Incorrect distance when hiking

[Tomas5]

Hello,

yesterday I did hike which is by mapy.cz long 8.3km. Suunto 5 measured 11.2km with best GPS accuracy. Other persons hiking with me side by side, recorded on their phones distance around 9km. How is it possible that suunto watch is so much off ?

I had disabled autopause, so this could increment some distance because while we had break watch recorded some distance. But 30% more is too much away from reality.

I know that autopause can increase this accuracy, but I have problem that while hiking, when I climb steep route slowly, watch beeps all the time, paused-unpaused-paused-unpaused … which is anoying.

Is there any possibility to improve accuracy ? I noticed that 10s (good) GPS accuracy can help with this but with 10s interval don’t allow record ascent and descent.

609689d2bb50a56572c67048.fit

[DMytro]

@tomas5 for me Autopause only makes the distance less accurate while hiking in the mountains. As you’ve said, on the steeper trails pace oftentimes falls below the threshold.

[isazi]

I never use autopause.

Anyway can you find something strange in the map or speed graph?

[Mff73]

@tomas5
If I remove this part of your fit, I get 9km

There also seems to be some other small “bad” parts that may increase distance.

[Tomas5]

@mff73 yes i noticed this. That is place where we had break, strange is that we was on one place. Almost no movement at all. But gps readings was too incorrect, but there was quite narrow path between hills from both sides.

[Tomas5]

Week ago i did similar distance hike. And same result, mobile phones recorded almost correct distance and suunto 5 did 30% more. With same strange parts where we had some breaks while hike.

[Tomas5]

@mff73 how do you removed this part anyway? I don’t know good tool to edit fit files like this.

[Tomas5]

@isazi stranges part was from screenshoot from @Mff73

[Łukasz Szmigiel]

@tomas5 keep in mind that “good” in S5 is one GPS fix per minute, not per 10 seconds. Also, “good” is achievable only with custom battery mode which is buggy (it’ll default to endurance next time, which is one fix per two minutes).

If you want to use auto pause, it makes sense only with performance battery mode and in my opinion it’s useless when traveling slowly (ie. hiking) as the watch will trigger it way too often (ie. when on slow ascends).

[Tomas5]

@łukasz-szmigiel just looking for solution how to improve performance, because when watch tracked 12km on 8km hike. It is almost unusable. 30% difference. With suunto ambit 2S I used to have autopause disabled and 10s interval and I almost every time tracked correct distance compared to maps.

[Dimitrios Kanellopoulos]

@tomas5 well it tracked that because it was not paused and in 1min gps fix right ?

[Tomas5]

@dimitrios-kanellopoulos now with Suunto 5 it was 1s (best) fix and no autopause. With Ambit 2S it was 10s fix and no autopause usually. Never noticed so big difference with Ambit 2S, but now with Suunto 5, i checked latest hikes and few of them is really far away from real distance.

I hope that autopause could be implemented by step counter rather than by GPS/speed. Becouse when hiking slowly it pauses all the time, but if it would check steps it would know that I am walking and not sitting down.

[Egika]

how about not using autopause and just manually pause the watch when taking a rest?

[Tomas5]

@egika yes I try, but usually there are only two scenarios. 1) first I forget to pause or I press pause maybe after few minutes. 2) almost every time I forget to unpause.

I know it is my fault when i forget to pause or unpause, but shouldn’t technology help as to automate things instead of burdening us with doing this things manually ?

Well in this two hikes 200€ dedicated GPS device performed worst than some random smartphones with mapy.cz app or samsung health app. They had autopause enabled, but it didn’t pause/unpause all the time like suunto watch use to do.

[Egika]

@tomas5 the smartphone comparison is not fair - how long would their battery last tracking?And how much is the weight?

Anyway, the trigger of autopaus could be discussed. I don’t know if step detection would work when riding a bike or doing other sports like skiing, skating, etc. There are a lot of sports with different kind of arm movement during activity and pause.

So I guess for your use case and in a narrow valley with limited GPS reception the onyl things that could help are to enable GLONASS and use manual pause (plus you could attach a label to your back pack’s chest belt that says “(un)pause watch”. And everytime you open or close the belt for a break it would remind you

[Tomas5]

@egika Yes I enabled Galileo now and want to test next time if it will improve. And I will try to do my best to pause/unpause manually.

Should be better to test with Glonass ? I was looking for answer on forum and web but I couldn’t decide which one is better. Saw that Galileo had some problems at and of 2020 but I don’t know if this persist or not.

For pause trigger i noticed this with bike too. Even I have bought quite expensive bike pod, when i go on slow gear on step climb, I get autopause quite often, but watch should know that if I have cadence 40-50rpm it is imposible that I am resting. Maybe considering to trigger autopause by sensors (on bike, running, hike) would be better than in every type of sport by GPS only.

[Egika]

@tomas5 said in Incorrect distance when hiking:

Should be better to test with Glonass ? I was looking for answer on forum and web but I couldn’t decide which one is better. Saw that Galileo had some problems at and of 2020 but I don’t know if this persist or not.

Glonass is recommended for difficult topography (like deep canyons). And my personal experience in the slovenian alps is the same: where I could not get a fix at all with GPS or Galileo, Glonass made it possible

[Tomas5]

@egika thanks a lot, i am changing to Glonass. Lot of hikes I do is not in canyons but still surrounded by hills and forests so it can help.

[Dimitrios Kanellopoulos]

@tomas5 the thing is that the s series have the best static detection among all suuntos including the legendary a3.

However depending on the movement or if going in a cottage etc that changes.

I would not try autopause as for hikes it makes no sense since you might physically pause many times.

Was there anything in particular to the place you stopped ?

[Tomas5]

@dimitrios-kanellopoulos yes I stopped next to nice waterfall. Just siting, taking photos and eating some snack. I will just need to learn press pause by miself every time I stop for some break.