Fitbit floor tracking

sargessexyone

Was trying to figure out why my fitbit said I climbed 16 floors today so I went to the online help and FAQs section and this is what I found.

Fitbit trackers that count floors use an altimeter to calculate how many floors you've climbed. An altimeter is a sensor that calculates altitude based on atmospheric pressure. Atmospheric pressure decreases with increasing elevation, so the tracker calculates elevation gain based on the reduction in atmospheric pressure. Your tracker registers a floor when it detects continuous motion combined with an elevation gain of about 10 feet. 10 feet is an average between residential and commercial floor heights.

So does that mean since it was so cold today that my fitbit assumed I was increasing my altitude??? Floors climbed isn't one of my priorities to track but I am curious.

malibu927

I was wondering too. Mine said 7 floors when I last synced it. I've only gone upstairs one time today!

RockWarrior84

I was wondering too. Mine said 7 floors when I last synced it. I've only gone upstairs one time today!

i would assume it would also count elevation change driving as well (driving up and down hills). You would be surprised how much elevation change there is between different areas of a town and what not.

malibu927

I was wondering too. Mine said 7 floors when I last synced it. I've only gone upstairs one time today!

i would assume it would also count elevation change driving as well (driving up and down hills). You would be surprised how much elevation change there is between different areas of a town and what not.

I checked the times the climbs were recorded...all were within the 75 minutes I was at the gym. Two as I was warming up on the bike, the rest on the treadmill which was at 0 vertical

bentobee

I'm glad to see this brought up! Counting floors is one of my goals, so I do always keep an eye on it (most flights come from my long walks up many hills). For the last week I've been catching mine counting floors that I did not climb. Today I went upstairs only once (our stairs only go to a bonus room) and my FitBit says I've climbed 3. This never happened prior to this last week.

SerenitiC

Great topic OP! Every once in awhile mine will count an extra one or three(I blame the truck or forgetting to turn on sleep mode) But I pretty much always get my daily stairs goal since I live on the 3rd floor of my building. Oddly though it only counts the 3 sets of stairs at two, but i'm not complaining.

sargessexyone

Just looked at the details and I was home when it said I was climbing floors (we live in a one story house).

sargessexyone

Great topic OP! Every once in awhile mine will count an extra one or three(I blame the truck or forgetting to turn on sleep mode) But I pretty much always get my daily stairs goal since I live on the 3rd floor of my building. Oddly though it only counts the 3 sets of stairs at two, but i'm not complaining.

This part is probably the answer to your problem.


If you climb a long staircase, you may find that the tracker's floor count doesn't match how many floors you've gone up because the floors in the building are taller than 10 feet. For example, if you climb 4 floors that are 13 feet tall (for a total gain of 52 feet), your tracker might tell you that you've gone 5 floors because it assumes that each floor is about 10 feet.

WalkingAlong

I was wondering too. Mine said 7 floors when I last synced it. I've only gone upstairs one time today!

i would assume it would also count elevation change driving as well (driving up and down hills). You would be surprised how much elevation change there is between different areas of a town and what not.

No, it only counts 'floors' if the altitude change is accompanied by stepping. If you go up 5 steps and stop, or maybe turn around to go up the next flight, it might not count that because of the stop in the middle. If you go up an elevator it shouldn't count.

What people need to realize is it's just a fun little gimmicky thing that doesn't count into your calories and is just a rough estimate. If you were home all day in your ranch and see two floors, it means nothing. If you decide to go run a stadium, you might find the stats fun. If you work in a high rise, it's fun. If you have stairs at home you can run, it's fun.

samanthab19

It doesn't count the stairmaster as flights either

WalkingAlong

No, it needs an actual elevation change. Or a storm front.

sargessexyone

I was wondering too. Mine said 7 floors when I last synced it. I've only gone upstairs one time today!

i would assume it would also count elevation change driving as well (driving up and down hills). You would be surprised how much elevation change there is between different areas of a town and what not.

No, it only counts 'floors' if the altitude change is accompanied by stepping. If you go up 5 steps and stop, or maybe turn around to go up the next flight, it might not count that because of the stop in the middle. If you go up an elevator it shouldn't count.

What people need to realize is it's just a fun little gimmicky thing that doesn't count into your calories and is just a rough estimate. If you were home all day in your ranch and see two floors, it means nothing. If you decide to go run a stadium, you might find the stats fun. If you work in a high rise, it's fun. If you have stairs at home you can run, it's fun.

From the fitbit website:

Your tracker registers a floor when it detects continuous motion combined with an elevation gain of about 10 feet. 10 feet is an average between residential and commercial floor heights.

I don't track the floors, I just thought it curious that it counted 16 today when always before it 1 maybe 2.

scrapjen

In real life you would burn a few extra calories for elevation changes (rather than staying flat) but the "stairs" function is a little more just for fun ... it doesn't affect your calorie burn, which is probably a good thing as it is notoriously unreliable. That being said, mine has been quite accurate. I do have the occasional day when something wonky happens, but for the most part, mine is spot on. My gym is downstairs, and I do several workouts a day, so I see my "stairs" at the end of every workout.

My son (14 years old) was at a basketball tournament and had some spare time so he ran the bleachers just to up his stair count. He hit 100 that day (and it was all honest too!).

sargessexyone

In real life you would burn a few extra calories for elevation changes (rather than staying flat) but the "stairs" function is a little more just for fun ... it doesn't affect your calorie burn, which is probably a good thing as it is notoriously unreliable. That being said, mine has been quite accurate. I do have the occasional day when something wonky happens, but for the most part, mine is spot on. My gym is downstairs, and I do several workouts a day, so I see my "stairs" at the end of every workout.

My son (14 years old) was at a basketball tournament and had some spare time so he ran the bleachers just to up his stair count. He hit 100 that day (and it was all honest too!).

Awesome job for him!!

WalkingAlong

I was wondering too. Mine said 7 floors when I last synced it. I've only gone upstairs one time today!

i would assume it would also count elevation change driving as well (driving up and down hills). You would be surprised how much elevation change there is between different areas of a town and what not.

No, it only counts 'floors' if the altitude change is accompanied by stepping. If you go up 5 steps and stop, or maybe turn around to go up the next flight, it might not count that because of the stop in the middle. If you go up an elevator it shouldn't count.

What people need to realize is it's just a fun little gimmicky thing that doesn't count into your calories and is just a rough estimate. If you were home all day in your ranch and see two floors, it means nothing. If you decide to go run a stadium, you might find the stats fun. If you work in a high rise, it's fun. If you have stairs at home you can run, it's fun.

From the fitbit website:

Your tracker registers a floor when it detects continuous motion combined with an elevation gain of about 10 feet. 10 feet is an average between residential and commercial floor heights.

I don't track the floors, I just thought it curious that it counted 16 today when always before it 1 maybe 2.

That is a lot. It was probably the weather. I don't know anything about barometric pressure but people on the Fitbit site talk about weather patterns affecting theirs.

kshama2001

I was wondering why yesterday I got 19 floors but today only got 8 floors for the exact same walk and the OP seems to have answered it - continuous motion combined with an elevation gain - yesterday I was just walking but today I brought my pruners and was working on the trail so was stopping a lot.

Next time I bring my pruners I'll only work while going downhill and see how that changes things

L_Master

sargessexyone wrote: »

Was trying to figure out why my fitbit said I climbed 16 floors today so I went to the online help and FAQs section and this is what I found.

Fitbit trackers that count floors use an altimeter to calculate how many floors you've climbed. An altimeter is a sensor that calculates altitude based on atmospheric pressure. Atmospheric pressure decreases with increasing elevation, so the tracker calculates elevation gain based on the reduction in atmospheric pressure. Your tracker registers a floor when it detects continuous motion combined with an elevation gain of about 10 feet. 10 feet is an average between residential and commercial floor heights.

So does that mean since it was so cold today that my fitbit assumed I was increasing my altitude??? Floors climbed isn't one of my priorities to track but I am curious.

No. Temperature does not affect the reading. It works off barometric pressure changes, which aren't inherently related to temperature. It's certainly possible that a major weather front moving through could impact the number of floors if you were moving at the time, but I've found the floors feature to be impressively accurate for any outdoor walking. I've done 8 run/walks with the things now, and each time it's been within 8% of the "actual" elevation change as selected from an average between strava and google earth map of the route. If I go outside and walk a route with 600ft elevation change, I'm getting between 55-65 floors. Pretty good in my book.

I do get the occasional flight of stairs randomly counted, but I'm definitely not getting 30 floors on a day where I just walked around the house or at work. The only thing that remains to be seen is what happens when we have a big low pressure front come through.

samanthab19 wrote: »

It doesn't count the stairmaster as flights either

Of course not. While you do gravitational work on the stairmaster you don't actually change altitude, and thus there is no corresponding pressure change to trigger the altimeter in the fitbit.