My Garmin went swimming by itself!
Drkpking
Posts: 1 Member
I use a Garmin vivofit 3 to track my steps, etc. and have to share what I just found listed in my activity for yesterday !!!!
Take a look at the attached photo...
See the swimming? My Garmin went “swimming” by itself (in my pants pocket because I had a manicure) through the washing machine and the system registered it as swimming! I find this incredibly funny. The good news was that after I put the clothes in the dryer, I went for a walk with my puppies and looked down at my wrist and said “ “oh $&”#%$. where is my Garmin?” And I ran in the house and retrieved it out of the dryer before it had heated up to much. I don’t know how it would’ve fared going to through the whole drying cycle. I don’t want to know. Note to self —check all pockets every time. And maybe no more manicures!
Take a look at the attached photo...
See the swimming? My Garmin went “swimming” by itself (in my pants pocket because I had a manicure) through the washing machine and the system registered it as swimming! I find this incredibly funny. The good news was that after I put the clothes in the dryer, I went for a walk with my puppies and looked down at my wrist and said “ “oh $&”#%$. where is my Garmin?” And I ran in the house and retrieved it out of the dryer before it had heated up to much. I don’t know how it would’ve fared going to through the whole drying cycle. I don’t want to know. Note to self —check all pockets every time. And maybe no more manicures!
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Replies
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Now that made me laugh
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I want to know which stroke and your swolf!
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LOL!
Now I'm wondering if Garmins simply enjoy imagining that we are swimming: Mine thought I was swimming when I was actually bailing water out of the bottom of a rowing barge (big boat that's basically a rectangular box about the size of a living room, but with oars).
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Mine constantly thinks that I'm cycling when I'm rowing outside. I think it's logic is, "well you're moving faster than you would if you were walking, but it's clear that there's no repeated walking/running like cadence so...cycling?"0
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My FitBit clone went swimming by itself when I was playing SUP polo over the summer and now it's sleeping with the fishes...2
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^ Exactly why I don’t like devices that auto-detect workouts. I’d rather tell it what workout I’m doing than have it try to guess what I’m doing.Mine constantly thinks that I'm cycling when I'm rowing outside. I think it's logic is, "well you're moving faster than you would if you were walking, but it's clear that there's no repeated walking/running like cadence so...cycling?"
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LOL!
Now I'm wondering if Garmins simply enjoy imagining that we are swimming: Mine thought I was swimming when I was actually bailing water out of the bottom of a rowing barge (big boat that's basically a rectangular box about the size of a living room, but with oars).
At least it was thematically correct. Mine thinks being in a small boat on a choppy lake is cycling if I leave the "auto-detect" feature on. I like to think I ride with finesse and smoothness, my watch thinks I'm more of a slamdancing on the pedals kind of guy.
By the way I put 2 or 3 Fitbit Ones through the wash the same way, and it was the end of each of them.1 -
That's pretty funny.
My fenix 5X wouldn't record a swim unless the clothes managed to push the correct buttons to select swimming, then start. 0 -
Sooo... how many calories is your wash cycle?2 -
That's pretty funny.
My fenix 5X wouldn't record a swim unless the clothes managed to push the correct buttons to select swimming, then start.
That's interesting: My Vivoactive 3 (also Garmin, but lower model) has the select/start process for activities, but will try to suggest activities after the fact if it sees certain signs, regardless. (That's how the swimming/bailing thing happened.) I'm a little surprised to hear Fenix doesn't have that same imaginative habit! Maybe Garmin thinks us less athletic/more tracker-ish people need more help knowing what we're doing?
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Funny. If I forget my phone in my pocket google fit thinks I'm biking. What I'm usually doing is riding a horse.1
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That's pretty funny.
My fenix 5X wouldn't record a swim unless the clothes managed to push the correct buttons to select swimming, then start.
That's interesting: My Vivoactive 3 (also Garmin, but lower model) has the select/start process for activities, but will try to suggest activities after the fact if it sees certain signs, regardless. (That's how the swimming/bailing thing happened.) I'm a little surprised to hear Fenix doesn't have that same imaginative habit! Maybe Garmin thinks us less athletic/more tracker-ish people need more help knowing what we're doing?
The Fenix watches will identify activities that match movement patterns of a particular exercise, and they'll tag them as a "Move IQ Event" in your daily activity, as opposed to a recorded workout. There's a better, more in-depth explanation of it here: https://support.garmin.com/en-US/?faq=zgFpy8MShkArqAxCug5wC60 -
That's pretty funny.
My fenix 5X wouldn't record a swim unless the clothes managed to push the correct buttons to select swimming, then start.
That's interesting: My Vivoactive 3 (also Garmin, but lower model) has the select/start process for activities, but will try to suggest activities after the fact if it sees certain signs, regardless. (That's how the swimming/bailing thing happened.) I'm a little surprised to hear Fenix doesn't have that same imaginative habit! Maybe Garmin thinks us less athletic/more tracker-ish people need more help knowing what we're doing?
I think it comes down to target audience. VA is for people who want a great, do it all watch. Fenix is for people who are anal about their data. I never start moving until it has a full GPS lock and the pace reads zero. I have auto pause turned off because I want a full accounting. Also battery life is one of the selling points and that's not gonna work if it turns on the GPS without you knowing about it.
Or maybe I'm confused about what you mean. My timeline and stress chart show the start/end of when it thinks I went for a walk or whatever else, but it doesn't really have any detail about it.0 -
NorthCascades wrote: »That's pretty funny.
My fenix 5X wouldn't record a swim unless the clothes managed to push the correct buttons to select swimming, then start.
That's interesting: My Vivoactive 3 (also Garmin, but lower model) has the select/start process for activities, but will try to suggest activities after the fact if it sees certain signs, regardless. (That's how the swimming/bailing thing happened.) I'm a little surprised to hear Fenix doesn't have that same imaginative habit! Maybe Garmin thinks us less athletic/more tracker-ish people need more help knowing what we're doing?
Or maybe I'm confused about what you mean. My timeline and stress chart show the start/end of when it thinks I went for a walk or whatever else, but it doesn't really have any detail about it.
My VA3 does what Anvilhead was saying, I think - sometimes tags a part of my day as a Move IQ event, and speculates about what it was, based on movement patterns. It doesn't (AFAIK) start the GPS unless I explicitly start an activity that involves GPS data (like rowing - the outdoor kind); then the GPS starts.
The battery life is OK-ish. I usually stick it on the charger once a day or thereabouts, but it's rarely below 70s or 80s percents at the time. I think it'd probably go 2 days between charges, unless I did unusually long workouts or something. (I use a chest belt HRM for rowing because of arm movement, and for spin out of habit, and of course the GPS kicks in for outdoor rowing.)
I'm kinda data geek-y, and it's giving me the data I'd want for rowing: Maps, 500m splits, stroke ratings (you'd call it cadence, I think ), a bunch of HR data, etc.. (Some of the rowing specific data, I suspect, is a little . . . imaginative. ). I'm not saying it's as comprehensive as the more expensive Fenix, but it's giving me what I'd need if I were training more seriously again, I think. (There isn't as much add-on instrumentation available for rowing as there is for cycling, anyway. Physics of rowing are pretty arcane, and not as many people do it as cycle, I think, so not as much market.)
I actually prefer auto-pause on, because I don't need my 500m splits to include water breaks where we're just wind/current-drifting if not sitting still. On the water, I don't want to be messing around pausing the activity if we stop. (If you let go of your oars, rowing quickly turns into swimming.) I need to sit down and figure out whether I can change the autopause pace for rowing like I could on my old Forerunner 205, though.
But I digress wildly and inappropriately from the OP's washing machine! Sorry, OP!1 -
I just downloaded google fit this weekend, but I just kept the phone in my pocket, never started any workout recording, and was almost creeped out when I looked at it in the evening and saw that it had accurately detected a bike ride on Sunday afternoon! Like, how could google possibly know that?peppermintcaroline wrote: »Funny. If I forget my phone in my pocket google fit thinks I'm biking. What I'm usually doing is riding a horse.
My theory after seeing that was that it used gps to look at my speed and decide it was too fast for running and too slow for being in a car.
In the evening I put it in my pocket while doing a lower body strength video from youtube to see if it could also figure that out. It noticed I was doing something, but it also called it "cycling". There goes my gps hypothesis...
But I am for sure not putting my phone in the washing machine to test if that would register as swimming
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Mine thought I was swimming after a wedding where I danced A LOT. Now I'm mortified that I do way too many arm movements when I'm dancing. Or drinking and dancing1
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NorthCascades wrote: »That's pretty funny.
My fenix 5X wouldn't record a swim unless the clothes managed to push the correct buttons to select swimming, then start.
That's interesting: My Vivoactive 3 (also Garmin, but lower model) has the select/start process for activities, but will try to suggest activities after the fact if it sees certain signs, regardless. (That's how the swimming/bailing thing happened.) I'm a little surprised to hear Fenix doesn't have that same imaginative habit! Maybe Garmin thinks us less athletic/more tracker-ish people need more help knowing what we're doing?
Or maybe I'm confused about what you mean. My timeline and stress chart show the start/end of when it thinks I went for a walk or whatever else, but it doesn't really have any detail about it.
My VA3 does what Anvilhead was saying, I think - sometimes tags a part of my day as a Move IQ event, and speculates about what it was, based on movement patterns. It doesn't (AFAIK) start the GPS unless I explicitly start an activity that involves GPS data (like rowing - the outdoor kind); then the GPS starts.
The battery life is OK-ish. I usually stick it on the charger once a day or thereabouts, but it's rarely below 70s or 80s percents at the time. I think it'd probably go 2 days between charges, unless I did unusually long workouts or something. (I use a chest belt HRM for rowing because of arm movement, and for spin out of habit, and of course the GPS kicks in for outdoor rowing.)
I'm kinda data geek-y, and it's giving me the data I'd want for rowing: Maps, 500m splits, stroke ratings (you'd call it cadence, I think ), a bunch of HR data, etc.. (Some of the rowing specific data, I suspect, is a little . . . imaginative. ). I'm not saying it's as comprehensive as the more expensive Fenix, but it's giving me what I'd need if I were training more seriously again, I think. (There isn't as much add-on instrumentation available for rowing as there is for cycling, anyway. Physics of rowing are pretty arcane, and not as many people do it as cycle, I think, so not as much market.)
I actually prefer auto-pause on, because I don't need my 500m splits to include water breaks where we're just wind/current-drifting if not sitting still. On the water, I don't want to be messing around pausing the activity if we stop. (If you let go of your oars, rowing quickly turns into swimming.) I need to sit down and figure out whether I can change the autopause pace for rowing like I could on my old Forerunner 205, though.
But I digress wildly and inappropriately from the OP's washing machine! Sorry, OP!
I got VA3 a few weeks ago on a whom when I saw a used one. Still getting it figured out. The GPS seems kind of random.0 -
NorthCascades wrote: »That's pretty funny.
My fenix 5X wouldn't record a swim unless the clothes managed to push the correct buttons to select swimming, then start.
That's interesting: My Vivoactive 3 (also Garmin, but lower model) has the select/start process for activities, but will try to suggest activities after the fact if it sees certain signs, regardless. (That's how the swimming/bailing thing happened.) I'm a little surprised to hear Fenix doesn't have that same imaginative habit! Maybe Garmin thinks us less athletic/more tracker-ish people need more help knowing what we're doing?
Or maybe I'm confused about what you mean. My timeline and stress chart show the start/end of when it thinks I went for a walk or whatever else, but it doesn't really have any detail about it.
My VA3 does what Anvilhead was saying, I think - sometimes tags a part of my day as a Move IQ event, and speculates about what it was, based on movement patterns. It doesn't (AFAIK) start the GPS unless I explicitly start an activity that involves GPS data (like rowing - the outdoor kind); then the GPS starts.
The battery life is OK-ish. I usually stick it on the charger once a day or thereabouts, but it's rarely below 70s or 80s percents at the time. I think it'd probably go 2 days between charges, unless I did unusually long workouts or something. (I use a chest belt HRM for rowing because of arm movement, and for spin out of habit, and of course the GPS kicks in for outdoor rowing.)
I'm kinda data geek-y, and it's giving me the data I'd want for rowing: Maps, 500m splits, stroke ratings (you'd call it cadence, I think ), a bunch of HR data, etc.. (Some of the rowing specific data, I suspect, is a little . . . imaginative. ). I'm not saying it's as comprehensive as the more expensive Fenix, but it's giving me what I'd need if I were training more seriously again, I think. (There isn't as much add-on instrumentation available for rowing as there is for cycling, anyway. Physics of rowing are pretty arcane, and not as many people do it as cycle, I think, so not as much market.)
I actually prefer auto-pause on, because I don't need my 500m splits to include water breaks where we're just wind/current-drifting if not sitting still. On the water, I don't want to be messing around pausing the activity if we stop. (If you let go of your oars, rowing quickly turns into swimming.) I need to sit down and figure out whether I can change the autopause pace for rowing like I could on my old Forerunner 205, though.
But I digress wildly and inappropriately from the OP's washing machine! Sorry, OP!
I got VA3 a few weeks ago on a whom when I saw a used one. Still getting it figured out. The GPS seems kind of random.
"Random" in what way? If you're talking about accuracy, you may want to check your settings and make sure GPS recording is set to "every second" instead of "smart recording", and also play around with using GPS+GLONASS and/or GPS+GALILEO vs. GPS Only. Also, make sure it's not set to use UltraTrac (if the VA3 has that setting) - it's a battery saver mode and records GPS locations and sensor data less frequently.
DCRainmaker gave the VA3 respectable ratings for its GPS accuracy in his review, so it shouldn't be a hardware issue unless you have a defective one. You may also want to read through his review to help familiarize yourself with it and see if you can pick up any helpful tips from it (he goes through the devices pretty thoroughly): https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2017/10/garmin-vivoactive-3-in-depth-review.html0
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