Open water GPS drifting
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@gerasimos I tested open water swimming a bit today …it’s ridiculous
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@thanasis very bad…It’s truly infuriating because it’s like you’re buying a watch just for tracking runs, and it fails to do this basic job… If you wear it on your wrist, after all the tests I’ve done, it just fails.
And I’m always comparing with other athletes side by side mainly using Coros and Garmin, which also have GPS deviations — but in no way as bad as mine.
The only solution it’s a swim buoy and put the watch in or upside… Until a fix (if exists) -
In case anyone has forgotten what a good OWS track looks like, I used… another watch yesterday. I was using my FORM goggles, with their swim straight feature (shows a compass heading live as I swim, so I can be confident of swimming in a straight line).
My inflammatory post aside, has everyone logged this with Suunto support, with a reference to this thread?
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@gerasimos I didn’t try swimming in the last days… but I also don’t expect the proof of this problem in near future… it seems that there is all the power of the Suunto Team working on new models to be released
there was no comment of some official persons (for example @pavel.samokha) about this problem… -
I have exactly the same problem with my Suunto Race, even though I always sync the watch with the app before training, and I swim freestyle only.
I had no such issues last summer, so it’s obviously connected to the latest firmware updates.I’ve reported the issue several times through the app, but never got a reply, nor even a confirmation that my reports were received.
The whole situation really pisses me off, as swimming is almost the only sport I can do now (I had a bad knee injury, so no more running, cycling, or anything like that). At this point, I’m even starting to consider switching to Garmin, though I was generally happy with my watch before.
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@Ilya-Zherikov-0 I hope your knee heals quickly and you can get back to all your activities soon.
It’s completely understandable to be frustrated with a situation like this. As for me, I’ve tried every possible test, (and triple check with others models in same hand)and the only thing left is to wait and see if a GPS fix come, If not, then unfortunately I’ll need to invest in a watch that’s reliable for open-water tracking. (For other activities SVti works absolutely perfect in every aspect)
I really don’t want to keep it inside a swim buoy or carry two watches, merge .fit files…etc -even if that means accepting small deviations from the actual distance-
But nothing like the crazy inaccuracies it’s been showing this year… It’s like my Suunto watch have caught a GNSS virus
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I am not a good swimmer, but I tried a short open water swim yesterday - my first with Suunto - and it was a complete failure.
If I bought this watch for swimming, I’d be very disappointed!
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Did you follow this procedure before starting the activity?
https://www.suunto.com/en-gb/Support/faq-articles/lifecycle/how-to-get-more-accurate-open-water-swim-tracking/ -
The swimming style you should use is freestyle only, and your arm must come completely out of the water, maintaining a consistent frequency so that the GPS always has proper tracking.
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Should not press start and begin recording the activity while your watch is in the water for seconds without swimming, because in that case it will definitely lose the signal for the rest of the session.
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If you are resting or stopped anytime during the open water swim, make sure to keep the hand that is wearing your watch at or above the surface of the water to allow the watch to maintain a strong GPS signal.
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Is your watch running on the latest update… and check always BEST GPS Settings on watch
-If your watch continues the same results after several tests and all these steps, then you are likely facing the same issue…
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@gerasimos said in Open water GPS drifting:
The swimming style you should use is freestyle only, and your arm must come completely out of the water, maintaining a consistent frequency so that the GPS always has proper tracking.
No my swimming style wasn’t good. Initially I went freestyle, but then switched to breaststroke for a while to rest even though I still tried to keep my arm coming out of the water - that is when the position jumped. The watch had actually displayed an alert that it detected an unusual speed. It if detected a poor data and a significant jump in distance and speed, why did it record it?
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@sky-runner
So you can’t have an objective criterion that it’s 100% the watch’s GPS fault in your case, since you changed your swimming style, and with the breaststroke your hand stayed in the water — therefore GPS reflections are absolutely normal to occur.
As for speed recording, it’s also logical for this to happen because, along with the signal reflecting and the distance, it also records speed — like you had teleported.
Sometimes the watch even shows a pop-up message saying that the speed is not normal for swimming and asks if you want to continue.Check this link (it’s from another company but i found it clearly and analytical for swim style)
https://support.coros.com/hc/en-us/articles/360040257611-Open-Water-SwimI hope I helped, because these are entirely my personal assessments and not any kind of official test.
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After vacation update.
The watch performed much better than before, with the same firmware (latest) and startup procedure before swimming (update GNSS using the app and wait for a good signal before swimming).
There were no large deviations, only smaller ones. Roughly, I would say that the tracked distance is within +10% the real distance. I tested it on my usual swimming routes, so I know the distances in advance. But almost every swim had a absurdly top speed ( >30km/h). One swim had a record breaking top speed of 185.8 km/h
These performances are acceptable, for me who swims recreationally during the summer, but far from perfect or even ideal.
Hope the issue will be fixed with the next updates.
