Vibrations et tonalités fantômes

[duffman19]

Some more observations confirming that it is indeed the compass auto-calibration causing the phantom vibrations:

I’ve been paying more attention to where I am when the phantom vibrations occur. Most often they occur when I am in the kitchen or the car, or shortly after I have been in the kitchen or car. This makes sense. Lots of magnets and electric fields in both places.

To test, I loaded the compass widget while going about my daily routine in both locations. As suspected, it frequently resets (“Calibrate compass” warning) while moving throughout these spaces.

For the kitchen, there are three main culprits: the refrigerator (grabbing the handle near a magnet), the stove (induction cooktop), and a wall-mounted, magnetic knife bar. The compass resets if the watch gets within a few inches of these items.

For the car, it was simply grabbing the door handle. My car has a touch sensor in the handle that unlocks the vehicle if the key fob is nearby. The compass resets every time I open the car with my watch hand. It will also reset if I place my arm on the inside door armrest. The culprit here seems to be the window controls or some other electronics within the door frame.

Obviously the phantom vibration doesn’t occur until the watch auto-calibrates by moving through a range of motion (figure-8). So, even though the compass resets throughout the day in these spaces, the calibration may not take place until some time later after the watch has moved about a bit. The motions involved with driving (turning the wheel, moving through corners) seem to be enough to trigger it, so I’ll often get several of them while in the car. But if I simply grab something out of the fridge, I may not get the calibration and phantom vibration until some time later.

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This is very much a 9PP specific bug. My SV1 does not reset in any of the above locations. Even placing it next to a very strong magnet has very little effect on the compass. This is probably why the bug slipped through when the auto-calibration feature was added as most testers were probably not wearing 9PPs at the time.

[Łukasz Szmigiel]

@duffman19 I’ll have to investigate based on your findings as it’s possible to download logs from the watch with vscode addon for s+ development.

[duffman19]

@Łukasz-Szmigiel Sounds good, thanks.

Also just discovered that getting too close to my laptop triggers the reset. I think it’s the magnets for the tiny built-in speakers. Man, this thing is sen-si-tive.

I think I recall some discussion when the watch was first released cautioning against using the original 9P charger with the 9PP because the magnets were too strong and it could brick the watch. I don’t think that was ever actually the case, but it sounds like Suunto was at least aware of how delicate the 9PP’s magnetometer is.

[tmclr]

@duffman19

I think you might be on it!

I’ve just pulled up the compass widget and placed my 9PP close to my iPad (with magnetic keyboard cover) - bingo - the compass losses calibration. Performing a cal is hard by waggling the watch on your wrist (people in the office are wondering what I’m doing ), but when it is complete I get the vibration confirming calibration complete.

I then held the watch close to my iPad again without the compass widget active, and confirmed that it has lost calibration. I’m now waiting to see how long it takes to ‘naturally’ calibrate and give me the phantom vibration.

Thanks for solving the mystery, just need a fix now!

[tmclr]

I’ve repeated several times this morning - bringing my watch close to the magnetic cover of my iPad. It is VERY sensitive and resets the compass very readily as duffman has worked out!
With me working at my desk, it seems to take between 30 and 60 mins to ‘naturally’ recalibrate the compass and give the phantom vibration alert.

[Elipsus]

Yes Its the compass for sure.
I worked for a few hours yesterday on my 3D printer, and that thing is full of magnets, and …oh boy… the watch did vibrate every 5 minutes !
Good job @duffman19
Now lets hope for a fix !

[Łukasz Szmigiel]

@Elipsus yeah, can confirm that. I’ve observed that too while I was working on fixing my friend’s laptop.

[MirkoP]

So? Anyone close to Suunto that could tell us if we should downgrade the firmware to fix it or we could expected an update just to fix the bug?

Thanks to everyone

[Łukasz Szmigiel]

@MirkoP get used to it

[Liszto]

@Łukasz-Szmigiel any news from Suunto here on that topic ?
The Suunto 9PP of my wife have the issue and it is worst and worst, now it’s battery is draining something like more than 20% per day probably due to that and the amount of vibration is very annoying 🫠

She hopes to have a fix for that and she hopes it’s battery won’t be “damaged” by that…

[Łukasz Szmigiel]

@Liszto I doubt that it’ll get fixed.

[Liszto]

@Łukasz-Szmigiel ok

@isazi for the follow up just in case