Compass calibration during activity

[sartoric]

Today during an hike I’ve had some issue in navigation, the arrow pointing was a bit off as it was never aligned to the track so I decided to calibrate the compass, but I’ve discovered that isn’t possible.
Am I missing something or the only way to do it is to stop activity - calibrate - start a new activity ?

Maybe it would be useful to have this option in activity’s navigation menu

[A Former User]

@sartoric Just yesterday I tried exactly the same. In my case arrows were consistently pointing backwards relative to where I was heading (e. g. navigation screen rotated 180 degrees). I also wanted to calibrate the compass and discovered that I couldn’t do that without stopping the activity, which of course I really didn’t want to do. In retrospect the compass calibration turned out to be fine and the navigation screen orientation at low speed seems to be an issue. I am going to do more testing to verify that.

By the way, is your magnetic declination setting correct?

[subtleguru]

I don’t think you are missing anything - I have never found a way calibrate during an activity. Unfortunately both “compass” and “navigation settings” are not available as menu options during an activity.

The second of these allows for calibration and declination adjustment while the first would allow for using the compass use during an activity. I wonder if there is a technical constraint preventing Suunto from enabling these or if they have missed the need for it?

The approach of the Garmin Fenix range is to allow an activity to pushed into the background allowing ALL the watch functions to be used and then return to the activity after changing any settings.

An alternative is to pause the activity and then make the changes and provide the ability to resume the activity - another approach Garmin take.

[surfboomerang]

@sartoric I have noticed that when my compass was misaligned during an activity, making the eight figure a couple of times corrected the alignment.

I didn’t select calibrate in the menu, but just made the eight figure a couple of times in a row.

[sartoric]

@surfboomerang
I’ll give it a try if it will happen again.
I usually never had such an issue or I was asked to calibrate it when starting the activity.

[Fiox89]

I had a discussion about the compass a few days ago, and I was told that the compass can easily be devalued when the watch is connected to the USB cable, due to the strong magnet on the connector. I now calibrate the compass after each recharge, maybe this info can help

[sartoric]

@Fiox89 said in Compass calibration during activity:

I had a discussion about the compass a few days ago, and I was told that the compass can easily be devalued when the watch is connected to the USB cable,

Yep, correct.
In fact I would expect to see the “calibrate compass” alert

[Dimitrios Kanellopoulos]

You can calibrate the compass for any device (eg phone etc) just by doing the same movement the calibration mesage asks for. There is no need for the message for this to happen.

[sartoric]

@Dimitrios-Kanellopoulos
I didn’t know it, since I never had the need before

[subtleguru]

@Dimitrios-Kanellopoulos Is there any feedback that the calibration is successful? Even when forced to calibrate it is a bit hit and miss while contorting my wrist in an odd way

[Dimitrios Kanellopoulos]

@subtleguru if the compass is uncalibrated or calibrated without the watch asking it then a beep happens from my observations. This beep might not happen if not needed to be calibrated.

[sartoric]

@Dimitrios-Kanellopoulos
But , what if tones are disabled ?

[Dimitrios Kanellopoulos]

@sartoric nada nor if its calibrated. In general 10s of that movement is ok. If it was really $#@ in terms of reading it will force you to calibrate it with the notification.