Spartan Sport WHR Baro - GPS Accuracy "OK" - fix rate

zadow

Dears,

For my hiking activities I am using power saving mode with GPS accuracy set to OK. I was always impressed how good is this accuracy. Well, it was so good that I started to be suspicious.
According to manual:

OK: ~ 60 sec fix rate with full power

So, I extracted GPS file and checked times of GPS logs. I can see that the GPS is logged every second. OK, this I can understand that log rate is every second, as the BARO is reporting altitude. Then, I would expect that there will be 60 logs with same GPS coordinates. Nope. Cca up to 3 - 5 logs with same GPS coordinates.

The most important thing is that battery drain for GPS accuracy “OK” was only slightly lower than for BEST/GOOD. It would definitely won’t last for 40 hours as declared. Yep, display was off and with low Color mode and no HR was recorded.

So, could anyone explain, how the “OK” accuracy is really working?

Description on this link is for sure not applied. At least, not on my watches.

Thanks and have a nice day all!!!

sartoric

@zadow
Did you use route navigation feature ?

zadow

Nope. No Navigation and Navigation screen set to OFF.

Dimitrios Kanellopoulos

Can I have the file to check this? preferably a FIT file

zadow

Sure. It’s on the way to you via messanger (;

Dimitrios Kanellopoulos

Checked it you are right they are about 1-5s appart but many 1s appart

Dimitrios Kanellopoulos

But I think the Spartans on Good record every 1s if I remember corerct

sartoric

Yes, but he say it was set to OK
I guess I’ve never tried “OK” just “GOOD” and it correctly records every 1s

Out of curiosity, is there any way to search moves (MC or SA) based on GPS setting ?

zadow

Correct, @sartoric . It was set to OK. I am using GOOD only on my long rides on bike. For hiking, I am always using OK.

Dimitrios Kanellopoulos

@zadow oh!

Dimitrios Kanellopoulos

Then I have to test it once. Anyone else up to the task?

sartoric

Gonna try a fake walking move

Dimitrios Kanellopoulos

Oh wait! wait wait wait.

The first 7-12 mins are on best to determine the fused alti!

Dimitrios Kanellopoulos

Yes I crosschecked the file. Skip some samples at start and then its about 60s

zadow

Sorry guys, coming back a bit late. Trying to recovery a bit from my yesterday’s triathlon
Well, maybe I am missing something or I am not reading the file correctly, but still I see GPS change every 3-5 seconds. I checked different parts of file.
Could be the reason that I am reading GPS export from Strava? Fit file is in binary format.
Anyway, still, if the GPS accuracy in OK mode, is really as good as I can see it in my hiking activities, then it is impressively good.

I am going off for next two weeks, so no hurry on this topic. Thanks and enjoy the summer time!

sartoric

@zadow
Strava does its sh…magic with data during the import

Dimitrios Kanellopoulos

@zadow It can be that reason. You can upload a fit file to https://fit2tcx.runalyze.com/temp/ to get a detailed decode for example.

Dimitrios Kanellopoulos

@zadow Or ask me for the data, or a way to show you how to do this on beta.quantified-self.io

zadow

Dears,

I am back after some time. Recovering after last triathlon race and enjoying time with my family. It’s a great summer, by the way
I hope you all have also nice time, whatever you are doing

However, I need to get back to this issue as I still think that there is a issue with GPS accuracy set to OK. I was on three days long hike. First day morning I set my SSWHR Baro as following:
GPS accuracy - OK
Low color mode - ON
Display - OFF (after 10 sec)
Navigation - OFF (completely, even the breadcrumb display was off)

I was observing the GPS accuracy, which is not so important for me during hiking, but far more important - battery lifetime.

Here are my issues:
#1 - GPS accuracy - it’s just too good for OK mode. The fix is definitely not done each 60 seconds. According to my observation it is somewhere between 5 ~ 20 seconds. (yep, I am aware of first 15 minutes when FusedAlti should kick in).

#2 - Battery drain - I guess this is connected with #1. According to Tech. specification, with GPS set to OK, the battery should last up to 40hrs. My hikes tooks approximately 6 ~ 7 hours. (Day #1 and day #2). The battery drain was from 60% ~ 70% percent, which is consumption about 10% per hour. Simple calculation tell us that with such consumption, battery would last about 10 hours. Hey, wait - 10 hours is expected at GPS set to BEST…

So, I did some activities with different GPS setting to see battery consumption for each Power saving mode:
BEST - cca 10% ~ 12% per hour
Good - cca 5% ~ 7% per hour
OK -cca cca 8% ~ 10% per hour

That is pretty strange, isn’t it? Consumption for mode OK is worse than for Good…

I wanted to create a ticket for this but somehow could not find a link where to report it.

For your reference, link to my activities:

Hiking Day#1:
https://app.suunto.com/move/zadow/5d505a3c17683a14e17386c8

Hiking Day #2:
https://app.suunto.com/move/zadow/5d516eef58e21162c5da60bc

Hiking Day #3:
https://app.suunto.com/move/zadow/5d5288bca6957bf53b9a7643

P.S.
Please do not advice me to go for S9 when I am so focused on battery life. I am not and I am pretty happy with my Sport Baro. It does everything what I need and it does it perfectly. Once the OK mode is solved, it’s still the best watches for all my needs. I just wanted to mention this upfront

Dimitrios Kanellopoulos

@zadow Did you use navigation? What file is with the OK mode? Did you use any ETA custom fields?