Change off-track alarm distance in Suunto 9
-
Hi,
I’m new to the forum and new to Suunto. Just bought a Suunto 9 and I wonder if there is a way to change the distance for the watch to alarm when you are following a route and go off-track.
I’ve read in the manual is set to 100 meters, which in my experience is too much. Actually today I was running in the mountains following a route and after a few minutes realised that I was going in the wrong direction but the watch didn’t complain at all.
Don’t remember seeing any related setting in the docs. Is there any way of setting that distance to something like 50 or 25 meters?
-
@djibarian
Nope
It can’t be done atm. Just consider that sometimes gps precision is not so precise
and it could fire the alarm even if you’re on track, if the set distance is too short.As you know, sometimes the map track is a bit different from the real trail, so you need to have some “margin” to avoid alarm to beep every time, but to warn you when you’re really off track
-
@sartoric That’s the reason of being able to change the distance for the alarm. You know in advance if the area is open, if the track you are following is precise, etc. so you should be able to decide the alarm threshold. Actually that’s a feature already present in the Fenix 5. At least the Suunto 9 should show the distance to the track, imo.
-
@djibarian said in Change off-track alarm distance in Suunto 9:
@sartoric That’s the reason of being able to change the distance for the alarm. You know in advance if the area is open, if the track you are following is precise, etc. so you should be able to decide the alarm threshold. Actually that’s a feature already present in the Fenix 5. At least the Suunto 9 should show the distance to the track, imo.
Yes but if it showed the distance to the track and the GPS isn’t that precise it may be the wrong distance. I have found the track more very good when walking or cycling - just zoom out a bit more on the bike and in a bit more if walking. On the bike it often gives an off track warning when I’m on the track (road) as if it is too sensitive IMHO.
-
I’ll agree with you, that a 100m off track alarm is too much. A few months ago I run a race with a friend who owned a Garmin Fenix 5. His watch triggered almost on time when we got off track. It will be useful in a feature update, to have the option to choose in which metres the alarm should be triggered.
-
Just tried the feature in a Fenix 5 today and fell in love with it instantly. I didn’t change any setting, just activated the TrackBack feature to follow the track back home. If you move a few meters off the track it vibrates and shows the off-distance and the direction to go on-track. If you come on-track vibrates again and the distance to the track changes to the distance to the starting point. Moving through the data screens there is one that shows you the ETA, the remaining distance, etc. Simply perfect. I can’t find any of that in the Suunto 9 and doesn’t agree about the lack of precision of the GPS. I’d prefer a false off-track alarm (which actually I got with the Fenix and simply ignored it) than nothing at all, which is what you have now in the Suunto. 100 meters is pretty much useless.
-
@djibarian Has this changed for Garmin, the last unit I had provided a warning every 60 sec I was off track and no way to silence it. That was incredibly annoying. It was also way to sensitive and would often activate when I was on track. I have been happy with the Suunto version so far.
-
@Brad_Olwin didn’t see that behavior. It’s true that warned once when on-track, but then I went 70 meters far from the track and went perfect. Only complained once and then went silent all the time until I went on-trak again, which detected perfectly.
-
@djibarian That is good, I agree, it would be useful to have a selectable adjustment for distance off track. I think there are some changes coming to Navigation, let’s see what happens.
