Ambit – Am I doing it wrong?

That’s odd.  Exactly my use case for my Ambit3 Peak as well.  It has a feature called fusedalti that handles the altitude correction.  It’s basically the combo of gps altitude and barometric altitude.  Assuming you’re using it such that you are actively tracking yourself.  It calibrates using GPS elevation at the start of the “move” and then the barometer from that point on as long as you are moving.

if you just open up the nav settings when you are not doing anything with the watch and hit “current location”, it’s suppose to set off FusedAlti in the background to calibrate the altitude via GPS.  Obviously you need to be outdoors or sitting next to a window for that to work.  Once it’s done that, you should get a relatively accurate altitude reading on the bottom of the default watch screen (bottom pane of second display). But if you leave it for awhile, that altitude reading will get wildly off as the weather changes until you record another session or get “current location” to calibrate it.  For example, I’m setting at 1250ish feet right now.  Watch reads 3993 feet for the reference altitude on the main display.  I haven’t used on a hike for a few weeks and the weather has been up and down pressure wise.

I should have also added, in your example, I agree.  I don’t see how your max battery low frequency recording intervals would have any bearing on the altitude calculation.  The way the watch should be working in that case is when you start recording it calibrates the altitude once, right at the start when it gets a GPS fix, then the barometer should handle it while you are moving.  And Suunto is IMO the best of breed for the baro accuracy in this regard.  Especially the Ambit series.

Tha is for the response, Chris.

I went on a hike this morning and checked the settings before we started and I noticed that I was on the Automatic Profile not Altimeter Profile like I indicated above. Which profile do you use?

I leave mine in auto mode.  Never had an issue.  I get pretty accurate elevation on my recordings around here in VA.  Had it out in Inyo this fall and it was dead on going over 2 10k foot passes.  At least based on the topo maps and JMT guides for where I was.

i would think altitude mode would be even more stable since it’s not trying to keep up with whether you are moving or not.

I use a Suunto Ambit3 Peak several days every week for running, hiking or backpacking. I don’t really understand the issue you have with the watch.

It measures both distance and altitude with great accuracy and precision.

I suggest you check out Andrew Skurka’s many blog posts about the watch.

Here’s a good starting point:

https://andrewskurka.com/long-term-review-suunto-ambit3-peak-gps-sport-watch/

Yep, I’ve read everything Skurka has mentioned. I think it’s time for me to call Suunto. Perhaps mine is defective or I have a really dumb setting turned on.

You weren’t hiking into or out of a tornado were you?  That pressure change would definitely hose your results :-)

IIRC, reflashing the firmware with the PC app will reset everything to default.  But honestly not sure you can change enough settings to trigger what you are seeing.  Be sure to sync any recordings before you flash though.  It clears the logs too!

have you tried going into the altit-baro setting screen (long press on middle button) and changing it to manual calibration.  Then back to auto, which will trigger fusedalti to recalibrate again?  It may take a few minutes and you should be outside.  What I’m referring to is different than the altitude vs baro vs automatic.  This is where you pick either manual calibration (setting the elevation at a known point vs fusedalti doing it).  Just thinking it might reset it’s brains.

I do have fusedalti turned on. It’s been turned on since I purchased it. I’ll try turning that off, manually calibrating to my home elevation and then turning it back on.

I reset the whole watch and sync’ed it to my computer and it seems to be fine now. :)

Sweet!  Wonder what in the world had gotten outta whack?  Maybe it just got into a sad state on it’s own, nothing you changed, and was kinda ‘locked’ into some kind of funk.  Who knows.

Good thing you didn’t have to contact Suunto, with their current identity crisis and transitioning to the new SA platform with MovesCount headed down the drain, I’m not sure they’d have been much help.  I participate on the Suunto forum, and they are definitely in a state of disarray right now.  Hope they find a way forward for all us Ambit3 owners.  I had a Spartan model for awhile and switched back to the Ambit3.