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The question is, what is better. Obviously in the case that led to the threshold change, the phantom steps were unacceptable, but missing real steps for real walks is also not great.
Several of the articles I read accept that "steps" is really a proxy for physical activity, and in my view housework counts somewhat in that regard too. If I am using the step counter because I'm on a hike or a run, I want accuracy for actual steps. If I'm using it as a monitor of my general lifestyle, I probably want other exercise-like behaviour included, or at least don't mind about it.
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Appreciate this is just a first round of testing, a just a rought feedback and more is needed.
Mixed activities are not great, they dont make good comparisons. We have to be quite rigid in the testing regime and a range of activties measured seperately AND the activity set needs to be as close a possible the same as the last test.
I came up with this list of tests:
1) Walking a 1 mile circuit
2) Sleeping overnight.
3) Driving 15 minutes or 30 minutes
4) Sitting at a Desk for 4 hours typing
5) General housework.Even if you walk exactly the same walk, same route, same distance 10 times it will comes out different each time with the same device because your path will always be slighly different, unless you had painted footprints in the path and walked exactly the same footprints etc.
You have to do the same tests multiple times and take the average, one result is not enough.Whats is already known:
on Threshold 14 Bangle will over count on none stepping acctivties like driving, housework but be within 98% of a control device like a fitbit or Amazfit Bip.
On Threshold 18 - I would expect the Bangle to under count by maybe 2000 steps over a 10K steps walk. I did the tests and have the result somewhere.
When I set the threhold at 14 it was because over 10K steps of actual walking I got the most accurate results. I dont want to go on a 10 mile walk and the step counter tell me I have only walked 14000 steps instead of the 20,0000+ it should be saying- as its a pretty worthless step counter in that situation.
On the days I am not walking I am less bothered about accuracy. If I know I have been in the house all day apart from taking the dog round the block, done a bit of housework - I dont really care if the counter reads 1000 steps or 1500 steps - I know I simply did not get enough exercise that day and I'm not going to fool myself just because a step counter says I did 200-300 steps more than I actually did.
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Update... The time is about 22:00 (CET) and I've taken the watches off.
On the 14 threshold the result was, after wearing both watches from 07:00 to 22:00 (mixed activities):
Fitbit - 8765
Bangle - 10188
Today with the 18 threshold, after wearing both watches from 07:00 to 22:00 (mixed activities, but not as active as last time), the result was:
Fitbit - 6404
Bangle - 5830
Would have liked to see about the same number of steps, but there's definitely a change.
Threshold 14 meant that the Bangle would count 16% more steps than the Fitbit, while threshold 18 meant the Bangle counted 9% fewer steps than the Fitbit. While monitoring the count throughout the day it seemed to me that the count while being still and doing housework was more accurate this time around. The big discrepancy didn't really start until I went for a short walk in the afternoon and then it stayed at about 400-600 steps difference the rest of the day.
The above observations seem to correlate somewhat with the reasoning made by @Gordon here: http://forum.espruino.com/comments/16360753/. Walking became more inaccurate while other activities became more accurate.
More testing needed though...