Garmin Sync Doesn't Work Correctly

I switched from a Fitbit Versa to a Garmin Vivo, which is a much more accurate and comprehensive tracker so far.

The problem is that Cronometer's sync with Garmin is a mess:

  1. Garmin's total steps (or total Calories) do not seem to appear in Cronometer, only specific Activities do (such as running or hiking).

But this means that Cronometer does not provide accurate information based on the total calories expended for the day. For instance, according to Garmin, yesterday I took a total of 8843 steps, including about an hour of hiking. Garmin reflects a total of 2067 calories burned. But Cronometer shows only the "hike" Activity from Garmin and shows 1882 calories burned. On other days the discrepancy can be much more significant.

  1. Often when I get up and sync in the morning, Chronometer places the sleep time under tomorrow's date. It looks like server times discrepancy. For what it's worth, today it worked as expected and Sleep was placed under today's date.

  2. Can Cronometer pass weight from Withings to Garmin, so we don't have to install My Fitness Pal to do so? Can Cronometer also add fields for "Muscle Mass" and "Bone Mass," as these are available from Withings?

Comments

  • edited September 2020

    I also have a Garmin Venu (same device, different screen)

    Every day I get a "Daily Activity (Garmin)" which is your calories from activates that aren't specifically logged as an activity like just walking around the house/etc.

    I do also note it puts a sleep value on the next day as well, but it tends to update that day to the correct value after I wake up. I'm not sure why it does that.

    Right now I also use MyFitnessPal to sync weight:
    Scale (WeightGuru) -> MFP -> Garmin -> Cronometer.
    I've requested they add a Cronometer and Garmin integration, but I don't expect to see that anytime soon, if at all. The health data syncing world is a strange one.

    Garmin has an API that you can push weight to, I considered writing a simple Python program to push a bunch of data I extracted from MFP with a web scraper I also wrote, but didn't figure it was worth the effort right now, so in theory Cronometer should be able to send that data to them if they were to develop the features, but that takes time/resources as well. I don't know if Cronometer currently pushes anything back to Garmin, though, but I don't think so.

  • @Blobo having the same issues as your #3 that you posted. I also have a Withings and Garmin Fenix. The Garmin sends info to cronometer, but Withings is not sending my weight to Cronometer. I also have a MFP and Withings is not sending biometrics there either.

  • edited September 2020

    I do get "Daily Activity" in Cronometer from my Garmin Venu, the problem is that they are completely inaccurate.

    Yesterday, Cronometer subtracted 44 calories based on Garmin's "Daily Activity.". The day before yesterday, it was 2 minutes and 0 calories. Two days ago it was 11 minutes and 0 calories subtracted. Yet, I did not spend these days in bed. The "burned calories" value is always significantly lower in Cronometer than in Garmin -- I don't understand why Cronometer doesn't just import the correct "burned calories" data from Garmin.

    I also don't understand why Cronometer doesn't export "calories consumed" to Garmin.

    Neither of these are complex or time-consuming tasks for a modestly competent developer.

    I guess the Sleep value does get adjusted eventually, but it's just sloppy implementation.

  • edited September 2020

    The problem with them pushing the calorie data back to Garmin is that they simply can't. Garmin has some sort of exclusive deal with MyFitnessPal where they are the only ones that's can have that functionality. There is a pretty long standing thread on the Garmin forums complaining about this, but so far they haven't responded or seemed to care.

    My burned calories are always accurate compared to the Garmin app. Right now they both show the exact same number for active calories. One thing to note is that Cronometer does need to be set to Sedentary activity, and it will only be slightly off (within ~100 calories) of Garmin as Garmin uses a slightly different number for the formula. They may seem out of sync, but that's only due to Garmin adding the "Resting Calories" over time vs all at once. The actual math behind it is that Cronometer uses a 1.2 multiplier, where Garmin uses 1.22. My active calories were also a 100% match on both, if I combined my workout and "Daily Activity" numbers which is what you were concerned with there.

    The thread about that is here: https://forums.cronometer.com/discussion/comment/12743

    One thing of note with the Garmin, they don't typically sync until you actually open the Connect app (this saves battery life). So if you don't open it before you check, say the web app or Cronometer it may be out of sync at the time.

    The sleep one, yeah that's just weird and I don't understand it either.

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