AllWeatherJeff

Has anyone ever experienced this before?

App used: Ride with GPS.
Device used: Samsung Note6.

Actual distance traveled was 78 miles, but total distance recorded was 90.1 miles.

I paused the app for approximately one minute to take off my jacket just before completing mile 48 of my ride, when I resumed the ride the new total was 60.2 miles. Somehow the app also recorded the 12 extra miles as an out and back, 6 mile stretch in a straight line over terrain with no roads or trails to speak of.

The 12 mile glitch:


The extra 12 miles also reconfigured all the data so my average speed is not correct.


I have contacted support at RidewithGPS,


I'm mostly just curious if anyone else has had this or something similar occur while using the RidewithGPS app.

Thanks

tyrion

I have thousands of miles mapped with RideWithGPS and have never seen such a thing, but then I never pause the app in the middle of a ride.

atwl77

This looks more like a smartphone GPS glitch than a RWGPS problem.

AllWeatherJeff

Yeah. That's pretty much what the tech support guy said in his reply email. He attributed it to interference with the "GPS radio" inside smartphones.

He gave me a link to a tutorial vid that showed me how to edit the glitch with the Ride Clean Up feature.

Here's the edited route with the glitch removed:

Tourist in MSN

I use dedicated GPS units, not a phone for GPS tracking.

Occasionally there will be one erratic reading that puts me far away, sometimes a few miles away but on very rare occasions in the middle of the atlantic or some totally absurd place in the middle of my track. Messes up my distance traveled, average speed, etc.

This sort of thing happens on occasion. My newer GPS units have much better antennae than my older ones that had a small patch antennae, the problem was more common with my older ones. Blame the GPS chip or antennae or the GPS software that is used to determine location, but I would not blame the tracking software.

The GPS signals from the satellites have to travel thousands of miles from satellites that are powered by solar panels, thus the signal can be pretty weak. Even commercial GPS units like the ones that professional surveyors use occasionally have difficulty from weak signals, most commonly in heavy tree cover or overcast conditions.

Carbonfiberboy 

My Polar GPS watch sometimes will give an erroneous GPS reading, especially on timber-lined roads, but my Garmin Edge units, never.

jadocs

Exactly, and is a prime reason not to use your phone as a bike computer.

rhm

Here's an amusing GPS glitch. This happened to me on Saturday.



On top, that's how Strava shows my ride. Below, another rider's track on the same ride. We rode this clockwise, not that that matters.

My GPS malfunctioned at mile 98. At that point the distance covered went from 98 miles to zero, and my cumulative odometer went from several thousand to zero. But the GPS continued to navigate the route.


More detail: looking at the GPS afterwards, I see I rode 26,688.93 miles, at an average speed of 2784.6 mph. I did not really go that fast. And my top speed was 40.7, which is actually plausible.

unterhausen

I think Steve's top speed on that route is usually 60mph, and mine is 35mph.

Okay, on the pre-ride, Steve did 47.9mph top speed. I'm pretty sure the last time we rode Jack's mountain the other way, he told me he hit 60.

AllWeatherJeff

Holy moly!

An average speed of mach 4 is respectable.

Now that's a glitch.

And if not...I know whose slipstream I'll be tucked into on my next group ride.