On Wed, 15 Sep 2004 08:39:33 -0400, Dally wrote:

Chris Braun wrote:

Today I did some experimenting at the gym. I walked on the treadmill
for one minute at 3.0 mph and counted my steps mentally: 111. I had
the pedometer on during that time and it registered exactly the same.
Then I reset the pedometer and the treadmill and walked for one mile
at the same 3.0 pace (20 minutes). I expected my stride length to
stay pretty constant since I was on a treadmill, so expected a step
count of approximately 20 * 111, or 2220. I got 2206 -- very close.
So the pedometer seems to be doing a fine job of counting steps.

Then I looked at the miles it said I'd walked, and it said .405! And
of course I'd walked exactly 1 mile. So I'm going to just use it for
counting steps and not make use of the mileage reading. (Also, I've
concluded that the 5000 or so steps yesterday was correct. Once I
started paying attention to how many steps are involved in just
general walking around, I realized they add up pretty quickly.)

I didn't see this when you posted it at first, so sorry for the late
reply. Check to see if there's a way to set the stride length. The
distance calculation is nonsense unless you do that.

There isn't; it's a pretty simplistic device. But that's okay, as I'm
just using it to count steps. The pedometer's distance calculation
seems to assume a stride length of less than 1 foot, which is just
silly.


To set mine, I walked ten steps, measured that distance with a tape
measure in inches, divided that number by 10 then again by 12 to get my
stride length: 2.25 feet in my case. I set that in my pedometer by
"moding" over to distance then hitting set and continuing to hit set as
it cycled through the choices. Then I paused and it accepted the new
setting and the mileage counter suddenly started making sense!

In the gym experiment my stride length was 2.38, so at least I can do
the math if I want to figure mileage. But I'm just playing with step
counting for now.

Chris