Open water swim spark3 — TomTom Community

Spark, Spark 3, Runner 2 and Runner 3

Open water swim spark3

Marcelo ALtMarcelo ALt Posts: 3 [Apprentice Traveler]
edited January 2019 in Spark, Spark 3, Runner 2 and Runner 3
Hi, I use to swin in open water with my spark3 with the freestyle mode in the wrist.
Last week after the training, I compared my watch marking with my friend´s Garmin. While my watch measured 5,4 km, his watch marked about 2,7 Km.
Last month I tested my watch in the swimming poll in the freestyle mode in many ways, swimming 200m.
The watch measured as follow:
  • watch in the cap: 200 m (exacly);
  • watch in the wrist
  • crawl: 400 m;
  • crawl with the hand closed (more stroke): 500 m;
  • crawl with paddle and fins (less stroke): 300 m;
and so on.
Is it possible to fix the Spark 3 to have a precise and accurate measurement of the distance using a GPS mode in the wrist?
Thanks in advance.
Marcelo

Comments

  • tfarabaughtfarabaugh Posts: 16,632
    Superusers
    No, for two reasons. First, the watch does not support open water swimming using GPS, it is for pools only. Supporting open water swimming is much more complicated than pool swimming (which involves counting strokes and figuring out the stroke length). GPS cannot be detected underwater, so it would need to time the GPS signal attainment with the split second the watch is above water on each stroke (assuming you are doing a stroke that brings your arms out of the water). This is a very difficult thing to compensate for and it has been a mixed bag on all devices, none of them do it perfectly well and many have not even tried, like TT (and Garmin on their more recent devices). What most users who want open water swimming do is to use freestyle mode and put the watch in their cap or on a safety buoy behind them so it stays out of the water. You will then get distance but will lose swim specific metrics, however.

    Second, and most importantly,. TT Sports went out of business over a year ago and ceased all production and development. The watches are dead and nothing is being updated on them again. It is what it is.

    I imagine this is not what you were hoping to hear but let me know if this answered your question. If it did, please mark it as a solution so other can look for it if they have the same question.
Sign In or Register to comment.

Who's Online in this Category0