eBike Connect Wrong Altitude

[willpage]

I've seen a few posts here and on the wider internet about eBike Connect not showing altitude at all, but I have a different problem.

Altitude is shown, but it's wildly inaccurate. For example on my morning commute I ascend 164m according to the recording on Strava which is synced from eBike Connect. I know this is accurate within 10m or so. However, eBike Connect itself says 727m.

Despite that, the elevation chart in the eBike Connect app is accurate:

It's not even that it's displaying it in feet, because that would be 530 not 727.

Is this something I can fix somehow? I'm considering getting in touch with their customer service, but I'm not confident a faceless multinational like Bosch will be all that responsive.

Will.

 

[Stefan Mikes]

Will,
(Not specific to Bosch) I have noticed that most of GPS based systems experience issues with calculating elevation or elevation gain. Perhaps because of use of barometric altimeter?

I do not trust the elevation gain given by my Wahoo GPS computers. Therefore, I always click the "Correct elevation" in Strava. For instance, my Roam v2 recently reported only 1 m of elevation gain in my area! Yes, my area is flat but the data corrected by Strava against the map gave 28 m, which is a realistic value.

 

[fooferdoggie]

You need an altimeter too to sort it out. but even then bot the Nyon and my Garmin don't have exactly the same altitudes over a ride.

 

[AlanDB]

You need an altimeter too to sort it out. but even then bot the Nyon and my Garmin don't have exactly the same altitudes over a ride.

I have observed the same thing using my gen. 1 Nyon and a Garmin Oregon 500. And if you take a long ride in changing weather conditions (barometic pressure changes) the elevation and elevation changes will be skewed even if you correctly calibrated the elevation at the beginning of your ride. I have read that some displays use topographic mapping data to calculate elevation changes, but I don't know if that has ever been verified or which systems may use that method.

 

[fooferdoggie]

I have a garmin 1030+ and it adjusts its self pretty well showing the right altitude at the start of each ride. I never check the nyon really anymore. my garmin shows 119 accent and the nyon 193 and strava that gets the info from the garmin 118

 

[AlanDB]

Interesting .... I am familiar with Garmin automotive and handheld devices, but not with the Edge cycling devices or the Garmin Connect app. I found this Garmin knowledge base about elevation which I found interesting. https://support.garmin.com/en-US/?faq=dRY70Lc6yv2oY3eam1ZWxA#:~:text=The device will measure changes,related information in Garmin Connect.

 

[willpage]

I'm sure about the barometric altitude explanation. The graph it plots of my altitude is accurate and also my commute is only 35 minutes over a 200m hill - there's no way the atmospheric pressure changes enough during that time to throw my ascent and descent readings out by a factor of 4, coincidentally at exactly the time I ride to work and ride home each day.