Moving Time and Speed

If you have gone into our mapping app recently you will have already seen a popup with a new release note which says:

If you load a GPX track then, as well as telling you the elapsed time and average speed, it now also shows you the moving time and average moving speed. Calculating these figures is an inexact science when relying on GPS data due to "jitter" so this is an experimental feature and we would be interested in your thoughts on whether you think the figures we are getting are accurate and how they compare with the figures quoted by your GPS.

What this means that if you load a GPX track into our app then the track stats box is now a little larger with more information in.

To illustrate this here's a walk we did up Whernside some years ago.

As with the previous release we still have Elapsed Time (which is 5h 15m 19s in this case) and Ave. Speed (1.66mph 2.67kph) but now we also have Moving Time (4h 3m 19s) and a (moving) Ave. Speed (2.15mph 3.46kph).

So that suggests we were stationary for 72 minutes which, at first glance, seems high. However when you look at the data we didn't start until 3 minutes after the track begins, we ended 3 minutes before the track ends, we stopped at the foot of the Ribblehead viaduct for 9 minutes, 8 minutes on the bridge over the railway line, 5 minutes at Netherscar, 3 & 2 minute breathers on the way up, 29 minutes for lunch at the summit, 4 minutes for some reason coming down, 1 minute when we met the Dales High Way, and another 3 minutes on that Way.

In total that's 70 minutes I've identified and suddenly the moving figures seem very plausible.

However, and this is big "however", calculating moving time is a black art as all GPSs suffer from "jitter" (so even if you sit still you still appear to be moving about a bit) and everyone has to cope with that when calculating moving times. So we would be interested in what your GPS itself says your moving time or speed is for any tracks you upload, how it compares with what our app says, and which you think is more accurate.

Let us know either by replying to this post on the forum or contact us directly.

Tagged: maps

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