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Comparing Online Training Sites

GSAstuto

Maximum Pace
Oct 11, 2009
974
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I'm becoming increasingly frustrated and disenchanted by the feature bloat and highly disparate results found on the various online Training Sites like Garmin Connect, Strava, RideWithGPS, etc. Would love to hear feedback and comparison of data and determine the following:

1) Accurate presentation of data.
2) Accurate mapping.
3) Consistent
4) Privacy

Ideas? Comments?
 
You saw my comments on Garmin on another threat within the last 24 hours. I cannot comment on other sites.
 
Here's a lovely example of elevation inaccuracy

I plotted this route in the Chichibu mountains

http://ridewithgps.com/routes/716463 (Elevation: +3623 / -3620 m)

Then I rode it, near as dammit

http://ridewithgps.com/trips/394076 (Elevation: +1769 / -1777 m)

So the actual climb according to my Edge 800 was less than half of the plotted climb. Compare the elevation plots:

route-histogram-716463.jpg


trip-histogram-394076.jpg


So RideWithGPS made all sorts of lovely crinkly edges in the route plan that were not there in reality. Some smoothing function required I think. Naturally this effect is extremely exaggerated in the mountains - riding along a riverside psychopath the difference would probably be negligible.

It gets better! For the actual ride, uploaded to RWGPS, I'm invited to 'correct' the data to even greater heights of insanity.

ele3.jpg
 
Yes - it seems RWGPS has jumped the shark on calculations. I've noticed over the last few iterations it somehow never matches either my raw tcx data points, nor any other site. In fact none of the sites match each other. This is what I'd like to ascertain :

1) Is there a site that is consistently accurate - at least with rgards to processing the raw data?

2) Comparison of data between devices - we setup a series of control courses, then everyone uploads their data for those courses. So we can see if the data corresponds between our devices.

3) Comparison of Sites -
- Garmin Connect
- Ride With GPS
- Map My Ride
- Strava

Any others?
 
I would also add SportTracks (offline program) to the comparison list (at least for point 1-3). Can't comment so far as I just installed a Demo version.

Also, it might be interesting to iterate over all ascent and decent in the GARMIN TCX Log and compare that value with what the sites display.

On Garmin Connect:
What sucks about the Garmin Connect side is that they use Bing Maps which I find unusable. FYI - There is a workaround of using Chrome Browser with the Gfix Plugin to bring back Google Maps. It works very nice for me :) (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/fbeiifjiimghhaijicmdphhpockpbldc)
 
Is the issue here the sites or the GPS unit? I thought the inaccuracies/differences in altitude reporting were due to units working off of barometric pressure, GPS readings, or just guesstimating from height maps.
 
Is the issue here the sites or the GPS unit? I thought the inaccuracies/differences in altitude reporting were due to units working off of barometric pressure, GPS readings, or just guesstimating from height maps.

For the answers, see the "GPS accuracy" thread which Tim has created yesterday.
 
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