How Do Fitness Trackers Measure Steps

How Do Fitness Trackers Track Steps

Over the past couple of years, fitness trackers have become admired and used by a lot of consumers. 

While the tracker resting quietly on your wrist, it is measuring your steps, heart rate, how many calories you have burned, and even, your sleeping pattern. 

When you first use any fitness tracker you input your physiological details like your gender, weight, and height so that the tracker can better analyze the data it collects. 

Nowadays new tracker models are being produced with improved features meanwhile the price keep falling which is leaving the customer wondering how accurate these calculations are. 

In this article, we are going to discuss with you how do fitness trackers measure your steps, so stick around….

1. The Sensors

Your fitness tracker has a sensor in the form of a 3- axis accelerometer that can detect your motions. 

This allows it to track movements in all directions; it can tell you are walking, running, or even standing still.

It also includes a gyroscope that allows it to measure rotation and orientation. 

Many trackers are provided with an altimeter that makes it capable of measuring the number of stairs you climb every day or the height of the mountain you hike on your trip.

2. Processing

All the data collected by your tracker are stored and furthered processed when transferred to the software that is associated with the fitness tracker when they are synced whether it’s on your smartphone or your PC.

The software already has your personal data, and it uses the information collected from your tracker to understand what the different motions imply you were doing. 

3. The Algorithm 

Each manufacturer had its own algorithms; those aren’t really available for anyone to check.  

These algorithms help your software to categorize your movements and group them into different activities that you can check later under different headings on the application associated with the tracker. 

You need to understand that what makes the readings of one tracker different from the other are those personalized algorithms. 

It’s true that a tracker might miss a small movement and not count a step or two and that is something that is still unavoidable no matter how expensive or fancy your tracker is.

However, a lot of times your fitness tracker is not way off track, the numbers you get are more or less accurate. In my humble opinion, it’s better to have an estimate than to have nothing. 

4. The Application

This is the final stop and is focused on representing your processed data. 

As mentioned before, each tracker is connected to an application and you can find a variety of information available on this app. 

A lot of the apps come with an option to add data and exercise manually. 

Once your data go through the algorithms, they are refined and presented in a better format that is more user-friendly.


Fitness trackers can measure your steps by an amalgamation of sensors and algorithms that are able to count your every step and display this data later on an app that is connected to the tracker which makes it easy to keep track of your movements and exercises.  

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Dustin Mathis