Want a Digital Pedometer That’s Accurate?
No, pedometers or step counters are not a modern invention. The ancient Romans, in fact beat us to it by thousands of years, as they used a steps-based odometer to measure distances for civil and military applications.
The first pedometer in the US, however, was introduced by Thomas Jefferson, who was of course not a Roman but quite unselfish and did not apply patents for his inventions.
The Jefferson-day pedometers were an all-mechanical device with dials and arms which seem to move every which way and would take the genius of a rocket scientist to figure out the readings.
Naturally, today these hard-to-read devices have been rendered obsolete by the digital pedometer models available today.
The old pedometers rely on a mechanical pendulum that triggers a counter as movement shakes the device.
Today, operations of digital pedometer models revolve around sophisticated software and inertial sensors based on microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) to detect steps taken.
These MEMS inertial sensors allow fewer reading errors or false positives that are common in the old mechanical pedometer.
Nonetheless, the degree of accuracy of a digital pedometer would depend on the software technology used to read the inertial sensor output.
The software technology employed in step counters varies widely, and the more reliable ones are those in a digital pedometer that provides step readouts to within ± 5% error.
By and large, today’s pedometers are reasonably accurate if the user is walking at his/her calibrated pace on a flat surface and the device is in its optimal placement (typically on a vertical position on the user’s belt).
Some inaccuracies could arise when the user drives or rides a car when the vehicle’s motion triggers the digital pedometer to falsely count steps or when the user establishes other habitual movements that the device detects for an entire day.
