Strava not reconciling duplicate activities

[Cyril]

Users are complaining that their activities are duplicated/triplicated within Strava Apps, because they seem to increasingly use multiple recording devices (for example recording a Zwift ride with a Polar watch and Garmin bike computer, or recording the same run with a Garmin watch and the Strava app).

I could try and reconcile these duplicate activities within my own app but it really is a Strava issue, as your stats and API activities will also be unnecessarily duplicated.

Maybe some API users really need to know which device created the activity, but I imagine that 99% of the time they just need to know that one single activity took place, and that its properties can be processed.

Is Strava thinking about handling this issue soonish or should I look at implementing my own fix?

[Geof]

I know its not strava's fault but manufacturer are less and less keen to broadcast recorded data or pairing with HR sensors... see Bosch new smart system where no HR connectivity is available, no broadcast of internal powermeter... yet it happily integrates with strava.
Even if the community is actively requesting those changes, the answer is always the same "it's not foreseen on our roadmap"

Strava being the market leader and endpoint for such integrations, from a end-user perspective, it's the last resort to have it fixed once and for all.

Which one should be used ? The first one, and then merging only missing data into the first one (may it be GPS data, HR, powermeter, ...).

With which rule to detect duplicated activities? overlapping timestamps and their associated GPS datum within expected tolerances. If not create 2 differents activities...

Example : You record a 1 hour activity on device A (GPS, cadence, power) & device B (GPS, HR).
But you forgot to start recording on device B on the first 10 min. Device A stops recording after 50min as the battery dies...
You get home, it uploads device B activity... you charge-up device A then it uploads Device A activity...

1 char = 10min / A or B = data from device A or B / - = no_data
Activity A : AAAAA- (uploaded 2nd)
Activity B : -BBBBB (uploaded 1st)
Resulting activity  (source A or B)
GPS :       ABBBBB
power :    AAAAA-
Cad. :       AAAAA-
HR :         -BBBBB 
1 hour ride, the first 10 mins coming from device A, the last 50 mins coming from device B.
HR data not available for the first 10 min
Cadence & Power meter data not available for the last 10 min...

In short, develop/invest/buy a well known website (goto...) doing this without having to download & upolad tcx, and streamline it within your UI when duplicates are detected.

[Jan_Mantau]

If you state that this is a Strava issue then you should make some suggestions how Strava can solve this! With which rules should Strava detect that these are the same activities as they will be for sure have slightly different times, gps points and so on? Which of the multiple uploaded activities should Strava use in the end?