Assioma are frowned upon as a reliable source to Zwift.
you can manually set them to over-read in two different ways
you can miscalibrate them favourably
they give 2 seconds of free power when you stop pedalling
The 3rd issue is exaggerated by people who either ride more on/off by habit or to manipulate it. The game calculates speed on a 10s average of power so if someone pedals 3sec on 2sec free from pedals and 2-3s at 0 then it will take the higher reading as your speed. It’s a ludicrous advantage over the course of a race even if not sprinting and stopping
If you ride more like a triathlete or TT rider with constant power then it won’t matter as much.
If you find you have to accelerate to stay on the pack all the time then get better at drafting and not being pushed to the side.
Don’t go this direction about Smart Trainers…it’s a BLACK HOLE that it’s too deep.
Zwift World Series was suspended because of the SMART Trainer issue and not Power meter issue
You know that i would rather see people have Sticky Watts when they stop pedalling than having 20, 30, 40W FREE Watts…whatever there unit is miscalibrated. This is not minor issues it’s super wide spread on Kick Core and Kickr v6 Trainers. Let’s see what we will get now that ELITE has enter the Virtual Shifting world.
I’m almost 100% sure that in the near future VS will be banned from ELITE RACING.
I know about this suspension, but it is very different, only at very high power output and low cadence… but more important : it is not intentional… whereas sticky watts is intentional.
And I did see my watts go down when I switched from kickr core to Neo bike. Not much, a few watts but I went from kickr core watts > bike powermeter to Neo bike < assioma.
That was a 7-10% change for me, made me go from a lot of victories to a few victories on Zwift.
But I admitted it, because knowing I was not cheating made me feel proud
Not everyone takes a technical interest in how the platform works.
Some of us are just pedalling hard and watching our avatar and the front of the race.
I never really noticed the watts staying high for a few seconds, and when I did I assumed it was just transmission latency and ‘evened out’ due to the slight delay in the avatar accelerating when I applied more power.
In fact, I considered myself at a disadvantage due to wasting power by pedalling unnecessarily hard in a ‘panic’ when the avatar failed to respond to my input.
I think it’s a bizarre situation when it’s fairer to use a less reliable trainer for power than a PM because some people exploit a system flaw for gain that is actually debatable.
Sure, you get a few seconds of free watts. But is it efficient and sustainable to pedal 500w (3 seconds) 0 watts (3 seconds) over and over again instead of at a steady 300 watts? If I had a choice of training session between 1x20m at 300w and 3s on 3s off 500w I reckon I’d certainly choose the former.
I mean, how do they compare on TSS / IF etc?
But I totally get how doing it deliberately in a climb after attacking gives an unfair advantage for example. But if your natural way of riding on the flat in a group is to ride a big gear and ‘stop start’ quite a bit - is this a massive gain?> No.
I would raise a ticket through Zwift. I had a Hub for a year and it was great, especially in 10hz mode. However, it did eventually fail soon after upgrading to virtual shifting and Zwift replaced the trainer for me under warranty.
I now use a KickR V6 which has had its own fair share of problems with virtual shifting. But the hanging power values when using pedals is well known flaw.
Regarding your comment on delay/sticky watts. I don’t think that is how it works. Trying to explain in a foreign language isn’t easy, but hopefully it will make sense. When you start pedaling, there is a delay just as you said, but the power will ramp up at the same rate that you are increasing your work. There is no “sticky watts” in this case, it is 1:1 (actual work, registered by Zwift), since Zwift is receiving power numbers at all time. What happens in your case, since you are using your Assioma’s as your primary power source, is that when you stop pedaling and not doing any work, Zwift stops receiving power numbers, but since Zwift doesn’t know if this is intentional or a network error, it keeps your last reported power number for a given number of seconds, even if you are not pedaling. 0:1 where 0 is actual work done and 1 is the last reported power number. This is "free watts and is where the “sticky watts” name comes from. Hopefully this makes sense and explains why the delay from when you start pedaling to you stop doesn’t even out.
I do also think it would help your case if you would change your primary power in Zwift to your trainer for a while and start dual recording your rides and races on Zwiftpower. You seem more than capable of doing so and I am sure that your fellow Zwifters in this thread wouldn’t mind analyze your dual recordings and give their opinion. They all just want to help, me included:-) Also remember to do a calibration on your Assioma pedals, make sure they are on the latest firmware and that the crank length setting on them is corresponding to those on your bike. Also make sure that your Zwift Hub is on firmware 4.0 or later to enable the auto calibration on the unit.
I’ll second what Matt says. Pedals as power meters are also prone to miscalibration/doping/power matching in the app.
The Zwift Hub is a pretty good trainer. I raced B cat on it for a year and have a punchy riding style.
Overtime, I’ve learned to increase my cadence and soft pedal more. For some reason (and I think its Sticky watts) The community has an aversion to coasting, so I only do this now downhill if I want to tuck. But I am often out of the saddle punching 150%+ above FTP and have a high punch rating against other riders.
Just don’t ask me to ride at FTP for 10mins or more. I need over/unders
Yeah everthing us up to date and fully calibrated, with correct crank lengths.
I did notice in a test ride yesterday that the sticky watts thing only happens if I make a ‘hard stop’ on pedalling for 3s. If I ‘soft pedal’ or stop for 1-2s the power goes down after a second or two, then goes back up.
So with that in mind I think ‘not stopping pedalling’ means ‘no sticky watts’.
It was many years ago, I used to race MTBs so it was constant bursts and then grab recovery when you can.
One of the Elite women riders was DQd for sprinting and then coasting which was a shame. I think there may have been sticky watts at play though, but it was unintentional.
Exactly, I know a Dutch ex road pro who races on Zwift with a PM and his profiles look like mine.
If you race IRL here in NL your power profiles look like a seismograph in an eathquake. The roads are never straight for more than a few hundred metres at a time and the threat of crosswinds mean everyone is constantly overtaking everyone else to get to the front. Most races I’d be in 53x15 riding in microbursts, looking to maintain position while trying to work as little as possible.
The vibe I’m getting is that you’re being asked to do some pretty simple things and you keep avoiding that and trying to explain why you’re hard done by by everyone and everything.
Its understandable to be a bit sensitive when you’ve been accused of cheating. But at this point, just do the steps man, people have cut the food up on the plate for you.
I think so too and the reason is that when soft pedaling Zwift is always receiving power numbers and the built-in safety measure to handle network errors doesn’t kick in. The watts are still a bit delayed though, but you won’t get any sticky watts.
and get a new hub under warranty. Mine started to fail auto calibration and wouldn’t hold resistance, it also made a rubbing noise.
I took the plastic case off and there was a load of belt debris and corrosion on the flywheel. I took a picture and they replaced it. I never found an issue with high power, and was able to spool a good sprint on it.
When I moved to the Wahoo the heavier flyhweel took a bit of getting used to. Slightly more inertia to spin up, but once going its felt easier to keep spinning.
People will say watts are watts, but they are not all produced the same. Crank length and RPM are known/fixed, but torque is an average. It varies through 360 degrees. 80NM of average torque with no standard deviation is very different to 80NM of average torque produced with large variance in peak torque for only 20% of the power phase.
You may find Inertial benefit from going up to a larger flywheel. The same as having trainer difficulty dropped to 30%
