Today’s update added a feature that helps Zwift maintain the link to my KICKR throughotu a session, which overrides my ability to use my iPhone to control the KICKR’s resistance. This is detrimental to my enjoyment of Zwift in 2 ways:
Riding/racing with a group will now be pretty much impossible unless everyone in the group has a KICKR. I will get dropped on every downhill, and even at the top of uphills as the grade drops, because it’s not possible to generate enough power when the KICKR’s resistance drops.
Using Zwift for any kind of structured training with a KICKR is now impossible.
I just sync my Quarq to Zwift and manually control my Kickr. The kickr wattage is way higher anyway, I suppose I’ve gotten a little bored, I generally watch Netflix / Crunchyroll even while Zwifting as of late.
i think it was a simple programming change - the code has some Ant+ out call that tells the kickr about an elevation change. I assume it used to be a simple algo that took the gradient of the hill and added some percentage to resistance. The odd thing about that algo was when i used my phone and wahoo fitness app to control the kickr and simply went to level mode, i felt changes in elevation, but they were muted. If it were a percent addition, i should have felt a more significant increase to my base power. With the NEW UPDATE it seems that everytime the wahoo kickr receives info about an elevation change it also get a reset command that puts the power back under control of Zwift. ANNOYING.
I will put my bike with a SRM power meter on the Kickr for a ride tomorrow and that will let me drive the kickr from one machine and simply use Zwift to capture the power numbers coming off the SRM. In other words - one machine for output and one for input.
Would be nice if Zwift gave us that control.
The next update will have a configuration screen, and you’ll be able to disable Zwift controlling smart trainers like the KICKR. Until then I’m afraid it is what it is. The next update will be sometime in the next 2 weeks. My goal with this update was to try and tackle some of the issues KICKR users were seeing with the control accidentally dropping out, so I made our grip on the KICKR tighter.
Jon@Zwift: Will the coming update allow Zwift to control the resistance of Kickr, while recording/displaying power from another power meter such as SRM. Trainer Road offers this now.
Also, what about the possibility of doing the above, but also having Zwift control the Kickr not based on its internal power meter measurements, but the measurements from the external power meter?
The issue is that many find the Kickr to report wattage 30 watts or so higher than their power meters. I’m not sure how this would work in a sim situation (opposed to erg), but essentially, it would be terrific if Zwift could make the Kickr create the proper resistance for the terrain using feedback from the power meter instead of the Kickr.
I know Wahoo is working on their solution to this, and I believe PerfPro has come up with their own. Would love to know your thoughts/plans, if possible.
