I’m sure that you are hard at work on this feature but thought I would post about it anyways. With 4 of these Fans we would be able to have Head and Tail winds (w/ +/- resistance of course) and Cross winds.
Next would be creating the Kona bike course…
X-mas is just around the corner just saying…
Love this idea!! Are there ANT+ fans already on the market?
I highly doubt that there are any Ant+ fans, in fact I’m willing to bet a fair amount that they do not exist.
It is kinda of a joke post because I do not even know how you would control the variable nature of the fan’s speed. More of a binary on/off would be a lot easier.
Having said that it would be very cool to have a head-wind and then tuck into the draft and feel less wind and resistance…
You’d need a fan that has a variable resistor instead of stepped gearing. Could be done easily enough with a few bits from Maplin/Radioshack and an RPi listening to the ANT+…
Keep in mind that you can’t just put a ‘dimmer’ on a regular oscillating fan, not unless you want to kill it and/or cause a major fire hazard. Avoid that approach, even if you find lots of DIY projects doing it this way. It’s dangerous.
But it should be possible to create a simple Raspberry PI controller with the ANT+ USB module or one of the Zigbee/XBee modules to work with that to power and modulate fans in a way that simulates real-world conditions.
The trick is not to get Zwift to control the fans, but to get your bike’s own sensors to control the fans. ANT+ is already on the bike, and sending data about power, cadence, speed… so parsing that (as Zwift already does) could also be parsed by the Raspberry PI to turn up the fans (higher speed detected) or turn them down (lower speed detected).
@s etuid : I agree that this should not be hacked together and could cause hazards. My ideal world would be Dyson making the fans as they make cool gear.
The reason that I want Zwift to control the fans is so that they would also add resistance during a head wind and less during a tail wind based on the weather conditions on Watopia or Richmond.
Of course all of this is just for fun as I’m sure they are many other things to deal with than modelling the effect of wind on a player in the game.
@s etuid: Love that drawing. Much kudos! And fair point on being careful with the motor/ power supply.
I’d definitely want the fan to be controlled by the ‘wheel speed’ of the bike, plus or minus ‘drafting effect’. Headwind/tailwind a bit pointless IMO because a headwind on a static bike doesn’t make it harder.
I like the idea of ant+ controlling the fans speed, but only to keep you cool head on while indoors, to avoid overheating.
Wonderful Idea. Zwift should make and sell them (who else?)
And with remote control please…