I had been using a Suunto ANT+ stick. I picked up a GARMIN stick and tried it today. My rider lag issue seemed to disappear. Before it was taking 2-3 seconds before my virtual rider would respond with my on the bike effort. Today it was nearly instantaneous…less than half a second. It made a huge difference in drafting and pacing. I was able to ride almost 3 laps with a group of the AIs.
On the downside, I have started seeing a crash upon exit. Doesn’t seem to be anything serious, just the program is not exiting cleanly. Didn’t seem to affect .fit files or anything. It happens whether I hit DISCARD or SAVE but right after I get an error that Zwiftapp stopped working.
Thats strange. I personally use both a Suunto and a Garmin. It wonder if the Garmin simply picks up the signals slightly better and you were in a just-barely-too-bad signal strength situation before. We’ll have to do some signal strength tests between the different sticks out there.
As for the crash, thanks for the report. You’re the first to report that (that I’ve seen) but I had a hunch a few people were crashing on exit more just based on the data I was seeing.
I keep my laptop computer in pretty much the same position relative to my trainer all the time. It’s roughly about 4 feet from the Kickr with an unobstructed line of sight. It could be that the Garmin is simply better and picking up the signal but it has no physical advantage - at least with regard to positioning.
I guess I can’t say definitively that the change in ANT+ stick is what made the difference, but it was the only variable that changed.
I was wondering about Ant+ stick performance too. I used an old Garmin USB2 stick. I had the laptop on a card table about right even with the bars on the drive side of the bike. It picked up my Wahoo WFSC01 cadence/speed module and Garmin HRM instantly. Picking up my 4iiiis Precision was extremely finicky. Despite being less than 4 feet away it went from not picking it up at all to losing connection. Dropping the dongle down about a foot with an extension cable made it workable. I will probably rig a more permanent setup in the future and was wondering if the Suunto or the new Garmin Ant+ stick got any better reception than the old USB2 Garmin.