Do I need an external cadence sensor with KICKR V5?

Should the graphic of the road race driver in Zwift be synchron with the real pedals? If an external cadence sensor has a better accuracy what I still think, what sensor will be used for the graphic? The external or the internal from the KICKR V5 with update?

I’ve never needed more than the internal one in the Kickr V5. Ride on and don’t complicate your life with another sensor.

With the internal KICKR V 5 cadence sensor I always drive with 85 rpm, but in reality I am about 100 rpm.

That seems weird. I would ask Wahoo what they think. I compared mine (both an older KickrCore and then my newer KickrV5) with a Wahoo external sensor and it was very close in performance. Something feels off with yours if you are steady at 85

Or look if you have a bike you ride outside and want some sensors for it, buy the Wahoo set of speed and cadence for pretty cheap and do your own comparison. Then you would have data to report back to Wahoo on your KickrV5. But the ideal is getting your internal one dialed - having to link an additional sensor is a pain.

I have ordered the external wahoo cadence sensor, when it arrives I can compare it with the internal.
When its the same I can return it :slight_smile:

The accuracy of cadence reported by most trainers can vary, because they usually don’t have an actual sensor and instead calculate/estimate your cadence based on variations in the torque that you apply when pedalling. So the smoothness of your pedal stroke can affect this, and make it less or more accurate.

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Yes, you are right, this is the reason I bought an external wahoo cadence sensor. The sensor is very small and also wireless and the signal is not calculated/estimated it is true.

Yes, I just finished my Zwift ride on my Kickr 2020. I never find cadence not match before, but today I tried some smooth pedal, and noticed my cadence goes to 130+ for 10 sec at least, while I was pedaling no more then 80.

Now I will put on my spare Garmin cadence sensor to avoid this from happenning.

I would be interested what wahoo states for the accuracy? 1%, 2% 3% or more?

will be either very accuate or far off.

its possible go of while you doing high cadence and smooth pedalling while rhe flywheel rotate very fast.

You should always be running a separate cadence sensor. There are several situations where having accurate cadence makes a material difference in you game performance. The most obvious one is on the short steep climb in the subway in London; the trick there is to hit the bottom in a big gear with big power and then drop into the small ring and spin the fastest cadence you can maintain the rest of the way. I typically spin about 140rpm up that and I’m almost always the first rider over the top. It’s really useful in a long race because you’re near the end of the loop and if you can keep it together for to the finish, you win! Or something…

I’m sorry, I might well be misunderstanding your point but Zwift does nothing with your cadence other than display it.

Your escalator climb example is all about your real-world cadence helping you make good power up the top. It would be exactly the same if you didn’t have cadence connected at all.

I don’t know about that. I’ll ride it sometime without any cadence and let you know how it goes. A ride leader pointed out the technique right after I started Zwifting and it made a huge difference in my speed over the top. I can put down more raw short power at a lower cadence standing and spinning hard is always faster there. As a point of reference, I have a crap sprint on the flat; standing and putting down watts or sitting and riding a higher cadence, my acceleration is not very impressive.

I always try and get my cadence high for that escalator too, and it helps for sure.

But are you really suggesting that your speed in Zwift depends on cadence as well as speed? Other than the real-world benefit to help spin up your flywheel and generate power, it sounds like a placebo effect at best to me, I’m afraid.

I can’t do the no cadence sensor test since I’ve been riding the Kickr Bike for the last year and half. Yesterday in the TdZ London Loop, I hit the bottom at about 5.2w/kg at a lower cadence then shifted about five strokes up the escalator and spun it up to 130 or so. My power dropped to 3.4 or so and I still rode away from the other five guys I was riding with. Didn’t pay attention to what they were putting down. I’ll pay more attention next time I do the Loop.

So what’s the trick in getting my V5 to read cadence? I have tried everything I can come up with and can’t get cadence in the wahoo app or Zwift. Kinda frustrated and I know it’s something I’m missing bc everyone else has theirs working.

You shouldn’t have to do anything special, it should just work. Sounds like you have a bad kickr, and i suggest you contact wahoo support.

I have the v5 and ended up buying a seperate wahoo Cadence sensor. I’m not sure how cadence works on the v5 but I found it didn’t respond quickly enough to changes at higher rpm.

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