Dropouts when using snapshot on mobile

I finally found out why I was getting intermittent dropouts. Around 13 minutes into my ride, I snapped a picture using the mobile (Android) app. A few seconds after, I lost speed, cadence and power metrics. I tested the theory 3 more times on my ride: at 13, 30 and 40 minutes. Each time I would snap a picture, dropouts.

You can see the dropouts in my Garmin screenshot above, There’s a couple of phantom dropouts, not sure where those came from.

Below are the actual snapshots I took. I started my Garmin and Zwift at the same time so the Zwift timer and Garmin time should match, within a few seconds.

I’m running a PowerTap G3 for power/speed/cadence. My head unit is a Garmin Edge 500 and my USB dongle is a Suunto. I’m using a Samsung S5 to run the mobile app, Bluetooth turned off.

Before you say it’s a Garmin issue only, my Strava capture shows dropouts too (see below):

Is this a known issue? I don’t get on the support forums much.

 

Hi Miguel,

This is the first I’ve heard of it but I’m going to pass this on to our QA team to see if they can reproduce it.

If it happens regularly (each time you ride), please submit a ticket with your log.txt files as that will help.

Thanks!

Hey Eric,

So far what I’ve come up with is that ANT+ (PowerTap) uses the 2.4 GHz frequency. That happens to be the same frequency as a home wifi.

Quick update: Yesterday I selected channel 1 on my router and snapped pictures every 5-10 minutes. I didn’t get a single data dropout.