Ah. I have the feeling they’re going to be able to get steering implemented within the next few months (unless Zwift tries to restrict the protocol since the Square is a competitor of the RIDE). In terms of the other buttons that were originally intended to work like the Zwift Play, I have the feeling Zwift won’t allow this integration…
Why not?
I can’t believe that Elite would have advertised Square as having buttons to control Zwift without an understanding/agreement that this could be implemented.
Elite implemented the first steering device for Zwift, and they already have virtual shifting support on one of their trainers, so they’re not new to working with Zwift.
Hey there, when I pair my Square with Zwift, everything is correctly recognized, however I get a notification by Zwift to update the firmware of the Square for the controller to work, but there is no firmware to be updated on the Square.
Elite support wrote me that the issue is in Zwift side, as they already provided to Zwift all the info needed to update Zwift to support the Square.
Within Zwift, I get the icon that I am using a controller, and I can change directions, however none of the other keys to control menus etc are working.
Anyone has the same issuse and got same feedback, meaning basically that regardless of the Zwift notification, we need to wait for Zwift to do something about the controller being finally recognized ?
Appears to be some discussion here…
Initially this was what they were saying, but now it’s beeen changed to “ Each controller is equipped with 10 buttons: four for activating third-party app controls (protocol available but awaiting activation by software developers)”
Interesting, good spot. But that makes it sound like it’s fairly imminent, and not that Zwift aren’t going to allow it.
To shed some light on why steering doesn’t work on Elite smart trainers but does on those from other manufacturers, the way they connect to Zwift differs.
For Elite smart trainers, they connect directly to Zwift, while the Elite Square then connects to the smart trainer to adjust resistance based on the selected virtual gear.
In contrast, for third-party smart trainers, the only communication between the Elite Square and the trainer happens via the ANT+ FE-C protocol. This means the smart trainer itself cannot connect to Zwift because then the Elite Square wouldn’t be able to communicate with it to modify resistance based on virtual gear changes.
To address this, Elite had to adopt a setup similar to what the QZ app does, essentially virtualizing the smart trainer. In this case, the Elite Square device connects to Zwift and then sends the gradient information to the smart trainer, adjusting resistance according to the selected virtual gear.
For steering to work on Elite smart trainers, each model’s firmware needs an update. However, for third-party smart trainers, Elite likely accounted for this directly in the Elite Square’s firmware development.
By the way, speaking of ANT+ FE-C, it was a major achievement for the industry, as it managed to bring together the leading smart trainer manufacturers years ago to standardize how trainers were controlled by apps. Thanks to this, Zwift became what it is today.
And yet, now Zwift is moving towards proprietary protocols. What do its users think about this?