Elite Sterzo Smart paired, but not steering in Zwift | Windows 11 [September 2024]

Latest update, Sterzo worked last Wednesday 16th twice even with and without another Sterzo being used in the same room. My Zwift didn’t update until Thursday, just tried riding a group ride and no steering, had to pair through phone with HRM kicking in and out like usual.

After group wide was finished, and still riding tried pairing back with bluetooth and nothing. Ended ride and started a new ride with a RP, still didn’t work. Restarted Zwift and was paired over BT, went back into the same RP and Sterzo worked.

Edit, just noticed ZCA is still locked to zwift and stuck on the “you’re connected”, forced stopped and restarted, still showing game option and trying to pair when restarting ZCA.

Similar issue here. The only way I can get my Sterzo to pair with Zwift on my Win 11 (64bit) Alienware Laptop, is to remove and reinstall the batteries (which are new). Steering is then intermittent, and if I close Zwift and then restart, or reboot my PC, the Sterzo is not detected until I remove and replace the batteries again. The LEDs flash. The Sterzo has worked well for two seasons previously. To checked the battery contact and made sure they snugly held the batteries, and I cleaned them with a touch of alcohol. The issue persists.

Last two rides:

Ride 1, started with phone (comp app installed but not running) BT on (connected to headphones), tablet running comp app but BT off. Sterzo ‘connected’, solid blue light, no steering. Tried a few disconnects and reconnects, turning the tablet BT on at one point. Finally steering worked, not sure why, or if anything correlated to it.

Ride 2, today: BT off on all other devices, sterzo connected at login, solid blue light. Steering didn’t work for maybe the first 2 minutes of the ride, but started working on its own before I did anything. Worked for the whole ride.

Hi, I am also experiencing problems with the Elite sterzo smart. I Have: changed the batteries, uninstalled and re-installed Zwift, updated the Bluetooth drivers of my gaming Laptop (Win11). After updating the drivers it worked once, after that it stopped working once more. The Sterzo smart is shown as paired at the beginning of the ride and the blue led on the device also shows that the sterzo is connected. An yet, it doesn’t work. After roughly 10 min. the Sterzo disconnects, as the blinking Led shows. Despite that, Zwift shows it (in the options and also in the hud) as connected. I used the sterzo the entire season 23/24 without experiencing any problem. After resuming at the end of September (and after the Zwift’s updates during the sommer), the elite Sterzo has yet to work properly. So it’s clearly a bug on Zwift’s side.

2 Likes

I am in the same situation. It worked fine in the early summer, but now I’m getting back on to Zwift for the fall and it doesn’t work.
I tried updating Bluetooth drivers and firmware (not needed), resetting the Bluetooth device, powering things on and off, and changing batteries, but it still doesn’t work.
It shows up in the Zwift pairing screen with full green Bluetooth bars. It appears to be able to run the calibration, but it does not respond once I’m in the game.

I’m curious what anyone is using for Companion App. As long as we’re waiting for a solution, might as well try diagnosing.

  1. Who is using Comp App and having these problems?
  2. Does the Sterzo work when run through Comp App?
  3. Have you tried turning BT on/off on your Comp App device?

tl/dr is that there is some evidence on my end that Comp App is involved in my problems. Could be false positives, though.

I wasn’t running the Companion App. Turning off bluetooth on the phone didn’t make a difference.

1 Like

Hello all, Alejandro here from Zwift! Appreciate you took ownership of bringing this to our attention. First of all, I would like to ask you to please contact us at support@zwift.com so that one of my support colleagues can take a deeper look into this and further assist you.

@Jason_J_SPM, I found that one of my colleagues has already sent you an email, so please take a look at your inbox, or your spam/junk folder.

@Tom_J same to you, I noticed that you are now being assisted by one of my colleagues.

1 Like

Hi Alejandro–yep, Rowdy and I are working on this, I’m just posting updates here too to try to help others out, see if anyone else might find something interesting in what I’m up to trying to diagnose :slight_smile:

I have done everything and posting updates. My next check is to try riding tomorrow to see if steering works, if it doesn’t then I am going to try without running ZCA. Next step will be to uninstall and reload Zwift,… although I don’t think this will fix the issue hence why I have been hesitant to try it.

And once again, I have 2 sterzo’s and when steering doesn’t work, neither will work with Win 11. I can load Zwift on my Android tablet and BOTH will work.

1 Like

Zwift support had me delete Documents/Zwift/KnownDevices.xml and Prefs.xml
That seemed to do the trick. Steering is back.

Update

Another group ride no steering unless paired through phone.

Deleted files, no change.
Exit ride and start a new ride, no change,
Restart zwift no change,
Fresh install no change,
Running without ZCA, no change

Lately I am getting more or less the same results–no steering right away, but i will come back if I can disconnect and reconnect multiple times during the ride.

Fortunately–Rowdy at Zwift told me via my support ticket that he has be able to recreate the problem on his own machine now. Still doesn’t know why, but he’s able to demonstrate it to the techs. So that’s a good step in the right direction.

3 Likes

I take back my declaration of success.
It worked for one ride. Now the problem is back and deleting those two files isn’t fixing it.

I have changed the old connector and put a Garmin USB Plus connector and at the moment my Sterzo address works

Based on your comment, I switched to a different Bluetooth adapter. It worked for one session.
Quitting Zwift and trying another ride, the Sterzo didn’t work.
Rebooting the computer didn’t fix it. Changing back to the other Bluetooth adapter didn’t work.

Yeah, I’ve been trying a lot of methodical options and changes, and I’m not finding any regular patterns for when it works and when it doesn’t. As I said above, I can get it to work eventually on most rides now, after a bunch of unpairing/repairing. But lately I’m not making any other changes when I do that. I just unpair/repair/repeat until it starts working. :person_shrugging:

2 Likes

Are you just unpairing the Sterzo in the Zwift Pairing screen - or unpairing the Bluetooth adapter?

In the Zwift pairing screen.

Zwift will see the Sterzo right away at login, but it’s seemingly random if steering works. So I’ll go into the pairing screen mid-ride (thankfully that doesn’t put the brakes on anymore), disconnect, and the reconnect to the Sterzo. I can’t find any pattern, but sometimes I’ll back all the way out to the ride again, then go back into Menu/Pairing. Sometimes I’ll just close and reopen the Sterzo pairing button, sometimes I’ll uncheck the Sterzo and just wait for it to appear again and then click it. None of those seem to work more often than others, but in general I’m usually able to get steering after 4-7 unpair/repairs.

Sometimes I’ll repair and go back to the game and it won’t work for a few seconds, and then suddenly it will work again. I haven’t mentioned that before, forgot about it. But it might be relevant, I’m going to tag @Rowdy on that too. There’s sometimes a Unpair–>Pair–>Back to Ride–>No Steering–>Then Steering After A Delay that happens.

2 Likes

Well at a loss here now, its either I want steering or I want HRM. But now after about 15min my HRM stops connecting when paired through phone, but works fine when ran through Win 11.

So now, no steering for club ladder and other races,… or steering and getting DQ’d for no HRM. PMSL