First impressions & Suggestions

I had some initial installation issues about two weeks back, but I was able to get things working correctly today.

Initial pairing:
This worked easily. I paired a HR and my KICKR. I tried to map a speed sensor but that didn’t work. For some reason, I thought the KICKR broadcasts a speed signal, but it didn’t. My cadence sensor is BTLE, so I couldn’t pair it (it pairs on a mac with trainer road, so perhaps this will be incorporated in the future mac version). All in all, everything worked as expected.

First ride:
I started going, but I wasn’t impressed with the course. There was a segment where we were going uphill but the 3D rendering made it look like we were going down hill. That was weird. The AI riders were nice.

Suggestion: It would be good if the could be pacer AI riders with different jerseys – that is, find a group looking to do 17 mph, 19mph and perhaps a faster group. This is how group rides work and I found myself going too hard at times.

Logging a few rides: I started and stopped the software a few times just to see how it work. I was using the iPhone app for this. This was a nice feature. The gestures were kind of fun, but served no purpose on today’s ride. I’ll be nice when there are some real riders to “chat with”.

Suggestion: When discontinuing a ride with the iphone app, the screen should show the ride summary. The current operation appears to be to shut the entire application down.

Suggestion: I feel that there is a missing element when opening the screen. Going straight to a ride is okay, but we need an intermediate screen, a dashboard perhaps. This dashboard could show ride history, riders active and potentially “groups” to join. It could also show more discretely the paired sensors and only notify the user when the previously paired sensors don’t connect and are missing.

Potential bug: Between my first two rides and a third ride, I started uploading files to Garmin Connect. This worked and it was fun to see you spoofed the GPS coordinates. But, when I went back to the app, I had ANT+ connectivity issues. I think my kickr went into sleep mode, but since the software was open, I didn’t notice any pairing loss. I sat at the starting line spinning away without movement. After a few moments, I was underway, but had a few more drop outs along the way.

Things I would like in the future:
Dashboard as mentioned above

AI pacers - these could be PR ghosts or set speeds and or targets

More courses! - The island is too small and I don’t want to ride hills all of the time