rode yesterday and again today.
I have a Schwinn AC Performance Plus indoor bike with the Mpower console to do watts/hr/speed/cadence/etc. Works well. I did have a problem with my Bluetooth HR strap. It was not detected by the computer I’m using, but I switched back to an older wahoo one and it works fine. And yes, I do calibrate the mpower console every few days so the watts isn’t wildly over stated. More feedback as I use it.
hello! i have Schwinn AC sport with the red Mpower console and i cant seem to get it to connect. I bought the Ant plus dongle, set that all up, got a long USB cord so that the ant stick sits right on my console but i can seem to get Zwift to see my console. i would be very appreciative of any tips you may have. somewhere i read that the red schwinn console does not work, but the older grey one does… which do you have? thank you !! denise
Hello- I have the older grey console it really just worked out of the box. The only issue I have is the console drops to zero every 20 minutes and I have to wait several seconds for it to continue to broadcast the numbers back to zwift.
My only advice is to check the manual online and try hopping into the system menu to see if there are any settings there. I don’t recall doing that on mine, but it was used in a spin studio where the watts were broadcast to a system using ant+. Good luck,
thank you monte! i will poke around in the settings of my console. i read that the red console broadcasts on a different ant channel so i may be out of luck. for fun i ran to our local sports shop and bought a garmin magnetless speed sensor and attached it to the hub of my flywheel and was able to connect to zwift and ride around… it was fun, but i am afraid not terribly accurate. willl keep trying to get my console to work! thanks again…
Monte, Are you still riding? Can you tell me exactly what steps you used to connect your Schwinn AC Performance Plus with the MPower console to Zwijft? Are you able to enjoy a full riding experience? Is the Zwift app able to interface with the spin bike and control the resistance? Did you buy and use the ANT+ dongle? If so, exactly how?? Please help?
Thanks.ka
i did buy the ant+ usb dongle. my bike had the original mpower console and could do wattage, rpm, and heart rate. literally, i plugged in the usb dongle and loaded zwift, it was detected and worked flawlessly the first time. i would caution, i read another rider had a newer mpower console that they could not get to work. otherwise, it works fine for me. zwift cannot control the resistance, only read the watts. if you own the bike, buy the dongle for 45$ to try it out.
i will say my schwinn bike was used in a spin studio where the ant+ was used for group rides. but it should work if you have the console with ant+. good luck!
Has anyone had any luck running this bike with the Red Mpower console?
Got mine to work (MPower2 red / black console) but it took a firmware upgrade. It came with fw version 1.6 and it seems that it could not be detected. Upgraded to v 1.7 and now i can see the power and rpm meter from Zwift. You can follow upgrade instructions here:
Hi, I’m thinking of getting a second hand AC performance spin bike (as quieter than my current old bike + turbo set up). Monte, could you tell me if you resolved your issue with the power drop outs after 20 mins please? Or has anyone else had that problem too? I do mostly races that last 40 mins plus and struggle as it is to keep up, let alone if power goes to 0 half way through! Thanks.
@Chris, I experience periodic drops on watt read out as well. I don’t know if this is the AC computer, ANT protocol, the USB dongle or something else altogether. It seems to just happen. I swapped a generic USB ANT dongle for a Garmin USB ANT. Seems to be marginally be better. I just learned to live with those drops.
@Chris - My original post didn’t use the MPower2 console and eventually it did work. The original bike w/ original Mpower console was finicky with batteries, calibration, etc. If I kept the batteries fresh and the setup paired and configured, it worked best. Bought a kickr 9 months ago and put the old bike away.
Georges / Monte, thanks very much for coming back to me so quickly. A kickr or Neo or Atom would all be preferable, but the spin bike solves my noise issue. I’ll continue searching for a bargain, but good to know you have used them and they do work! Thanks again.