Hand cycle / Upper Body Ergometer

General Discussion
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Hello and thank you for keeping this thread informational. I am interested in knowing what setups people are using for their hand cycle workouts.

Zwift has taken the first steps in including the hand cycle avatar and dynamics, however, I have not been able to get a list of compatible upper body ergometers or even information on how to best set one up with sensors from them. So, I am hoping this topic will allow those interested in hand cycling exercise to utilize the app.

It seems there are four main ways to approach this:

Attaching an actual hand cycle to a Zwift compatible trainer.
Purchasing a ‘smart’ upper body ergometer that can connect / pair to Zwift.
Modifying a basic upper body ergometer with the appropriate sensors to pair to Zwift.
Piecing together some other contraption with the appropriate parts.

From what I have seen there seems to be ways to approach each of those builds. I would like to discuss the pros and cons of each type and thus determine, and inform, which might be the most practical for any given situation.

For me, personally, I am envisioning a tabletop setup with an upper body ergometer, something that I can sit down and use, and also put away. There seems to be a very limited selection of these available on the internet, with questionable product support, availability, and also costing upwards of $2000 usd. Some, however, seem to be capable of reading cadence, heart rate, watts and have other nice features and built in programs. Some seem to be able to run in reverse arm rotation, this seems like a critical feature.

It would be nice to be able to get going with a more budget setup, maybe using a group of sensors attached to a more basic exerciser. What sensors would be needed? From what I’ve seen, some of these products use crank arms and pedals that looked sourced from the cycle industry, could these be swapped with power reading crank or pedal sensors?

I would appreciate any feedback here regarding products, product reviews, setup tips, expectations, things to avoid, etc.

I hope to see you all hand cycling in Zwift!

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Also interested in what you ended up doing. I just attached my handcycle to the direct drive trainer.

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Hello. I ended up getting the Yosuda‎ YSD-MS-01… from our favorite jungle located, web order megastore. I went with it because it had some claimed Zwift compatibility and was only $115 shipped. I’ve had it for about 5 months now.

It does have some compatibility, out of the box it does connect to Zwift. It shows up twice on the Zwift devices screen… as a ‘power source’ and a ‘resistance’ device. And is able to do so wirelessly via Bluetooth.

However, this is a basic device that, I believe, only transmits flywheel ‘speed’ information. The resistance is increased or decreased with an incremental knob on the machine. While I am in a Zwift activity it will display a wattage number and a speed number, but this doesn’t seem to change at all if I change the resistance on the fly. The device does not increase or decrease resistance on hills or descents in routes. I haven’t tried it on a workout function yet.

So, what I have been using it for is basically as a single speed device. I have tried to dial in what I believe is relative resistance to my body weight and what seems like the correct wattage output displayed. I set it on 11, out of 16 increments. This way, during route riding, I can compare my speeds and wattage numbers strictly to my other activities and can race my ghosts or compare wattage and speed to those events. Changing the resistance on this device would only create inaccurate readings and incomparable events.

One thing good about this device is that it will read in both forward and reverse motions. What I do is start, in either forward or reverse, ride a distance and then coast… the wattage reading will go down to zero, then you can reverse directions and get wattage reading in the opposite direction. It only takes a few seconds to do this. The resistance too, it is very smooth and surprisingly quiet. Having a Bluetooth USB dongle extender that comes close to the device is essential to getting a good connection, this has been true for the Zwift One trainer that I have too.

The device came with the crank arms mounted in the conventional setup, like a bicycle. I used it that way, for a while, with the device zip tied to a table. But looking at hand cycle setups online it appeared that most have the ‘power stroke’ setup, that is both cranks and pedals at the same position, different from the ‘opposed’ setup on bicycles. The first setup is smooth and fast, but left me questioning my shoulder ergonomics, after changing it to the ‘power stroke’ I felt that the simultaneous shoulder and arm motions were more ergonomic and engaged my chest and core better. Switching it however caused the table to start to jump up, I just happened to have a bunch of weights to weigh the table down. Also getting one of the crank arms off was a nightmare, you will probably have to get a JIS crank arm puller to make it easy, I got mine off by a lot of prying.

I think that is pretty much it, it’s a cheap ‘semi-smart’ trainer with an out of the box speed sensor. I was thinking about replacing the cranks with power meter cranks or pedals, or something to get an accurate wattage reading. But, I don’t know… as it is it’s good for adding arm workouts to Zwift and self-comparison riding. I’m hoping in the future there will be a hand cycle setup that has the features of the bicycle trainer at an affordable price.

If you guys have any other info or setups… post it here!

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