Mine is on the way.
I’m a little unclear on the final setup I will need if I use Apple Tv for the game and connect the Trainer, cadence, power meter to Victory using Wifi.
How do I best connect a heart rate monitor and my Play Controllers? Can these use wifi also? Can both connect to Apple TV via bluetooth? Do I still need companion app for connections?
The Play controllers require two Bluetooth connections. Everything else can go via WiFi if you bridge the HRM through the trainer. I have not personally tested this but the math appears to work out.
This is how i do everything now with my old trainer, but my impression was that with the Victory trainer wifi connections there was a workaround which made the Companion unnecessary.
Ok. I see now. I didn’t understand the bluetooth bridge to the trainer for the HRM could be in place without running the Victory app live. Now it all makes sense.
I still don’t if someone can do a how to please 
I’m happy to when I get my trainer Jan 3ish if it works the way I’m expecting. But I can’t confirm this works yet.
But expectation from the videos is that we use the JetBlack app to connect the trainer/cadence/power via Wifi and the heart rate monitor via bluetooth, then shut the JetBlack app, connect appleTV to trainer via wifi, and everything should be connected w/ no bluetooth slots used. Then connect 2xplay via bluetooth and viola – no companion app needed.
At a fundamental level, it’s somewhat built into the BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) specification;
I single device (i.e. the Victory) broadcasts what Bluetooth profiles it supports. So in this case to support HRM bridging, the Victory broadcasts “I support Power, Cadence, Resistance, and Heart Rate profiles”. Then Zwift only has to connect to 1 bluetooth device to read the data for all those profiles.
Internally, the Victory makes a BLE connection to your HRM to read what it is broadcasting, and re-transmits it to Zwift.
This gets set up in the JetBlack mobile app; you can instruct it to pair to your HRM, and the app tells the trainer what bluetooth device to search for to get HRM data. The trainer should then automatically reconnect to your HRM whenever needed and essentially proxy the data values over to Zwift.
The JB mobile app just configures the trainer to give it the info of what bluetooth device to connect to, since there isn’t a screen / buttons on the trainer where you could search for and select the device. The mobile app isn’t what actually transmits the HRM data though, so you shouldn’t need to open the JB app every time you ride, only if you want to change which device you want to get HRM data from.
JBV arrived four days ago.
I’m new to Zwift, but setup via BT to an iPad had only a couple niggles. Some day may upscale the rig.
Unit seems to be of a piece, but time will tell.
Quiet and smooth relative to my old trainer.
Shifting is fine for me.
Two rides in, way more interesting. I’m sure I’ll spin more often and longer.
Happy so far.
Unfortunately, seems I had another wifi dropout on 4.12 and am back to oscillating, inaccurate power. I’m going to just use my PM for power till this gets worked out.
After several more rides it’s still reading at least 10-25 watts difference than my Assioma Duos. I downgraded to 4.10 then reupdated to 4.12 and LED still flashing red after the update. Calibrated using the JB app, did an erg workout to test against my Assioma but it didn’t fix it. Power reading still off. Really want to like this trainer but it’s getting frustrating. Hope it gets sorted soon.
Hate to hear that. It’s so strange to me that everything worked well right after updating the firmware, only to start having issues again. At the very least, I’m hopeful that this is something that can be sorted out. For now though, we’re basically beta testers.
I agree… It’s weird. Tho I also experienced the same.
I’m not back to square one, but a number of things felt like they had regressed on my second ride post update.
Updated the “beta” 4.12.0, not because I had major issues but because I like trying latest firmware.
I followed the steps in this forum and the upgrade worked perfectly.
Before carrying out the upgrade my issues were I had a few WiFi dropouts and I felt changing virtual gears was too much of a jump from one gear to the next - it just didn’t feel smooth.
I rode today and I had one drop out but I now think this is caused when I turn my Vacmaster 54 fan on. I usually turn the fan on 10 minutes into my ride. Tomorrow I will try having the fan on 1st and then connect JetBlack to Zwift.
For VR shifting, not sure if they did address it, but to me it does feel a bit smoother when changing gears. It could be my imagination.
New feature - auto power off?
I have noticed that the light on the JBV now seems to turn off if not in use. Previously the green light would stay on if the JBV was connected to power source.
Noticed it twice the day after upgrading. I tried timing it to see at what stage it turns off. I got to 33 minutes and green light was still on but had to head out.
Does anyone have a changelog for v4.12.0 ?
I’ve too noticed the “sleep” mode. One quick spin of the flywheel, and the unit “wakes” up.
Also, I know what you mean about the virtual gearing. I’m pretty much only using gears 10 and 11 for 90% of my rides. I’m in 9 going up steep inclines and maybe go to 13-14 during a sprint.
Having the laser bright LED turn off automatically is why support gave me the code to test 4.12. It does indeed turn off now but somewhere past 30 minutes, and they agree it should be 5 minutes, so I’d expect that in the next update.
I’ve also had power dropouts both on 4.9 and 4.12 over WiFi, but Bluetooth has been solid and when I’ve compared the power to my Quarq it’s been spot on.
For virtual gearing, that’s all on Zwift’s end. The default trainer resistance setting in Zwift is 50%, at which point I found I only use a few gears. Up that to 100% in game and you’ll use a lot more of your gears. At the end of the day that setting controls how much resistance varies with terrain, and the virtual gears control how much you’ve stepped up or down the resistance to simulate shifting, so you need more variance to use more gears.
On the shifting, yeah I thought that might be the case. I’m new to virtual shifting, and I’m just not shifting nearly as much as I used to with my 2x12. I have done some pretty hilly terrain (Bologna TTT on Thursday). It’s a bit weird to have 24 gears, and only really need 3-4.
I am glad to hear this is a feature (auto power off) and it was not a case that my unit was having issues. I use the SRAM gearing option. I might go back and try sequential 1-24.
You must be on the Zwift Ride. Those of us with just a Play or Click and a trainer that has virtual shifting only have 1-24. This Zwift Insider article details the virtual shifting gears.
I am indeed on the Zwift Ride Frame. Very surprised they haven’t enabled SRAM shifting option for Zwift play controllers as the buttons are there
Another user here, who is very disappointed by his Jetblack Victory, especially after waiting almost 3 months for the device and given how much it was hyped up by DCRainmaker, GPLama and co.
For the Wifi connection: My actual Wifi connection is actually rock solid, especially as the access point is only 2-3 meters away. But the Zwift Direct Connect protocol over that Wifi connection is a different story. It’s based on Multicast DNS - similar to Apple Bonjour - and therefore you can use Bonjour troubleshooting tools with it. I noticed that the Victory Jetblack correctly appears under “victory.local._wahoo-fitness-tnp._tcp.local.” DNS name, after starting the trainer. That entry has valid “ble-service-uuids” in it. (Note that the protocol was apparently developed by Wahoo, which is why “Wahoo” shows up in the name).
When that entry shows up I can ride in Zwift using Zwift Direct Connect over Wifi without a problem. But after a few hours - at max 1 day - a second entry with the same M-DNS hostname but no ble-service-uuids shows up. That’s when Zwift Direct Connect stops working as it doesn’t transfer data anymore. Maybe Jetblack expects us to reboot the trainer before each training session?
Vibrations: Someone wrote “The entire trainer causes a bit of a vibration. Like, I can feel a vibration transmitted all the way through the pedals to my knees. Its weird.”. The same happens with my trainer and I really don’t know if this is normal or not and if I need to be concerned about it.
This is my first indoor trainer and my experience is so far only with outdoor biking and belt-driven spin bikes in a gym. With neither of them have I obviously ever experienced anything like this.
Is this just how turbo trainers work, or is it time to box up the Victory and send it back?