Kickr bike buttons

According to today’s update, the Wahoo Smart Bike has steering enabled now. It’s unclear if we need to do anything on our end. I asked the question in the thread.

IIRC, part of the introduction of the Steerzo from Elite, Zwift wasn’t going to enable steering in any other hardware for six months. This is how Elite was given enough time to sell the units as the only steering available to make back some of their development costs. That’s how we’re here now.

I was under the impression that steering is enabled on mountain bike roads (I do not know how many of them are out there, but the one I know is not yet enabled, according to the update release) and in Future Works races. I am curious, too, to see how it works and what it is good for.

For some reason not made entirely clear, you need to pair through Bluetooth to get steering enabled. It doesn’t work through ANT+. Yes, I know, it makes no sense whatsoever but that’s the way it is. I’ve not been able to get it to work through the Zwift Companion bridge so this is something I’ll have to take up later. Annoying though…

Yap, tested today, does not work through ANT+, does work through Bluetooth. The trainer should appear in the connection menu as Wahoo Kickr Bike, and this name is only available with Bluetooth. With ANT+ connection, it appears as a cryptic Wahoo device with ANT+ number, and this is possibly why Zwift has problems figuring out if it is a Kickr Bike or not… Just a wild guess…

Is this the official Zwift line? I can’t find anywhere that says you have to use Bluetooth for steering. However, I haven’t been able to get steering to work with ANT+ either. It’s my understanding that you can’t use a Bluetooth connection to a Windows computer for the Kickr Bike only ANT+. I use a Windows 10 computer so does that mean steering is a no go for me?

Thx.

Yes, it is the official Zwift line. They just don’t make it very obvious in the set up instructions, just allude to it indirectly by suggesting if you “could” use your Zwift Companion app to bridge to your Zwift app for Bluetooth. It doesn’t say anywhere that you MUST have Bluetooth. Kinda not smart…

You’ll need to get a Bluetooth USB dongle and pair through that to get steering. Of figure out how to bridge through the Companion; I was never able to make that work. I had a BT dongle and it worked right off the bat once I plugged it in and paired up.

That said, steering isn’t working in nearly all of the events AND Bluetooth has been spotty in some cases recently. You may want to order the dongle and ride with ANT+ until they get sh*t straightened out.

See my reply above. I used the wrong “Reply” button…

Mark, thx for the quick reply.

I got a Bluetooth dongle for Christmas, but couldn’t get the pairing to work. Zwift would never see the Kickr Bike. On the pairing screen the Bluetooth Icon was flashing, but when I searched nothing ever showed up. I went back and read some docs. (can’t remember where) that seemed to say Windows 10 Zwift and Bluetooth wasn’t a supported configuration. So I went back to ANT+.

Sounds like what I read was not correct so I’ll revisit trying to get Bluetooth to work. Do I need to do anything to “flush out” the ANT+ pairing first before doing the Bluetooth pairing?

Thx…josh

I just unplugged the ANT+ dongle and plugged in the Bluetooth dongle, then rebooted the computer. It should see the dongle and let you know it does. Then start Zwift, chant the appropriate incantations, spin counterclockwise three times on your left foot and hope it works. Mine worked fine when I did this. :crazy_face:

Let us know how it works out.

Ha…Will do

Josh, BT can be tricky to set up. Most, if not all, modern computers have built-in BT. If you use a dongle, you end up with two BT devices in the computer which may conflict with each other. One has to go through some tricks to disable one and enable the other. Then, on top of it, the range of BT can be lower than the range of BT. I have the same issue, ANT+ is reasonably stable (although it could get better if I was able to bring it closer to the trainer), while BT, with the dongle plugged into the same hub, is much less reliable.

Having said all that, I “played” with steering, it was fun for about 5 minutes, after which I really started wondering why it is there and what it is good for. Basically, all you can do is to move left to right or right to left within your lane of traffic. So, you can chose if you ride next to the shoulder, next to the middle line of the road, or anywhere in between. Why would I care where I am ???

Thanks for the reply Andrei.

I got the BT connection going last night. I discovered that if did a search for Controllable the bike didn’t show up, but if I did a search for Power Source it did. Once I paired the bike on Power Source, I was able to pair on Cadence and Controllable.

I haven’t done an actual ride with BT yet so I don’t know about the connection stability vs. ANT+ in my environment. FWIW, ANT+ has been very stable for me according to Zwiftanaylizer.

With regard to steering, among other things it is promoted as a way to have more control over drafting which I guess could be helpful. That’s one of the things that bugs me when riding events. I can’t seem to stay in a good draft. Especially around corners I always swing wide and get the “Close the Gap” message.

OTOH, it may need wide adoption before Zwift lets it be more than a gimmick so there aren’t a few people with an unfair advantage. I’ll play around with it and see if it’s useful for me.

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Josh, you are welcome! Ironically, steering is disabled in Tour de Zwift events, and I suspect, in most races! I wonder if Future Works races are the only ones in which steering during races is allowed, and if this is going to change any time soon. With this limitation, steering is more or less a useless thing for now, or perhaps a feature which slowly finds its way out of development to real life until more trainers get a steering attachment of some sort. For bikes attached to trainers, Zwift sells a front wheel support for about $100 which enables steering through turning the handlebars, but of course right now it is a limited value add-on. A classical chicken and egg problem, so it seems…

With Zwift now supporting digital buttons on the Kickr Bike rather than analogue only steering there is no reason, other than commercial, to not implement this as software buttons in the companion app and clients and via DXInput (keyboard or controller) on the PC version allowing steering for all.

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My Kickr Bike was able to steer until this new update last week. No more steering, connectivity issues, etc.

Jus puttin’ this out there. Thanks… if a fix is in the works…

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I just got a Kickr bike … expecting all the debugging to be done by now. Wrong! I am on the latest firmware and thru companion app can select the bike as all my pairings (although that’s flaky at best). Says steering enabled in the HUD and App… but no joy actually steering. Ironically i still have a sterzo and can pair that fine sit on the Kickr bike and steer that way!
Using Windows 10 desktop and the Bluetooth dongle sees the bike but refuses to pair.

Hi Chris, it’s a known bug fresh from the release last week, see this thread:

It would be nice to have the bike buttons turn left and right in addition to steering. Long press on each side to turn left or right should be easy to program.

The kickr bike button functions are almost complete. It would be nice to have the bike turn left or right, in addition to steering. You can use the same steering buttons but program them to turn left or right by pressing and holding (2x secs) each button to turn left or right.

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