Pairing and trainer bugs on my first Android ride

Android
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I finally got to ride the Zwift Android app today! :slight_smile: Overall, the ride went fine, but I did notice a few strange things. I’m on a Sony Xperia XZ1 Compact, with an itty bitty display, running Android 8.0.

  1. The Zwift pairing screen picked up my Stages power meter as a controllable trainer (before I realized my Kickr wasn’t plugged in). I’m… guessing that shouldn’t happen, haha.

  2. It took a while for everything to be recognized, but eventually I got my Kickr (1st gen) smart trainer, Stages power meter, and Wahoo Tickr heart rate monitor all paired and ready to ride.

  3. When I took my first screenshot, I got a pop-up prompt to enable permissions, which I expected. But then after I hit OK, my sensors/devices lost connection and I had to go through the process of re-pairing them. This didn’t happen again with my second screenshot, so I assume it has something to do with the Zwift app losing focus.

  4. Resistance did not change with the terrain during my free ride, even though my Kickr was paired as a controllable trainer (I had indeed plugged it in by then, lol) and I had “trainer difficulty” set at the default halfway mark. This works fine in the PC version of Zwift when connected with ANT+ (I haven’t tried Bluetooth on the PC with Zwift Companion yet). I saw something about resistance now working with the Wahoo Kickr in the most recent update, but it looks like my app already updated to the latest version last night. I’ll try another ride again soon to check.

  5. I finished and saved my ride successfully, and then went back into another ride without exiting the game to see if it would still work. Unfortunately, the only thing that would pair at this point was my Kickr - the power meter and heart rate monitor showed up momentarily, then “no signal,” then they wouldn’t appear in the pairing screen at all.

Should I submit a log file to support, or is this enough info? Are any of these known issues (I didn’t see them listed, but I haven’t gone through all the beta feedback), and if so, are there workarounds?

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I have found you can either have a smart trainer paired for everything (control, cadence and power) or a powermeter for power (and cadence if you want) but not a mix of the two.

Generally if it finds the smart trainer first then the power meter might show up but will not work - it goes straight to no signal.

If I pair the smart trainer to something else first then the powermeter will pair (I guess because the smart trainer isn’t able to be paired)

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Hmm, so maybe I accidentally made my own workaround by forgetting to plug the Kickr in until I paired my Stages? LOL. And then when I came back in to see if I could start a second ride in the same session, it paired the Kickr first and wouldn’t recognize the Stages.

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Even with the latest update, I have a similar experience. If I make sure my trainer (Tacx Vortex) doesn’t pair first, the numbers power and cadence from my pedals are read correctly, but as soon as I then connect to the trainer as the controllable, the I get the No Signal message for the power and cadence.

So it seems like whatever comes from the trainer takes priority over the same coming from other sensors.