Pssst: Yes, you do have another device connected, dummy

Title firmly tongue in cheek but with a grain of truth. Me, I’m the dummy. Don’t be like me.

I see SO MANY posts describing an inability for Zwift to see a trainer or control it correctly.

Well, yesterday, it happened to me.

I normally Zwift using a dedicated AppleTV4K in my office/pain-cave (Tacx NEO2T, Polar H10 HRM) but had been experimenting with other devices recently - Win11 laptop with an ANT+ dongle, iPad connected via Bluetooth.

I tried to connect to my trainer as usual but the NEO2T wasn’t visible to Zwift on the AppleTV. Reboot AppleTV, power-cycle the trainer - still nothing.

On a lark, I walk down the hall, pull the ANT+ dongle from the USB port on my PC, and shut the iPad off.
(NOTE: Neither of these devices had Zwift running in the foreground or background and all pairing was done through the Zwift app, not in device BLE pairing)

Shuffle back down the hall - yup, Zwift on the Apple TV now sees my trainer.


TL;DR: If Zwift isn’t finding your trainer, even if you think you don’t have something else connected to it, assume you do.

Thank you for attending my TedTalk. Please exit through the gift shop.

Other links of interest:

On a similar note, I picked up the 4iii HR monitor a while back as it will take a ant+ signal & rebroadcast it in Bluetooth for you…

I set the HR monitor up, connected to my phone, opened the 4iii App, found the Ant+ signal set it to pair & broadcast and for the life of me couldn’t get the ATV to pick up the 4iiii device. I must have spent 30/40mins trying different things, there is a zwift help section that says if you rename the 4iii it simply wont work(this really needs to be updated as its not accurate), so undone the naming & this didn’t fix it, rebooted everything etc

After an age & getting really annoyed with it I gave up on it, started turning things off and as I shut down the App on my phone it paired instantly with my ATV.

Turns out you cant connect the HR monitor to the 4iii app and ATV at the same time, which now seems a fairly sensible\reasonable thing but I missed that completely when setting it up.

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I had the fortune of having this be a problem I encountered on my very first day with my H3. Connected to Saris app to calibrate, then shut down the app on the phone and tried to connect the H3 to software on my laptop. No joy. Unpaired H3 with phone/phone app, laptop software was happy. So yeah, luckily that was maybe the first thing I learned about my trainer. Probably saved me a lot of grief in the long run.

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I got burned by the Wahoo app and a TickrX. If you have the app installed and pairedd to your Tickr it seems to latch on and never let it go, thus causing it to not be connectable by ATV or whatever. Had to remove it from the Wahoo app entirely.

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I don’t know if it’s accurate now but at one point years ago that was very true. I’ve been using a Viiiiva HRM for about 5yrs. That is the one and only problem I have ever had with it pairing to Zwift.

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I have renamed it & it works fine with Zwift obviously once unpaired from other devices.

The only issue I had was that it was draining batteries and not sleeping, I went through 3 batteries in 10 days - Spoke to 4iii and they just sent me a new one with a minimal of fuss, so I now have 2 of them one as a back up should something go wrong.

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I’m reading this a bit late but just wanted to pose a question.
I have an incomplete understanding of the fine details of BLE and Ant+, but doesn’t pulling out the Ant+ dongle just removes your Ant+ antenna?
Since devices don’t actually “pair” using Any +, shouldn’t your BLE device have detected your trainer regardless if another device was detecting it via Ant +?
It still seems that you were connected via BLE to some device but would the Any+ dongle affect that?

Reviewing the OP, I guess it was turning off the iPad that did the trick.

Some fitness devices cannot support multiple connections at all, so, after an initial Ant+ or BLE connection is established, no other connections can be made until that first one drops. This is device specific. There are other trainers that can handle multiple independent connections on either radio, although it can get weird. Like if two apps are connected in erg mode, what does the trainer do with competing requests for resistance levels? Might be fun to fire up RGT and Zwift, ride some roller routes, and see what happens :slight_smile:

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How much for it?

A post was merged into an existing topic: Trainer Resistance | Trainer Difficulty too low, Simulation and ERG mode do not work [January 2023]