Repeating bluetooth 30 second dropout

Bugs and Support
1

Hey all,

2015 Macbook running Big Sur
Kinetic Road Machine (Dumb)
Cable (ant+ to BLE)
Inride sensor
Garmin Cadence, Speed, HRM Sensors

I guess I’ve got two problems. I had two different setups running Zwift, neither of which are working, and would be willing to settle for resolution for at least one of them. The first setup, worked in Spring ’19, and it was just Garmin cadence and speed sensors run through a Cable BLE sensor. I ran 12 weeks of “Build Me Up” with only a few hiccups - due to network dropouts interrupting the fit file log - not the sensors as far as I can figure. I stopped running Zwift in spring ’20 because it got buggy, and it drove me completely insane. It was possibly due to an Inride sensor which I recently purchased, which was my “second” setup. I wanted more realistic power readings.

Anyhow, I started Zwifting again last week. It started with no bluetooth connectivity, Big Sur apparently left multiple permissions available for Zwift minus BLE. I got the sensors connected, but Inride was running with a 7-10 second lag. I removed the battery from the Inride sensor and am only using the cadence and speed (and hr) sensors.

Now I’ve got a 2-3 second lag. And every 30 seconds, I lose connectivity for about 4 seconds. It goes…wattage will drop (approximately) by 30w, then drop another 30w, then shoot up to a number about 200w above my actual wattage, then 100w above my actual wattage, then my actual wattage. So if I’m riding it’d look something like 115w>75w>35w>330w>230w> 115w. I can’t complete workout checkpoints. Seems like I have a lag if doing a sprint too. Below is everything I’ve done so far to remedy the issue.

  • Updated Zwift.
  • Restarted Zwift.
  • Erased two files from Zwift, and reset the bluetooth module following the “Resolving Mac BLE pairing Issues After An Update”, where the second file actually requires a tilde in order to access it (~/Library/Preferences/ByHost)
  • Delete/Reinstall Zwift.
  • Reset PRAM.
  • Full shut down of Macbook.
  • Multimetered and changed the Inride, cadence, speed, hrm, and Cable sensor’s batteries.
  • Garmin Fenix 3 HR connects to all sensors.
  • Erased speed and cadence sensors from the Cable (ant+ to ble) sensor, then reconnected to the Macbook.
  • *Found correct(ish?), and IMMEDIATE readings of speed, no lag, for cadence and speed on CABLE and Kinetic apps via iphone 6s.
  • Did a spin down on the Kinetic App for the Inride sensor, could not spin down on Zwift.
  • I did the Zwift “BLE Pairing Issues” thing again.
  • Zwiftalizer didn’t look like it listed BLE problems specifically, so I guess it looked good?

All this has been several hours across multiple days of reading and doing other stuff that isn’t riding. Within minutes of writing all this up, I tried Zwift for the first time on the iphone app, with the same 30 second interruption. Is this a CABLE issue, anybody? I posted this on their board 3 days ago. If anybody can help out that’d be great! And thanks.

2

Well, I haven’t done a programmed workout yet, but it seems as though the axe to drop is on Apple yet again. I still have a slight delay, 2 seconds or so. It should be workable. I figured it out about midnight last night. I’m only using cadence and speed sensors now. No patience to setup Inride, maybe later.

I spent hours cursing out everybody else. Garmin, Northpole, Zwift, Kinetic, the range booster, the wireless outlets. Similar to how BLE permissions were arbitrarily blocked for Zwift by Apple, while other permissions for Zwift were not, this time it looks like it was an undownloaded firmware update for the Cable iOS app. Which is another mystery. I lost a year subscription due to this.

I randomly decided to search the app store for the Cable Util. Below the app it read “6 mos.” since the last update. I just manually updated all apps within the last week, so Cable should have been updated with all the others. I did some more investigating. I lost about 20~ minutes hypothesizing:

  • is it the inexplicably, apparently non-turnoffable “remove unused apps” option?
  • should I should switch back to auto updates?
  • maybe it was just me being incomepetent.

They were all wrong is all that matters.

I decided to go to “Purchased” on the app store, and typed in CABLE, and nothing appears. Hmm. Then I had to manually search 13 years worth of previously downloaded apps, to make sure it wasn’t. And there are hundreds of previously downloaded apps. Many of which are no longer on the phone. And I have to do this because there is no option to search ”ON THE PHONE” — but rather — you can only search the entire history of your account, or “not on this phone”.

There is no CABLE app according to “My Purchases”, though it is in my “App Library”. So that’s another problem I still have to solve. I gotta, dunno… sign out of the account, or delete/reinstall Cable/and reconfigure it for the dozenth time even though, apparently the problem hasn’t been Cable. Or maybe I have to factory reset my phone, or etc. Endless problems and it’s always Apple. It’s causing me existential problems.

Apple strikes again. And Again. And again.
Stealing hours.