Tacx Neo 2T - bluetooth dying?

For the past six weeks I have enjoyed countless miles of riding bliss on my new Tacx Neo 2T. Then suddenly, two nights ago, things started going south. My Zwift rides would intermittently pause and the avatar would stop pedaling - and then resume. This would progress to a full stop while still pedaling at the same pace and ultimately end with Zwift crashing.

Making a long story short, the same problem exists with the Tacx training program and is recapitulated if I use my iPad rather than PC for the training session (in Zwift). It seems to be limited to the trainer, which pops in and out of the bluetooth connection if I monitor with the Tacx training program, whether riding or not. Oddly, the HRM has been unaffected, so I don’t think it’s BT interference.

While I peruse here and expand elsewhere on the internet, I’ll be happy to entertain any ideas for a fix - or even a workaround - so I can get this thing to limp through a few workouts over the holiday weekend and my next opportunity to connect with Garmin support.

Have you tried using ANT+ via dongle on your PC, i find that it suffers much less from dropouts and othe r issues?

I haven’t, but thank you for reading and asking.

With respect to the above issues, I discovered that the Tacx firmware wasn’t up to date. I had naively assumed that if I used the Tacx Desktop Application for training purposes that it would automatically monitor device firmware and update as needed. Only when I encountered this “new” problem did I discover that there is a separate utility app that must be used to monitor firmware - and that my firmware was horribly outdated. After a version 26 to 36 upgrade, I was able to enjoy 20+ miles of error free riding last night.

I will presume that when Zwift implemented the latest update, it integrated codes that were missing from the “old” firmware and were properly introduced with the new firmware.

Regardless of the above, the Ant+ option is intriguing to me. Of all my bike “computer” hardware, the most reliable are my Assioma pedals - which are also the only set that communicates via Ant+. Switching over may also address the remaining issue - poor connection performance of my Garmin dual HRM that is constantly dropping the BT signal. Will an Ant+ dongle communicate with numerous devices simultaneously, or do I need a separate dongle for each device?

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Yes, a single ANT+ dongle will connect with multiple ANT+ devicws simultaneously. Try and get the dongle as close to your devices as you reasonably can. Some people use a USB extension cable for this purpose.

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Hi, I’ve had pretty much exactly the same issue recently with my Tacx Neo 2T Smart despite having the latest firmware. Thus far I’ve only used the Tacx software and not Zwift, but the Bluetooth connection issue you describe with the trainer is clearly still around, at least under certain circumstances.

I just ordered the Tacx ANT+ dongle. I wanted to get this working with my existing gear, but if it fixes the problem it’s worth it. That said, I’m curious to see if anyone has figured out the source of the problem with the Bluetooth connection. Like you I have a Bluetooth heart monitor that’s had no connection issues, so interference seems unlikely.

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I assume this issue hasn’t been resolved? Nearly a year ago I was having a similar issue, except I was using Ant+. Since then I’ve switched to primarily using BT. I don’t know what I did but it ended up getting resolved. I spoke with Garmin at the time and they told me to unplug my Tacx between sessions (it seemed to work for a little bit). However the past week the issue has resurfaced with mine and my wife’s accounts. We would pedal and then it would suddenly drop, a lot. Not sure the cause. I have a reach out to Garmin. Interestingly enough, when we first had the problem after buying my HRM and such Garmin dropped Ant+ from their Tacx app/software.