I have a dedicated trainer bike on a Wahoo Kickr Core, paired with a Kickr Climb, with all the fiddling to make it work on 50% trainer difficulty. I am interested in simplifying the setup a little more with a Zwift Cog & Click combo. I’ve found almost no reference to whether the virtual shifting breaks the control system for the climb. Since the load signal controls the trainer force, this load signal is probably used for virtual shifting, and this load signal also controls the climb elevation, I would expect the virtual shifting to not be compatible with the climb functionality. Can anybody confirm this? Has anybody had any experience with getting this combination to work?
I can’t speak to the zwift cog, but I have a kickr core, a climb, and the zwift play controllers. I use virtual shifting so now I don’t have to manually shift, and the climb still works perfectly.
Zwift’s virtual shifting doesn’t have anything to do with the gradient sent to the trainer, it controls the trainer’s resistance directly. So it shouldn’t affect the use of a tilting device for climbing like the Climb or Rizer.
That’s about the most positive feedback I’ve received, thank you. Whether or not an exact comparison, it does at least show that there is some kind of arrangement that has been made to make it work. Certainly enough that I’ll get a Cog when my local importer does finally manage to get them into stock. Thanks again.
I thought the question was whether you get more pairing tiles – is there a limit on these? Or only 1 “Controls” tile. If my RIzer offers steering as well, what happens when you also pair a Play. Do you get 2 “controls” tiles? Will either one steer?
If you have access to the Play controllers (and assuming they will fit your bike) you do not need the Cog + Click upgrade. You can use those with either a normal cassette, or a 3rd party single speed conversion kit which is quite cheap.
There aren’t more tiles. For controls I select my zwift play controllers. The kickr climb isn’t something that pairs directly to zwift, as long as the kickr core is connected as controllable it will automatically send the gradient to the climb. Not sure how the rizer works.
Hey Steve. I think it kind of does, or at least it did when I first set up my Climb. Zwift didn’t control the Climb at all, it only sends the trainer’s resistance to the Kickr, and in turn the Climb is paired with the Kickr and the Kickr directly controls the elevation. The consequence of this was that when you run the trainer difficulty on 50%, Zwift only sends half the difficulty to the Kickr, which in turn only sends half the elevation to the Climb. The Hack/Workaround was to set the Climb’s wheelbase setting to be a factor of the Trainer difficulty out, which would then make the Kickr match Zwift’s elevation near enough again. So my concern is that since at least some time ago, Zwift is now pre-calculating a resistance based on the gear the rider has chosen in software, it’s going to send the resistance it’s calculated based on virtual terrain and virtual gear, which the Kickr is then going to use to set the Climbs elevation. The consequence would be you hit a nice steep hill, the Climb goes up, you smash back to an easy virtual gear, Zwift sends a much lower resistance to the Kickr, and the Climb drops dramatically. This is the way the system would have reacted when I needed to use a work around hack to make the Climb work with with non 100% trainer difficulty, and it’s the way it would work if Zwift and Wahoo have not come up with a solution. The Kickr bike has elevation and virtual shifting, so there certainly could be a solution to the problem, but I just haven’t seen it written anywhere yet. The fact that the wheelbase hack hasn’t been broken by a software update leads me to believe there isn’t a resolution out there yet. JB’s response though seems to indicate there is.
Thanks Paul, there’s precious little available locally for me, but because there is a local importer most of the online places won’t ship to me. My local place promised me they would have the Zwift Click + Cog combo available by Feb, but it’s still only for “pre-order”. They don’t do the Play controller at all. I’ve looked at what I can get to make this happen, from single speed arrangements, to Play controllers, to trying to get an ESP32 microcontroller to be a virtual shifter. I’d considered scavenging an old DI2 shifter to trigger all the electronics if I could get that to work. All moot though if virtual shifting fundamentally breaks the Climb’s control system. Until then the old mechanical shifters are doing the job.
Hmm ok. My Rizer gets it’s own Control tile (but maybe because the Rizer also gives you steering functionality). So if I added a click or Play, I’m wondering what happens. For that matter, similarly if you add a Sterzo plus a Play or Click, etc.?
This doesn’t match my understanding of how it works. If we forget the Climb for a moment, when you’re going up a hill in Zwift then it’s not Zwift calculating the resistance that the trainer puts out - it’s the trainer that does that, and Zwift sends the gradient and the rider’s weight to the trainer, and then the trainer sets the appropriate resistance (which is why it gets easier on a climb when you drop a Feather, because Zwift sends the trainer a lower weight temporarily).
I don’t pretend to understand how Zwift’s virtual shifting protocol works, but it sits on top of the above. So I assume (but may be wrong) that Zwift manipulates the base resistance and/or tells the trainer which virtual gear to change to, and all that isn’t connected with any gradient stuff, which still gets added together to that.
I have received word from Zwift that the Climb is fully compatible with Virtual Shifting.
Steve, before I received word I found this little bit of information, and you are quite correct. I can’t post the link, but googling “makinolo zwift-trainer-protocol” it’s the first result. The interesting parts are the trainer SimulationParam packet, which provision for Wind, Incline, Cwa and Crr. It appears Zwift fix all but Incline to a set value, and they do their own controls with the Incline. Since they control trainer difficulty with the Incline parameter, that explains why the climb inclination is impacted by the trainer difficulty.
There is then the PhysicalParam packet, assumedly a slower update packet, that makes provision for Gear Ratio, Bike Weight and Rider Weight. This is where Zwift might control rider weight for that feature buff, as you mentioned, and also might change the gear ratio, for virtual shifting independent of it’s primary force control parameter.
From a software design side I’m surprised that the trainer is tasked with so much of the maths, but it’s probably designed around a less involved control system, and it’s good there is provision for this kind of control. I’ll pick up the cog and click when they become available locally.
