Zwift Companion and Wahoo Tickr Fit

I am new to Zwift and was trying to find out if the Wahoo Tickr Fit heart rate monitor can be used with the Zwift Companion app instead of the Apple Watch in order to use the main Zwift app on either the AppleTV or iPad and get the ride data into Apple Health?

Hi @Scott_Solomon welcome to Zwift forums.
Your question has several layers to it. The main question sounds like “how do I get my ride data into Apple Health” and this article should help answer that piece of it.

Do you already own an Apple Watch? Or are you asking if a third party HRM will have the same functionality as the Apple Watch? The answer is: it won’t.

My issue is that the Apple Watch does not always show up inside the Companion app as “in game” and so I do not get HR information during a ride. I was hoping that a Wahoo Tickr Fit HR monitor would fix that problem while still using the companion app so that the ride data will still go to Apple Health.

Try searching the forum for some of the Apple Watch threads. Bottom line is that using the Apple Watch as a HRM may not work consistently for you. It certainly does not for me. There is a tricky set of steps you have to follow to pair your watch to your Zwift app. If you do that and it still doesn’t work, there’s your answer.

I have tried to look at those threads, but there does not seem to be any “solution” that consistently works. Also, they do not address the question of whether or not the Wahoo Tickr Fit BTE can be used inside the Companion App instead of the Apple Watch so that HR data still gets input to Apple Health. There’s a reference in the main article but it seems a little unclear to me, so trying to confirm.

Read the article Shuji sent about how to connect Zwift to Apple Health. That will get your data into Apple Health regardless of the presence of heart rate data.

The Apple Watch is a separate issue from that, and you’re right, there may not be one consistent solution that works. I’ve given up on mine, quite frankly. Some people have talked about a free app called Heartcast, which was designed by a Peloton user. That app apparently resides on your phone, and it should get your phone to send out the watch’s HR data. I don’t know if it’s more reliable than the Companion app, but it is free. I’m sorry I can’t help more with this bit.

I’ve decided to forego the Apple Watch and an instead getting (tomorrow) a Wahoo Fitness TICKR Fit. I’ll connect that over BLE to Zwift on the iPad and sync my rides to Strava, which does in turn send all the relevant information (only the course map is left out) to Apple Health. I also found an app called HR2VP, which turns your HR into a fairly accurate power meter so that I cannot rely just on the speed/cadence sensors. If they ever do fix the companion app I will likely go back to it, but in the meantime this seems to work just as well.

Respectfully, I have to disagree. Fundamentally, you can correlate heart rate with power, but that is an average effect, and it will be wrong for a lot of people. For example, take the 220 - age rule for max heart rate.* That is an equation that predicts the average max HR given your age. That may be accurate on average, but for you as an individual, it may not be. You will have some people with relatively high HRs, and relatively low HRs. For example, by that formula, my max HR should be 180. But I know I saw 186 during my last ramp test, and I clearly survived that experience. Also, heart rate lags your power output, so if you go hard in a race, it takes some seconds for your heart rate to catch up. And heart rate can also be influenced by a lot of things, like rest and caffeine intake.

I don’t think Zwift should accept data from HR to power apps, but I can’t control that. I can say that these are not that accurate, and they may be even less accurate than the power curves on non-smart trainers.

*NB: 220 - age is not actually accurate on average. I’m just using it as an example because it’s a well known rule.

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It should work … although, IIRC, it didn’t at one point.