Shuji at Zwift HQ here. Have you tried powering off the Apple TV and turning it back on? Putting it to sleep by pressing the power button on the ATV remote is not the same thing. Sleep will not clear out the clutter of temp files that may be gumming up the works.
I looked through your server log history, and see the successful session your last ride was October 12, a 20.4 mile ride on Tempus Fugit.
You’re on the latest version of the main app and the Companion app, and your firmware for the Hub and Click are both up to date.
All of that is to say there’s nothing wrong that I can see from this end - issues like the ATV needs to be rebooted don’t show up at all on our servers - please try that on your end and see if that clears things up?
Thnx for the reply. What I do is try to connect to the Strava app on my iPhone. That fails too. I power off my AppleTV every ride. I’ll go back killing the app and starting over when it fails. My guess is the app gets less testing on tvOS than iOS (I test desktop and iOS apps for a living - no shame in that, just numbers).
All no go. Deleted app from AppleTV, reinstalled. Finally rebooting iPhone did it. But it comes back sometimes, and companion will sometimes stay in “Loading map…” mode. I failed to keep the connection, but I’ll give it one more try tonight.
@shooj - still not working. It’s either (a) the coasting code that Zwift introduced recently that’s throwing me in a funk, or (b) Bluetooth connections getting in the way.
I’ve been able to get the “0 resistance” state to go away at times briefly by hard rebooting every device: AppleTV, iPhone and my Zwift hub, and spinning the hub flywheel briefly. Once, while running Zwift from iPhone w/o Zwift Companion, I had resistance through the time I picked a ride, then started it, and as soon as the ride started the resistance went away.
I jumped on to report a similar finding. I’ve been trying to use a Zwift Hub (iOS) with a regular cassette and no virtual shifting equipment. ERG working well, but sim rides weren’t. I replicated the issue on PC, and noticed in the prefs.xml virtual shifting was enabled. After disabling this PC works as expected.
I assume virtual shifting UI is only visible with the appropriate hardware connected.
Thanks for this finding. I’ll pass it along to the team for investigation. If you deleted prefs.xml - does it have the same effect? Or did you have to edit the xml file to disable it?
@Barry_Janzen
Have you tried uninstalling the Zwift app on the Apple TV and reinstalling? The prefs file that Jeremy’s talking about is not editable on tvOS - by uninstalling / reinstaling you’re deleting everything and starting form scratch. I wonder if you’d try and report back on what happens for you.
After deleting the prefs.xml the problem returned.
After ending a ride and choosing to NOT save, prefs.xml did not contain additional config data
After ending a ride and choosing to save, prefs.xml contained additional config data (including the virtual shifting being enabled)
Seems like my problem (and possibly Barry’s?) has to do with Zwift assuming virtual shifting should be enabled because I’m using a Hub, but I don’t have any shifting capable hardware connected.
Please feel free to have someone contact me directly - Happy to assist further.
I don’t think deleting app will help, because I’m testing it both on AppleTV and iOS. But if it continues through the week-end, I’ll delete it and sell the Hub.
I did change the virtual shifting to off (which I prefer anyway), and still no hub resistance, so I rebooted the phone and Hub, and still no resistance UNTIL I started a ride, and then it kicked in.
But I’m not saying it’s fixed: I’ve had it work, and when I’m riding ahead of a pacer and the coast, I’ve lost resistance on 2 previous rides. I wish I had more time on this, but I have to go to work. I’ll try it late tonight and we’ll see if it holds, even through coasting.
Thanks for the data point, @JeremyC and thanks for the help, @shooj.
Welp, it returned today and I couldn’t get it back. I was doing a pacer ride and had to coast, and coasting kills it. The first time I coasted, it came back once I came to a stop. The second time it didn’t. Here’s what I tried to recover:
Reboot Companion on iPhone.
didn’t work, so I stopped the ride. Powered off AppleTV, killed Companion on iPhone, and powered off Zwift Hub.
Restarted all. Still no resistance.
stopped the ride. Powered off AppleTV, iPhone, and Zwift Hub.
Restarted all. Still no resistance.
This sucks.
ps - I checked hardware to make sure the shifting was set correctly (on for me, with Clickr, and I tried it both ways, and nothing changed).
The companion app has been updated, and it “feels” like it recovered from coasting a bit better. But the Cadence RPM’s seem to drop out way too much, and I’ll have to dig for an averaging factor. I consciously rode at a steady pace and would still get drops of 20-30 rpm. Power dipped, but that’s being averaged so that wasn’t as dramatic.
@shooj the only thing I could find was this:
“zwift-under-reporting-power/601841” in the forums (you have forums set up to not allow links).
and my power is certainly under reported due to cadence drop outs. There is no smoothing for cadence like there is for power, but it’s not like I want it: I want unrealistic numbers e.g. jumping 40 rpm or dropping 30 rpm to just be thrown out, unless that continues over the span of a few seconds. I understand that won’t work for racing, but no one would race with numbers like this off of a Zwift Hub.
Did another short ride today to test out my issues. I thought it may have fixed itself, but it hasn’t.
Check out today’s ride compared to one from Nov 2023. I struggle to get my power output over 60 watts. Near the end of the ride, for the last few minutes, the Zwift Hub started to act funky, it got super weak resistance then bounced back to what felt normal for resistance for the last few minutes of the ride.
Coasted for more than 3 seconds because of the pacer distance, and lost resistance. The cadence sensor + bluetooth to companion app appears to be the issue. But my usual resets (killing companion app, disable/enable BLE) didn’t help. I’m naming this “THE VIRTUAL FLAT” because thats what it feels like.
Does anyone have an idea what the sampling rate for cadence is off the hub?
OK, I’m ready to mark as solved (or won’t solve) again.
I’ve just given up on the companion app consistently being able to connect to tvOS and the Hub. I own the trainer from last Christmas that originated from JetBlack (google dcrainmaker JetBlack lawsuit for some details). That’s all been settled, and it appears that no effort will be made to support it. It’s been discussed elsewhere, and most people seem to accept that.
I have no opinion one way or the other. I’ll just say I enjoyed my first year of Zwift, and while I’m fine just mirroring my phone to my AppleTV and eliminating variables in the equation, I’m sure there’ll be more competition in 2025, making all products work harder for customers.