Zwift Ride connecting to Laptop via Bluetooth

On my recommendation a friend has bought a Zwift Ride frame to match to his existing Kickr Core rather than using an old road bike. Historically he has connected the Kickr Core to the laptop via Bluetooth rather than Ant+ and it has worked fine.

He has added the Zwift ride into the mix and he is not getting a choice to pair the handlebar controls. His setup is slightly different in that he doesn’t get Wi-Fi in his garage so he uses an ethernet cable to connect the laptop directly to the house. This means his companion app doesn’t pair with the PC app as such. If he turns off device connection in the companion app the connection with the Kickr disappears as well so this is obviously playing a part in the mix. Any ideas what to try before I send him to Amazon for an Ant+ dongle to see if that changes anything ?

Virtual shifting and the Ride controls will not work with ANT+ so don’t bother with that.

The Kickr Core needs to have current firmware to work with the Ride so check that.

And put a WiFi access point on the end of the Ethernet cable in the garage. Almost any old router can be switched over to access point mode.