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LRADIKAL
Jun 10, 2001

Fun Shoe
huh?

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TobinHatesYou
Aug 14, 2007

wacky cycling inflatable
tube man

Pretty self-explanatory.

e.pilot
Nov 20, 2011

sometimes maybe good
sometimes maybe shit

TobinHatesYou posted:

Can we get a hell yeah for BeastPussy who went from 237W FT on zPower to 292W FT with a power meter?

:ck5:

Literally Lewis Hamilton
Feb 22, 2005



big watts big life

nwin
Feb 25, 2002

make's u think

TobinHatesYou posted:

Can we get a hell yeah for BeastPussy who went from 237W FT on zPower to 292W FT with a power meter?

:drat: way to go man!

I figured zPower would overestimate, if anything. Nice surprise I’m sure!

simmyb
Sep 29, 2005

:hellyeah: :hellyeah: :hellyeah:

rngd in the womb
Oct 13, 2009

Yam Slacker
This might be helpful for anyone still looking to buy a trainer.

https://www.dcrainmaker.com/trainer-stock

BeastPussy
Jul 15, 2003

im so mumped up lmao
zPower actually had me at 213W, the 237 was from my first test ride on the PM which was strictly Z2.

Thanks everybody, very happy with my results and can't wait to improve them.

FogHelmut
Dec 18, 2003

We got a Peloton because my wife wants to be popular among her peers and family members. It cost more than my real bike. I rode it today an have some questions:

- My Garmin watch connected through ANT+ kept dropping out for heartrate. Is bluetooth going to work better?
- Is there an option to filter out people from the leaderboard who aren't following the instructor? I want to see how I compare against normal people, not douchebags who are powering a small town with their output in the beginner class.

TobinHatesYou
Aug 14, 2007

wacky cycling inflatable
tube man
BT is a much more robust communications protocol. However who knows how good the radio hardware is in a Peloton bike...

bicievino
Feb 5, 2015

FogHelmut posted:

We got a Peloton because my wife wants to be popular among her peers and family members. It cost more than my real bike. I rode it today an have some questions:

- My Garmin watch connected through ANT+ kept dropping out for heartrate. Is bluetooth going to work better?
- Is there an option to filter out people from the leaderboard who aren't following the instructor? I want to see how I compare against normal people, not douchebags who are powering a small town with their output in the beginner class.

I don't know any of these answers but I think this means you should buy a more expensive real bike.

FogHelmut
Dec 18, 2003

bicievino posted:

I don't know any of these answers but I think this means you should buy a more expensive real bike.

I'm almost 8 weeks into waiting for components to arrive, I think upgrading parts over time is the correct way to spend the most amount of money on a real bike.

serious gaylord
Sep 16, 2007

what.
I did my first big group Zwift event tonight and I need to get better at positioning. I felt like I was constantly going forwards or backwards in the pack.

bicievino
Feb 5, 2015

FogHelmut posted:

I'm almost 8 weeks into waiting for components to arrive, I think upgrading parts over time is the correct way to spend the most amount of money on a real bike.

hell yeah

MrL_JaKiri
Sep 23, 2003

A bracing glass of carrot juice!

serious gaylord posted:

I did my first big group Zwift event tonight and I need to get better at positioning. I felt like I was constantly going forwards or backwards in the pack.

There's a lot more surging in Zwift groups, even in races, because the draft is a lot weaker than in real life.

serious gaylord
Sep 16, 2007

what.

MrL_JaKiri posted:

There's a lot more surging in Zwift groups, even in races, because the draft is a lot weaker than in real life.

I don't think it helped that Zwift would keep jumping me onto someone elses wheel if I so much as varied in power by 10w.

I enjoyed it, an hour at 173bpm was not what I was expecting but it was what I needed.

Literally Lewis Hamilton
Feb 22, 2005



Canyon eSports guy gets caught cheating on Zwift in the dumbest, most obvious way, catches a 6 month ban and gets booted from the team

https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2021/02/zwift-cheating-pro-another-tampering.html

Tl;dr: He created a secondary .fit file that was exactly 2% higher at all times and submitted that as his dual recorded file.

serious gaylord
Sep 16, 2007

what.
Interesting that they note the previous trainer that was very easy to miscalibrate vs the version he's using now.

Literally Lewis Hamilton
Feb 22, 2005



The old kickrs are comically easy to deliberately calibrate wrong. There’s a small bolt that changes the belt tension. You can can adjust it, do a spindown, then adjust the bolt again and have an instant boost of 50-60w, probably more. The first time I put my Assiomas on the trainer bike and ran two Garmins I realized the trainer was over reading the pedals by a good 20w.

Safety Dance
Sep 10, 2007

Five degrees to starboard!

Am I correct in my assumption that making Zwift work with a Peloton is more effort than it's worth?

e.pilot
Nov 20, 2011

sometimes maybe good
sometimes maybe shit
Not necessarily if you’ve already got a peloton.

Now if you’re looking at buying one with the express purpose of using it on zwift, then yeah it’s not really worth it.

Literally Lewis Hamilton
Feb 22, 2005



You’d need power meter pedals and you’d have to adjust the resistance knob to change power, so it really wouldn’t be great.

e.pilot
Nov 20, 2011

sometimes maybe good
sometimes maybe shit

Literally Lewis Hamilton posted:

You’d need power meter pedals and you’d have to adjust the resistance knob to change power, so it really wouldn’t be great.

still cheaper than buying a whole new trainer

like I said it really only makes sense if you’ve already got a peloton

Safety Dance
Sep 10, 2007

Five degrees to starboard!

My wife is getting one of the Peloton Bike+s, and I thought it might be neat to hook it up to Zwift. I'll probably just do regular Peloton stuff when I don't feel like dragging my actual bicycle downstairs rather than swap out pedals.

TobinHatesYou
Aug 14, 2007

wacky cycling inflatable
tube man

Literally Lewis Hamilton posted:

The old kickrs are comically easy to deliberately calibrate wrong. There’s a small bolt that changes the belt tension. You can can adjust it, do a spindown, then adjust the bolt again and have an instant boost of 50-60w, probably more. The first time I put my Assiomas on the trainer bike and ran two Garmins I realized the trainer was over reading the pedals by a good 20w.


You can still factory spindown a KICKR5, and during that spindown you can step on the flywheel with your shoe.

Also you can just use “Control w/ANT+ Power Meter” ... link some Assiomas and set the crank length to 200mm.

Now apparently Zwift has enough data that they can identify specific power meters by unique signatures, but proving someone is manipulating the data at the hardware level like that is quite hard. All the sanctioned riders at the moment were caught modifying the secondary recordings.

TobinHatesYou fucked around with this message at 23:59 on Feb 23, 2021

Vando
Oct 26, 2007

stoats about
It seems a real dumb move for anything close to top level competitors because the second you have to show for a premier offline event you're going to look stupid.

TobinHatesYou
Aug 14, 2007

wacky cycling inflatable
tube man

Vando posted:

It seems a real dumb move for anything close to top level competitors because the second you have to show for a premier offline event you're going to look stupid.

Doesn’t matter because they otherwise wouldn’t have a chance to race anything remotely competitive, and also there’s potentially more money involved in top level eRacing than mid-level elite racing. Also so what if they pack finish in offline events...they can just blame their body position or say they aren’t tactical enough.

Blue On Blue
Nov 14, 2012

Has anyone noticed the stock in smart trainers starting to come back up yet? or are they still selling out instantly

I placed a pre-order for one back in December, and it was supposed to be in now, but still nothing from the shop

But I check eBay and there are 2-3 sitting ready to ship from france, for maybe $50 more than the shop is selling it for locally

I'm tempted to just cancel the order I placed and go the eBay route, but I'm afraid of getting a huge import fee or something silly

jamal
Apr 15, 2003

I'll set the building on fire
I'm still a little confused as to what exactly all these people are doing. Is it that they are cheating somehow with the trainer calibration and then adjusting the backup power to match?

Where the better way to cheat is apparently by changing the calibration settings of your power sources and not trying to edit the fit file?

Cat Ass Trophy
Jul 24, 2007
I can do twice the work in half the time

jamal posted:

Where the better way to cheat is apparently by changing the calibration settings of your power sources and not trying to edit the fit file?

All you need to know about cheating is in here:
https://www.facebook.com/OCPICT

Dren
Jan 5, 2001

Pillbug

jamal posted:

I'm still a little confused as to what exactly all these people are doing. Is it that they are cheating somehow with the trainer calibration and then adjusting the backup power to match?

Where the better way to cheat is apparently by changing the calibration settings of your power sources and not trying to edit the fit file?

the dumb way to cheat is to only use a single power source, then copy that file, bump all the values up by 2%, and submit that as the second file

the smart way to cheat is to miscalibrate your trainer on the spindown then bump the values on the 2nd power meter’s fit file by a corresponding percentage.

if zwift wants to curb cheating something that would go a long way is requiring use of a head unit that digitally signs the fit file. they’d need to convince garmin and wahoo to add that in or make their own head unit.

Dren fucked around with this message at 13:20 on Feb 24, 2021

serious gaylord
Sep 16, 2007

what.
Some of the previous people caught weren't cheating but should have been disqualified a their 2nd power record didn't save right/ failed. But instead of taking the dq and being pissed for a week and then making sure you always charge your garmin they tried to fake it and will now forever be tarnished.

Literally Lewis Hamilton
Feb 22, 2005



It’s weird that Zwift hasn’t implemented dual recording in app. Having to use another device and power meter connected to it is so convoluted. If you do both in app and they’re submitted automatically when you exit, then it surely eliminates the ability to fudge your second fit file.

Unless they’re doing it purposefully to get data about how people are cheating first :tinfoil:

TobinHatesYou
Aug 14, 2007

wacky cycling inflatable
tube man

Dren posted:

the dumb way to cheat is to only use a single power source, then copy that file, bump all the values up by 2%, and submit that as the second file

the smart way to cheat is to miscalibrate your trainer on the spindown then bump the values on the 2nd power meter’s fit file by a corresponding percentage.

if zwift wants to curb cheating something that would go a long way is requiring use of a head unit that digitally signs the fit file. they’d need to convince garmin and wahoo to add that in or make their own head unit.

Nah this is still dumb because you can apply a scale factor to most power meters so that 2% bump is written directly into the original FIT file. Some power meters even have multiple implementations of this. Pedals need to know your crank length so they can determine how much mechanical advantage you have (in addition to having basic scale factor fields.)

But yes ZHQ is not keen on seeing FIT files with significantly later file creation dates than a couple hours after the race, and definitely not keen on seeing modification dates of any sort. There are other signatures in these FIT files as well.

On top of that Zwift can apply forensics to your historical performances and identify performances that drift off a general trend line.

TobinHatesYou
Aug 14, 2007

wacky cycling inflatable
tube man

Literally Lewis Hamilton posted:

It’s weird that Zwift hasn’t implemented dual recording in app. Having to use another device and power meter connected to it is so convoluted. If you do both in app and they’re submitted automatically when you exit, then it surely eliminates the ability to fudge your second fit file.

Unless they’re doing it purposefully to get data about how people are cheating first :tinfoil:

Since only 5 people are currently sanctioned, you can bet that just about every else is cheating in ways previously mentioned that don’t depend on editing the secondary FIT file.

Zwift is definitely collecting data, not only to create biological e-passports of everyone, but also to find ways of detecting what kind of power meter / smart trainer people are using based on the power data itself.

FogHelmut
Dec 18, 2003

This Garmin Vivoactive 3 is a piece of poo poo connecting to other devices. The ANT+ drops and reconnects constantly throughout the activity, and its bluetooth will not connect at all.

Any recommendations? A better Garmin watch? Chest strap (doesn't seem convenient to use)? Armband?

nwin
Feb 25, 2002

make's u think

FogHelmut posted:

This Garmin Vivoactive 3 is a piece of poo poo connecting to other devices. The ANT+ drops and reconnects constantly throughout the activity, and its bluetooth will not connect at all.

Any recommendations? A better Garmin watch? Chest strap (doesn't seem convenient to use)? Armband?

What are you trying to connect it to? Are you using it for outdoor rides instead of a bike computer?

FogHelmut
Dec 18, 2003

nwin posted:

What are you trying to connect it to? Are you using it for outdoor rides instead of a bike computer?

Peloton

bicievino
Feb 5, 2015

a chest strap is going to be your most reliable / cheapest option.
It's probably way less inconvenient than you're thinking.

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LRADIKAL
Jun 10, 2001

Fun Shoe
I bought a 20 dollar generic chest strap and was surprised by its utility and usability. It takes one button cell battery and seems to last for months. Just find something on Amazon.

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