Sufferfest (or similar)

Cheers @JaRok2300 - that’s good to hear.
Not about the front mech cable. That’s shady.

Already fixed, external cable routing and a stash of spares from Wilko👍

1 Like

So…looks like the SARIS powermeter is my PowerTap P1S pedals, when connecting via ANT+.
The trainer didn’t even appear in TrainerRoad.

I’ve now booted up my personal laptop and installed BKool Simulator, which found the trainer immediately (and my pedals, watch, HR strap…)
However, there is no option to update the firmware?
The version I am using (simulator) is different to the screenshots in the TrainerRoad help article.

I have emailed BKool to see if I am doing anything wrong?

Spent about 80 minutes farting on with it this morning.

Here’s my session from last night for info. This was pretty much entirely in 5th gear on small ring as cable broke 5mins in.
I usually try and use the big ring as pedalling feels smoother with high speed/low resistance compared to low speed/high resistance for any given power output.

I’m going back a while but I think you might have to physically connect with a cable to update firmware.

1 Like

That makes sense re the power meter. Trainer road would just be receiving a figure but not controlling the trainer.
In that set up it’s just dumb trainer with quite low resistance hence you running out of gears.
Did the guy you got it off say what he’d used it for, Zwift etc?
Ps. I use free Veloreality software for mine now so might be worth giving that a try as another option to see if it detects and controls the trainer.

That sounds about right, you get more inertia which helps keeping the power output smooth. However my trainer is quieter when I use a small gear/high resistance so I normally pick that one for anything under FTP.

Don’t know if this helps, as well as the firmware it seems it is something that can be truned on and off too.

Is it a Wheel-On trainer? If so, I wonder how it does an effective Erg mode, as it’s only as reliable as the ‘connection’ between you tyre and the roller, and it can’t detect torque or manage resistance as effectively a direct drive trainer. From a mechanical engineering perspective, a Smart wheel-on trainer isn’t going to be as accurate or sensitive as Direct Drive or a PM, because it relies on that tyre interface.

The accuracy isn’t up there with the newer direct drive trainers, there’s no doubt about that.
I’ve had mine about 5 years but only been using with a power meter for the last year or so to have an idea of that. I find the Bkool reads very low at the start of a session, a 100W warm up can be anything up to 140W, but once everything warms up and settles down it’s usually within about 5% of my power meter.

Cheers - I’ve tried that too :sob:
Got a support ticket open with them now

Just had an email from Bkool to say they’ve ceased building trainers to focus on the simulator software. Says they’ve passed the rights on to another company and after sales support won’t be affected.

1 Like

Had the reply from them that the ERG mode isn’t available for my model, so i’ll probably just test the BKOOL simulator and see what that is like.

That must be one the really early models that couldn’t have the firmware upgrade to Ant+FEC then.
I had a 12 month subscription to the simulator with my trainer and got an extra winter out of it as they add on upto 3 unused months too. I then used the free features for a another year or two before they reduced those to the extent that it wasn’t really an option.
I’m not interested in the racing aspects of Zwift so really liked the massive range of routes on Bkool and particularly the option to upload your own routes that you could then ride virtually or for real. I haven’t used it for a while now so don’t know how much it’s changed in the meantime.
Ps. When you say Erg mode isn’t available, did they say your trainer couldn’t be upgraded to Ant+FEC as you should be able to do workouts in Erg mode in the Bkool simulator. It’s just that Ant+FEC is the industry standard so won’t work in Erg mode with other software.