Metal Gear Solid V - The Phantom Pain Trainer

[Jerica Shilt]

Thereused to be a site called Friction Facts that covered a lot of this in-depth, but then Ceramic Speed bought them and the data all seems less visibly found. However, past news articles about the site outline most of the key stats you need to know. And Ceramic Speed does have some good articles left as well. Additionally, other 3rd party sites like Cycling Power Lab has more stats on this too.

If you have a coin-cell driven unit, one of the first and obvious signs of a dying battery is poor accuracy. Usually this renders itself via dropouts, but sometimes at low-voltage levels you just get general badness. As soon as you suspect power accuracy issues, just go get a clean pair of batteries and see if life returns to normal.

For example, the above graph shows an issue where for the first few sets the trainer was inaccurate at the beginning of each spike. This is because of gearing in ERG mode. In fact, TrainerRoad warns about this, and how to increase accuracy and stability in sets. They go into great detail on it here.

It totally depends on the nuances of your specific ride. For some people (99%) they may never notice the difference between those two price points, whereas for others it may become more apparent. Either way, I summarize all those in my trainer recommendations guide here.

I am asking because I have a strange behaving Direto in the pain cave and i do not know how to debug even more other than providing files to the Elite support and doing calibration spin-downs (and according to the offset, everything is right)

Basically my Direto is constantly beeping on uphills with a grade > 5-6%. The pedallijg feels slippery. Sounds like it can not fix the resistance and is getting a lot of variances form their integrated power meter. For me it is just not usable anymore. Strange thing here is that it worked very well for the last winter season, shortly after it was released and I got it.

The Elite support is not helpful. The basically say the trainer is behaving correctly and the error is on my side not riding the right way. I have yet to prove it with some good videos of the problem and my rages.

In terms of accuracy, you are correct: two sensors add up their imprecisions. Dual sensors add the benefit of independent leg measurements, however; and pedal-based sensors bring in ease of installation and transfer between bikes on top.

Hi Ray,

First a big thanks for this guide, it is clear and very helpful. I actually suffered from the time drift issue by one unit pausing, Zwift actually pausing when I stepped off to adjust something.

I just bought my KICKR core and had the same issue, my specialized tarmac was not shifting properly to the 11th cog. Te problem was the metal piece you insert in the trainer tu support the QR bikes, definitely the cassette is too close to the frame.

For some specialized bikes, you actually need to get a different derailleur hanger. They offset by 2mm for chain alignment so only work with the specialized hubs. A friend was having this issue of poor shifting on her Hammer. swapped out the hanger and all is good. Specialized and their proprietary sh@#.

Roger, I see the same thing with my Kickr Core and my PowerTap C1. The C1 consistently reports 10W higher than the Core. I also have a Stages (left only) which reports more or less the same offset as the C1. I contacted Wahoo support about the differences but they kept coming back to the difference being drivetrain loss and +/- tolerances. I might agree with them on that but not when the 10W difference is the same at 100W as it is 400W.

Hi

I am in the proces to find out what is the problem. I have just received a new Power meter from 4IIII, where I already have 2. So I know how I normally bike.

But now I have a unbalance which I normally d not have of L/R: 40/60% The firmware version is 3.0/2.1 and I suspect drops out on the left site, so my plan was to look inside the FIT file, but it is in binary format, and I cannot find a conversion tool that can make it to CSV format. Do any one know to a tool that can so that?

A) KICKR is reading high

B) Stages is reading low accuracy-wise

C) Your left leg is imbalanced slightly low, which when doubles makes it all lower.

D) You turned on power matching and forgot about it.

Thanks for all the great info. I did not quite understand your comment about doing a pre-spindown warm up for direct drive trainers. Why is this necessary? Instructions for my Wahoo Kickr do not specify any warm up. Thanks!

The biggest thing to improve SNAP accuracy is to ensure stability of your tire pressure, and then to ensure doing a roll-down about 15-minutes in (also, try doing a Wahoo Advanced roll-down as Wahoo suggested).

When one does a spin-down test, is the calibration somehow applied: in the sensor, or in the Bluetooth/ANT interface of the phone/tablet/computer/other (seems unlikely), or in the specific app on the phone/tablet/computer/other? I.e., is the sensor sending calibrated data to the device or is the sensor sending raw data that is then calibrated upstream (by the device or in the app)?

Superb article and very relevant. Lately i been been a zwift fan using wahoo 1gen kick trainer. I have a favero bepro single left pedal and oval rings. No herre is the issue:

Wahoo watt Value constant show a lot (a least 15% i gess) more than my pedal value on the garmin 520.

Have tryed static calibration + Dynamic on the pedals. Did look into ud the pedal lenght is ok (ude 175mm).

Alway preform a spin Down before Amy ride in zwift. Igen tryed a spin Down in Wahoo fitness app

So how to deal with this?

Could use pedal watt in zwift byt then the price a lover FTP.

I did some test and I paired the 2IN via Bluetooth with my iPad and checked the data with the Rotor App. All was fine and the data was immediately recorded from the iPad. Additionally I paired via Ant+ and the Garmin and the data was againb 2-3 secs later on the Garmin.

It looks like the sets may not be aligned actually. We use GPS timestamps (or computer clock timestamps) for alignment, but you can re-align at the bottom by clicking the little settings/info button next to each file in the set. Just add seconds (or negative seconds) to get them to line up.

My Favero pedals are reading 8 watts higher than my Tacx Neo 2. As a result, when I use my Garmin to control my Tacx Neo 2 in ERG mode using a Training Peaks workout which has my FTP based off my pedals I end up riding as if my FTP is 238 watts. I can see this as the average calculate from my actual pedal FTP value is Hi,

I on a Polar Vantage V and I use a Wahoo kicker for my indoor training. The problem is that Polar always doubles the wahoo power. For example if Im using Zwift it will show 200W while pedaling and polar will say 400. Its something that happens every time so I wonder if theres a way to fix this since I use Polar Flow for reviewing my data.

An old garmin edge 500 could be probably found used for about 50 euro looking, a 800 or 810 for a hundred buck probably, or if you want to stay in with Polar ecosystem, a M450 or M460 (or even an old V650?)

I used Assioma Duo into a Garmin Edge 520. Although I am used to having data displayed in a 3-sec average, it is recorded as raw data.

Therefore, I am displaying it to you as raw data and using smoothing as zero.

Hi Guys, do any of you struggle with a + 6% difference in watt between garmin vector 3 and wahoo kicker v6? the home trainer is showing a higher number which is highly counterintuitive since there should be a friction loss compared to the pedals. the lower reading here is Garmin vector 3.

(everything is calibrated and the crank arm length is correct)

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