Newbie or Unit Issues?

[nigeld]

Hi all.

I just got my iBike Pro III on Fri, and on Saturday I went through the quick start set up, then rode to a local business park to do the cal ride and coast down as is in the manual. I did the wind cal just before leaving home and everything looked good, but within 5 min the watts read "0" no matter what I did. At the business park I redid the tilt cal and wind cal, then did the cal ride. I did the coast down but had 4 bad coast downs before I got a good one. Things seemed to look good again, watts seemed more or less in line with my effort. Downloaded the file and cal ride and sent it to the iBike (aero: 0.070, CdA 0.117, Fric 3.505, Crr 0.0055). I don't know if those are reasonable numbers or not, I think a couple are default estimates.

Sunday I did a long ride but started with wind cal, another tilt and cal ride, then headed out. After a few miles my watts were all over the place and then just stuck on "0". I stopped and did another wind cal, rode on and the watts looked good again. This happened a few times, watts went low then to 0, but a wind cal would bring them back. Battery is good, I changed it on Sat as the supplied battery was low.

When I got home I was eager to download the file and find out what was going on, but the file would not download. The short ride to my cal ride location and the cal ride itself downloaded. The long ride showed up in the list, when I tried to download it I got the progress dialog for ages (67 mile ride), then it would disappear and open a new progress dialog and start the download again. After 3 attempts it just quit. Finally, after I trying to download it repeatedly the file downloaded, but it was blank. My other rides and cal rides downloaded OK.

I'm wondering if a calibration issue could cause such wild fluctuations in power readings, doesn't seem likely to me, or if the unit is bad. Is there a way to tell from the files? Being a newbie it could well be a user problem, but I find it strange that watts look like they are in a reasonable range but then just disappear completely. Everything else, except wind which often reads 0 despite an obvious wind, looks ok, cadence, speed, tilt, etc. Don't know about the download problem, I'm not happy at losing all that data, and I'm worried it's going to happen again. Is this likely to be the unit or could something I've done (or not done) be responsible?

Thanks.

-Nigel

[R Mc]

Unless you are around 4'3" and 50lbs . . . there's no way those numbers are right.

Now, as for what's making them so wrong, it will probably take the velocomp folks to inspect the files to give you guidance.

What is the wind scaling number reading in advanced settings of the profiles?

[nigeld]

From Sunday's cal ride:

Aero: NaN
Fric: NaN
Wind Scaling: 1.319
Cda: NaN
Crr: NaN
Weight: 176
Wheel: 2096

OK all those NaNs does not look good! What would be reasonable numbers to put in there? Looks like I lost my other profile I created on Sat, only the sample profile remains. It used to show up under Edit Profiles. However if I go to Tweak Cda... I get data from the Sat Cal Ride:

Dist: 2.32 mi (0:07:43)
Energy: 241.3 kJ
Cals Burn: 230.7 kcal
Climbing: 104 ft
Braking: 0.1 kJ (0.0%)
Min Avg Max
Power 0 521.1 1274 W
Aero 0 476.3 1522 W
Rolling 0 34.5 52 W
Gravity -362 4.2 279 W
Speed 0.0 18.0 27.1 mi/h
Wind 0.0 38.9 63.0 mi/h
Elev 480 515 545 ft
Slope -4.5 0.07 5.0 %
Caden 13 88.6 124 rpm
HR 79 118.8 144 bpm
NP 629 W
CdA: 0.315 m^2; Crr: 0.0055
175 lbs; 7/18/2009 8:06 PM
78 degF; 1008 mbar

Is that wind speed 38.9 - 63 mph! Power 521-1522w... I wish! This data is under Analyze iBike settings too.

[nigeld]

Thought I'd post this screenshot, it's a short ride but it shows what I'm experiencing. I do the wind cal before starting. I have a power reading but soon the watts disappear to 0 even though I'm riding a moderate effort. There is no wind data. I stop do another wind cal, take off again and the watts come back again...

[coachboyd]

Can you send me one of those ride files to me at boyd (at) totalcyclist dot com.

Something looks definitely not right and I want to make sure it's not just a setting in the iBike. At first glance it looks like something is not right with the wind port. If that's the case then it would be covered under warranty.

[nigeld]

On it's way, thanks Boyd. The whole missing file/download thing has me worried too.

-Nigel (formerly of Per4mance Training)