zero power reading

[cure]

hello i recently noticed while cruising, not pedaling, the power will show wattage. before i would go straight zero but for some reason it thinks im pedaling??

anyways, is there a setting that i might have accidentally pushed? i tried resetting it too but didnt seem to work, this troubleshooting really frustrates me and i couldn't bike anymore cuz i was so turned off...

on a side note, when looking at my files i can see head and tail wind on graph now, before i could only see tail...like i was drafting the whole 2 hours...but i was actually going solo.

[cure]

wow no suggestions?

[Velocomp]

Patience...

[Velocomp]

Please post a ride file showing your problem

[cure]

hi john,

sorry i shouldve done that in my first post... i actually looked at my file and it doesnt show that i wasnt pedaling. anyways on the device it showed lower power even though i was coasting, not as high when climbing the small hills. i'm not sure if my power is accurate either because ive used this for about a year, my power isnt average over 100w (just having a relaxing morning ride) and calories never over 1000, on this particular 32 mile ride...before i rode 40+ miles with only 800 calories. whats even stranger is that my ibike reads 1227 calories, and the file says only 971? does this mean i'm improving and i have to do another fit test? (how often do i do this?) or somethings wrong with my ibike?

thanks for helping me.

[cure]

is this something i need to deal with now? its really bothering me. it was accurate before but suddenly things seem to be off or not corresponding to each other...anybody?

[Velocomp]

What's going on is that your profile is wrong. Your Wind Scaling Factor is way too high, as demonstrated by the blue "flames" shoot up above your bike speed.

The calorie readings on your iBike are high due to this problem. The iBike software fixes everything after the fact.

I'm attaching a corrected profile. With this profile you will get good readings.

[cure]

hi john,

thanks so much for your time. could you please explain what you did exactly? i saw the changes compared to the one i had from before...im 130lb but the file you posted was 200+...how did you calculate that along with the other data included? any idea how it got all jumbled up so badly?

[Velocomp]

I'm traveling and won't be able to respond until next week. Perhaps someone else can chime in.

[racerfern]

@Cure:
130lb, got that. Are you on a typical road bike, a TT bike? Anything unusual about your setup? Clincher tires, etc. How tall are you?

I see where the weight wasn't set correctly. Get me some info and I'll try and sort this out.

[cure]

hi , good to see you here again.

5'9" , regular road bike (dont know how much it weighs; is it important?) clincher kenda c2c tires.

do i need to do another fit test? the first one i did was on a trainer which isnt as accurate if i were in the park...still have to do one of those...

i find it hard to do coast down runs and also the cal 1mile out and 1 miles in without cars interfering...i live in nyc.

thanks, if you need other info let me know. want to get this sorted out

[racerfern]

Here is a profile the way I see it. You shouldn't have to worry about coastdowns since the FAST START procedure works really well. However, a good calride to confirm your wind scaling is critical. I didn't adjust the wind scaling from what Velocomp set because I don't have anything to go by.

This is merely the FAST START numbers tweaked slightly based on my experience working with profiles. But remember, your wind scaling needs to be verified.

You should do a fitness test simply to establish a baseline. That's how accumulate the proper TSS points to track your fitness, freshness and fatigue. 20 minutes of ALL OUT! Isn't the old FLoyd Bennet Field in Brooklyn open? IIRC there are cycling races there so the surface should be good. Wide open too.

[cure]

hello,

i did the cal ride! it fixed the problem, when coasting power is zero again! not sure why that happened...will everything reset if the battery is taken out?

another concern, my weight is 130, but what if im not sure how much my bike weighs, will total weight all be calculated? i'd say my bike is about 25 as fernando put in my profile or maybe even less.

[racerfern]

Nothing resets if the battery is removed except the date and time.

I tend to allow about 25lb for the bike and all your gear. For a long ride with extra bottles, food, etc. I 'll make it 28lb. Basically, if you do a ride and play with total weight in the software, you'll see that adding or subtracting 2-3 pounds is negligible. Right now I have a total weight of 155.

What did you come up with wind scaling on this cal ride?

[cure]

hi,

i did the calride and i did a 20 miles right after. please take a look and see if it looks more accurate... blue above speed is head wind and below is tail? thank you!

[racerfern]

Cal ride looks pretty darn good. I would use the profile and roll with it. Go out and ride!

[cure]

hi fernando,

thanks so much for all your help! how can i be certain that i use the profile? do i have to import it to the ibike software? and is it safe to delete my files on the device too?

how can you tell if the calride was good or not, it didnt say 'good cal' in the end like when doing a tilt cal...

thanks!

[racerfern]

You should have imported the profile via the menu button in Edit Profiles. Then Accept and it becomes one of your profiles. Now "Send" the profile to the iBike and you're done.

You should be able to delete the files. You only get a warning if a calride is bad and even then it gets saved and should be usable.

Have fun riding!

[cure]

ok great, if i do that, how do i know im importing for profile 1 or 2? do i need to pre-select that before i hook the device to my computer? i dont want to have a bike profile on the wrong bike .. thanks!

ps, i have attached the very first cal ride i did...any suggestions or adjustments i should make? do another cal ride? (when i rode, i didnt ride in the exact path in the return, but it was in the reverse direction - would that be good enough for accuracy?)

thanks!

[racerfern]

You're importing your profile to the profile that's currently selected in the iBike setup screen. Go to setup, then Set PROF, hit the center button and it will show which one you're on.

I'll look at the cal ride later on (working today).

[cure]

cool, thanks. i imported successfully. i did another cal ride for my other bike, but it was windy that day...the speed/ power was jumping everywhere afterwards...on cal rides you need to do it on calm days? thanks!

[coachboyd]

Yeah, you'll definitely want to do the cal ride on a calm day. The cal ride is going to assign a wind scaling number.

Wind scaling is basically telling the computer how much wind is entering the wind port when you are riding. This differs from unit to unit which is why this measurement is necessary.

When you do an out and back ride you are basically telling the computer that ride had 0.0mph of average wind speed. If it's a gusty day then it becomes much harder to get consistent results, so calm conditions are really preferable.

[cure]

ok, i did another one. the numbers were a lot more constant, but the power were a lot higher than usual...please take a look.

also, when i downloaded the ride files i see 3 files "cal" excel files. 1st one i took was on my other bike, 2nd was the file that was previous "screwed up", 3rd i re did today, but when i download my cal ride, does that override the other cal rides i did before? i did save the 1st file and uploaded to profile 1, then switch to profile 2 for another cal ride. i want to upload it back to my ibike but im confused on which one was the good file...please see the print screen of the files...
one more thing, when downloading files i can see all files from profile 1 and 2...is that normal?

thanks, hope this can be cleared up soon!

[cure]

oh no! i was playing around in the 'download cal' window and noticed that the dates of the files are the same as the one i did on 9/11/2010...i have the excel cal ride i did but i dont know how to save it as a *.ibcd4m file... does this me i have to erase/clear everything and start fresh with ibike to do my profile 2? then upload each file individually for each profile?

i must be confused with .ibcd4m and the ibp...what is the difference?

if i havent done a ftp yet but i did a cal ride, can i do the ftp and it will just be saved/updated in my ibike ( so i could download this to my computer?)

[coachboyd]

The ibcd4m file is the file that occurs when you do the cal ride and coast downs (IBike Coast Down 4 Mile). This file has all the information for all your coast downs and your out and back ride.

The ibp (IBike Profile) is the file that occurs when you accept a profile. This has your aero and friction coefficients as well as your wind scaling and wireless ID's.

If you go into download coastdowns and cal ride from the iBike software (without your iBike attached), you can then open the ibcd4m file and accept it. This will create the profile for you in an ibp format (try renaming the file to something so you'll know exactly what it was).

Rule of thumb, whatever profile you have selected in your iBike at the time will be the one that get's written over when you send the profile to your iBike. So if your road bike is profile 1, but you are currently on profile 2 that data will get overwritten.

[cure]

thanks coachboyd,

on my first cal, i downloaded the ibcd4m (only cal ride, not a coast down) so that is enough to go with? or must i do a coast down and FTP? if i do these on separate days, do they get calculated all together when i download the ibcd4m? i believe that file is safe if thats the case...

if i know my FTP from my old test, can i just enter that in the profile and thats enough or will it create problems? im just wondering if i should just re do it all together.

[cure]

sorry, but can someone confirm this for me?

[lorduintah]

If the calibration is not a concern from the new or old - then the FTP you put in is likely to work out for you. So you can enter it - then sometime down the road you will be doing another. If you find that the IF and TSS values are not agreeing very well then running another FTP is probably the right thing to do.

Tom

[coachboyd]

sorry, but can someone confirm this for me?

With the FTP settings you can set it one of three ways.

In the profile section of the software you can change your FTP and resend the profile to the iBike
You can manually set it on your iBike head unit (probably the easiest way to do this)
or you can do the 20 minute fitness test. After the test is finished you will have a new FTP number.

Note that the TSS, IF, and NP numbers are all influenced by having the correct FTP inputted. If your FTP is set at the default of 80, then you'll probably have a very high IF and TSS for the ride.