Problem with a PowerPod v5

[markw65]

I've been using my powerpod for a few weeks now. Yesterday, I went out for a ride, and after about 20 miles, I noticed that power (reported on my Garmin Edge) dropped to zero. At the same time the "wind" and "slope" fields stopped updating, and didn't change again for the duration of the ride. I stopped a couple of times to see if pressing the button would wake it up, but no effect (and no light, of any color, on the PowerPod).

The PowerPod should have been fully charged before the ride (I had plugged it in, the light started flashing red, and when I unplugged it before the ride the light was out).

This morning, I connected it to my computer. The light didn't come on, and when I launched Isaac, it didn't see the PowerPod. I tried the "Connect" menu item, and it told me that it found the UART->USB bridge, but that I needed to make sure that the device was turned on. I left it for 30 minutes in case somehow the battery was dead and it needed a while to get going, but there was no change.

Then I did a search for "Hard reset" and found that holding the button for 10 seconds should do that. I tried, and after 10 seconds the light flashed yellow, then switched to flashing red, showing that it was charging.

Isaac connected, and I was able to download the first part of my ride. The name of the file was "Velocomp_07_03_2023_0709_0_Miles.ibr" (note the "0 miles"), but the contents of the file went up to almost 21 miles.

So - its probably ok? Do I need to do anything after the hard reset (like recalibrate?). If it happens again, is it safe to do a hard reset during the ride to try to fix it?

[Velocomp]

It sounds like your unit locked-up during the ride. This is a mysterious bug that we are aware of that, fortunately, happens very very rarely.

A hard reset fixes the problem (but it wipes out the distance of the ride). It's OK to do a hard reset during the ride, but hopefully this won't be necessary for you.

Please post your ride file so we can use it to hopefully get more information about the bug.

[markw65]

Ride file attached, thanks!

[Velocomp]

Ride file attached, thanks!

I don't see anything obviously wrong with your ride file, but your symptom is consistent with what we have seen before.

Let me know if this happens again.

[markw65]

I initially thought it happened again, but this is something different.

I noticed (as before) that slope and wind speed (as reported by the AeroPod CdA data field for Garmin) had stopped updating. But this time, power was still being reported. After finishing the ride, and uploading to garmin, I could see that the saved slope and wind speed had in fact frozen (from about 4:40 to the end of the ride):

Slope-wind.PNG (67.4 KiB) Viewed 5812 times

The slope, and wind speed data in the .ibr file look right (attached). So presumably this was a crash in the AeroPod CdA data field.

[markw65]

Incidentally, I initially got the powerpod for my long stride Elliptigo (20 inch wheels), and recently started using it with my Elliptigo RSUB (28 inch wheels).

Now when I download rides, the distances in the titles of the rides seem to be randomly longer or shorter than the actual ride (eg see my previous post: Velocomp_07_10_2023_0718_74_Miles.ibr is actually a 50 mile ride, not 74). The distances in the .ibr files themselves (once I open them) are correct.

I just realized that its using the wheel circumference of the currently selected profile to generate the filenames of the rides (my ride this morning was on the RSUB, so the currently active profile had the 28" wheels, but yesterday's ride was on the long stride, with 20" wheels).

As I said, this doesn't affect the data (the profile stored in the .ibr has the correct wheel size); and I doubt there are many people using a single powerpod with bikes with different sized wheels - so its not surprising that a bug like that could slip through.

Would be nice to fix though - apart from anything else, if I download all the rides, then switch to the other profile, it generates new names, and the next download tries to download them again, instead of realizing that they have already been downloaded.

[Velocomp]

I initially thought it happened again, but this is something different.

I noticed (as before) that slope and wind speed (as reported by the AeroPod CdA data field for Garmin) had stopped updating. But this time, power was still being reported. After finishing the ride, and uploading to garmin, I could see that the saved slope and wind speed had in fact frozen (from about 4:40 to the end of the ride):

Slope-wind.PNG

The slope, and wind speed data in the .ibr file look right (attached). So presumably this was a crash in the AeroPod CdA data field.

Your ride file was fine, so this is some kind of error in the .FIT file

[Velocomp]

Incidentally, I initially got the powerpod for my long stride Elliptigo (20 inch wheels), and recently started using it with my Elliptigo RSUB (28 inch wheels).

Now when I download rides, the distances in the titles of the rides seem to be randomly longer or shorter than the actual ride (eg see my previous post: Velocomp_07_10_2023_0718_74_Miles.ibr is actually a 50 mile ride, not 74). The distances in the .ibr files themselves (once I open them) are correct.

I just realized that its using the wheel circumference of the currently selected profile to generate the filenames of the rides (my ride this morning was on the RSUB, so the currently active profile had the 28" wheels, but yesterday's ride was on the long stride, with 20" wheels).

As I said, this doesn't affect the data (the profile stored in the .ibr has the correct wheel size); and I doubt there are many people using a single powerpod with bikes with different sized wheels - so its not surprising that a bug like that could slip through.

Would be nice to fix though - apart from anything else, if I download all the rides, then switch to the other profile, it generates new names, and the next download tries to download them again, instead of realizing that they have already been downloaded.

Each profile has a customized setting for wheel circumference. If you are using two different bikes you should create a separate profile for each bike, which would include the correct wheel size. Do a separate cal ride for each bike, and use a different speed sensor for each bike. That way PP will automatically switch to the correct profile for each bike.

When you download rides the first screen shows only those rides that have not already been downloaded. If you select that option you'll only get the new rides only.

[markw65]

Each profile has a customized setting for wheel circumference. If you are using two different bikes you should create a separate profile for each bike

Yes, that's exactly what I've done. And as I said, the downloaded files do contain the correct profiles, and once opened they show the correct distances.

The bug I'm reporting is that the *name* of the downloaded file includes the distance (eg the 74_miles in Velocomp_07_10_2023_0718_74_Miles.ibr). But the distance in the name is the distance as computed with the currently active profile, not the distance as computed with the profile that was used for the ride.

So if I do a 20 mile ride on the bike with the 20" wheels, then a 20 mile ride on the bike with the 28" wheels, and then download both, the first will be called Velocomp_date1_29_miles.ibr, while the second will be Velocomp_date2_20_miles.ibr. But if I now do another ride on the bike with the 20" wheels, and download again, I'll get the new ride, and a second copy of the first ride, this time correctly named Velocomp_date1_20_miles.ibr.

And again, both Velocomp_date1_29_miles.ibr and Velocomp_date1_20_miles.ibr will contain the same, 20 mile ride, with the correct profile. It's just that the file names are generated based on the profile thats current at the time of the download.

[markw65]

Your ride file was fine, so this is some kind of error in the .FIT file

Well yes, in a way. But the Aeropod CdA data field froze during the ride. I had to reboot my Garmin Edge to get it working again.

Since its that data field providing the values to Garmin, when it froze, it stopped updating the fields, and so what got recorded in the .FIT file for the rest of the ride were the stale values from just before the time that the data field froze.