It would be a very useful addition to allow the setting of a period in seconds for pre-adjusting the Power for an ERG period.
This is particularly beneficial for trainers where the time taken to adjust Power takes time.
Whilst it is possible to manually edit workouts to do this, obviously this is tedious if taking advantage of Trainer Day workout library.
Ideally the option would allow;
Adjust Resistance (seconds)
Pre-Adjust (Yes/No) when Next Interval is higher (i.e. prevent trainer reducing before end of interval)
This is an interesting idea. I assume you mean in ERG mode so right now we send an target update to the trainer 2 seconds before the desired interval change. We know some trainers are slower than this. I am not fully understanding what you are asking for. Meaning we always see this being consistent so if the interval starts 3 seconds late and finishes 3 seconds late this is not such a problem. Can you describe better or show a visual example?
As I understand, this is exactly what @zymurgy meant. The aim is to have correct power at the right moment, so if you know your trainer is 2 s sluggish, then you set it as 2 s and you will get the right power when your VO2 interval starts, not 2 s later.
Hey good to see you. Ok yes, I understand this and like this. I would just set a single value because I believe in most case the delay should stay mostly consistent. I think this should not be difficult. I will put this fairly high in the priority list.
It has been implemented nicely in PerfPro. There you are able to simply define a period in seconds, there is a secondary option for whether the pre-adjustment only impacts increasing intervals. In my case I would specify it to only pre-adjust for increasing intervals to help offset the sluggish response of my trainer (Stages SB20). Not many people would wish to have a work interval reduce early, but having it as an option covers all scenarios.
Are you kidding? I would totally wish for the intervals to end early.
It’s interesting PerfPro did it like this because if it starts 5 seconds early and it is 30 second it should end 5 seconds early to retain the 30 second duration.
If you are/were a perf pro user I assume you are on the more technical end of the spectrum. The problem is more settings just makes many people more confused. We are trying to retain and improve our simplicity but also solve problems such as this one that is why I like the automatic idea.
The issue on trainers like Stages SB20 is more the time it takes to get to target power rather than reducing. Obviously this is more of an issue on shorter duration intervals. So I found a 2 or 3 second period to pre-adjust would work well and would mean the time at target power was closer to the interval duration.
For example the SB20 can take 5 plus seconds to get to power, it is not quite as slow dropping off. So by adding pre-adjustment of 3 seconds for a 60s interval I would be close to target for 58s, since it is likely still getting to the specified power once the interval has truly started.
On prior KickR and Neo 2T per-adjust was less of an issue than the SB20.
NOTE: the SB20 tends to jump part of the way towards target, then stagnate or even drop down then eventually reach target.
So for example 135 to 380 watts often looks like
135 to perhaps 310 in a couple of seconds
hangs around looking at it’s reflection in a mirror and pontificating life for a few seconds
Oh I see, thanks for explaining, I will think about how hard it is to do it automatically vs settings. If we do it automatically we will take this into account and check both up and down times.
I think having a user able to define a period in seconds and then let them decide whether to apply for decrease is probably as complicated as it need be
But the problem is most people don’t look at or understand all these settings, so the reason I prefer automatic is everyone benefits from it regardless if they do settings or not. I used to think like you that everything could be a setting. Our app is simple (yet flexible) that is a big part of what makes it good for a wider group of people. Adding more and more settings makes it feel more complex and I spend more time explaining how things work
I understand that working in a software company.
Based on my personal indoor cycling experience with different trainers, I have only ever needed to specify a period for increase, most users would probably never need to set anything, but if someone had a sluggish trainer then that is handy.
So by automatic would you look to somehow take into account the power reported from the trainer based on the power the app is specifying and varying the timing based on that. A capability like that would be interesting.
Something else I wondered was whether an app could send more aggressive changes to some trainers than others, with the Stages SB20 needing a big boot up it’s backside compared to a gentle nudge on a Neo 2T. For example, I have thought of manually amending workouts so the SB20 would get an initial prompt above the target for a second or two then a prompt at the target power for the rest of the interval.
Yes, looking at the time difference between target sent and how for actual power to be achieved. My testing was Neo was instant (so intervals come early in our app) and Wahoo is 2-3 seconds. I have paid attention in a few years but generally many people could benefit from this (I think). But it’s more extreme cases like SB20 with big flywheel where it really matters.
I would create a second request for this “auto ramp” feature other people have mentioned when they stop in the middle of a harder interval on some trainers getting started again is very hard. These are similar problems in my mind.
The auto ramp would be a great addition, I know Kickr V6 and the Elite Justo have that feature, but it would be useful having it within an App for those using other trainers.
