Signal / Controller Power Dropouts with TD App

so my wife has been using Trainerday for a while and has recently been complaining that the signal on the SB20 drops sometimes during her workout, forcing her to unplug/reconnect the bike to get going again. I’ve been dismissing her concerns but this week actually joined TD and had my first ride today and… signal dropout.

Some facts: bike itself is paired to TD as controllable and power and a HR monitor is paired as well. Running the app on M1 iPad Pro with the latest version of iOS (15.6 i believe). TD app is updated to latest version. As usual, before every workout I calibrate the PMs on the SB20 with the Stages app and then force close the app before starting my workout. I’m coming from Trainerroad and have used that pretty extensively over the past 2 years with zero signal dropouts. Also use Rouvy and have had zero signal dropouts with that platform, so I’m fairly convinced it’s a Trainerday issue.

My issue happened maybe 3/4 of the way through the workout after a 250 or so watt segment that then dropped to a planned 84 or so watts. I noticed that the power during the 84w segment was rather high (still 250w or so) so I slowed rpms down and that’s when i noticed that the “2” box in the top right corner for # of connected devices now was showing “1”. I was able to go there and see that only the HR was connected, not the bike. Unpaired and repaired the SB20 bike (again, not the l/r cranks) and after a couple of seconds was back in business. I’m sure my wife could do the same thing rather than getting off to unplug, but she’s not as familiar with how any of this works.

Anyway, happy to share any additional details as needed but I’d love to have this resolved. Cannot have signal dropouts from my first ride on the platform after literally none on any of the other platforms for a far longer length of use…

UPDATE: and again it happened today. zero resistance in the middle of the session, just sitting there spinning the cranks with nothing registering for a good 2 min. beginning to think this app is…not good. Used m1 ipad pro today and iphone 11 yesterday. next time i’ll try android via samsung s21 ultra. all i know is that this dropout thing ONLY happens in TD app. no issue with Trainer Road, Rouvy or Zwift for 2.5 years…

Very strange, we have many SB20 users here. @HighSpeed do you want to try to offer any advice? I know people have have a few issues at times but seemed to get them resolved. Please let me know if you expertience this with Android. If you do and are willing to work with my developer it’s very easy for us to find and resolve issues on Android. If not we can also try and debug on iOS device as well, just not as convienient. We would love to get this fixed as usually improving one device can help with others. Do you have a link to the specific workout you were doing? Some times workouts with ramps (as compared to steps) can cause issues on some devices.

I am sure you are right it is something to do with our app. It seems the big guys have had a lot more time to iron out all the different devices and their issues. We have tackled about 95% (that I know of). This is one of the few device issues remaining, although many apps only send updates every 5-seconds and we send every 1 second on a ramp and this can cause some devices issues. A kickr Snap and workout with ramps for example.

my wife uses one specific workout (in the TD library) so i’ll have to find out what it is. I use a custom one I created using the creator tool and it does have a ramp at the end but also has several steps going from 130-140% of FTP to 40%. I’m willing to share data and work with anyone as I really want to get this right (2 TD subscriptions). Wife used the bike today and said there were no dropouts.
I’m going to change the PM batteries tonight before my next workout tomorrow and see if that helps as i know PMs tend to get finicky with batteries. Will report back after

If your problems were happening earlier in the workout on the steps, that means the problem is something else then ramps. 140% should not be a problem.