Goldencheetah and virtual power

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Howdy folks,

I'm sure this has been covered elsewhere but I'm struggling to find an answer.

I have an old dumb trainer which I've been using with GoldenCheetah. I don't have a power meter. I'd like to go back to Zwift, but it is impossible for an ant+ dongle to communicate with two applications simultaneously. Meaning I either get GoldenCheetah's better training data or Zwift's better visualisation. Not a problem thinks I, I'll use my Garmin to record data as well and then use that to upload to GC. And it sort of works - although it lacks virtual power data, which is pretty much the cornerstone of all the features of GC.

Does anyone know how to, in GoldenCheetah, retrospectively apply virtual power to an activity not recorded in that app? If I use the zwift .fit file I get wildly different power numbers for a given wheel speed than I do from GC which screws any attempt at consistent performance data.

The "Estimate Power Values" feature does not allow you to specify the trainer and instead gives you options for wind and rolling resistance.
 
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Milkfloat

An Peanut
Location
Midlands
ANT+ broadcasts to multiple devices simultaneously. It sounds like you just need to run two devices (GC and Zwift). When you say you use the Zwift .fit file, are you importing that to GC, as when I was comparing power meters the power data seemed fine to me.
 
OP
OP
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Edwardoka

Guest
ANT+ broadcasts to multiple devices simultaneously. It sounds like you just need to run two devices (GC and Zwift). When you say you use the Zwift .fit file, are you importing that to GC, as when I was comparing power meters the power data seemed fine to me.
Yeah I knew of the one dongle per app workaround, but seems to be a faff when I already have two ant+ receivers (the garmin and the dongle).

I suspect that most of the discrepancy is caused by my trainer (Tacx Sirius) being supported by GoldenCheetah's virtual power calculations but not being supported by Zwift's zPower calculations, so I fudged it by selecting a trainer by the same manufacturer with the closest power curve I could find on powercurvesensor.com. I know that virtual power is imprecise but when comparing like-for-like activities it gives useful metrics and without the eyewatering outlay of a smart trainer or a power meter.

Cheers ^_^
 
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