Team BKool CycleChat

[BILL S]

Now for a 'technical' moment.
In a world devoid of drag if you pushed yourself off down a 10% slope that went directly into a 10% climb (there would have to be a transition of course) you would not come to a stop until you got to the height you started from.
In the real world you wont because of profile drag and rolling resistance.
Other reasons you slow quickly going into a steep hill is that generally you are already going up or you have just taken a tight turn into contours.

What I was seeing happen to others on the new firmware is not real as in no way would you come to a sudden stop on any hill that they could put a road on if you hit it in excess of 30 mph, some of the deceleration I have seen you couldn't do with your brakes let alone powering into a hill or even coating into a hill come to that.
It's obvious from what has happened that the SW on your PC is simply telling your turbo trainer what the conditions are, rather than what has changed and so the un-realism we see with the old/new combination was/is something in the Trainer firmware that delays the onset of resistance however it is also reporting back your wheel speed which the PC SW translates into power based on the slope etc..
I think that the SW then fooled itself because if you a putting in so much power on a climb you must be going faster than the wheel speed that is reported so it blue numbers you up to a higher speed.
All this time the Trainer Firmware was going through its delayed transition phase (to make the transition 'more realistic' and not sudden) and so you are still not working against the true slope resistance and so you continue to be able to reach unreal wheel speeds and hit big power spikes until the transition delay is over and then you were slowed down.
Trouble is that some of the hills were too short to finish the transition so you simply flew over them as if they weren't there.
To fix this they need to manage the change in condition in the PC Software rather than trying to make the Turbo 'smart'.
I think all the turbo should have to do is set the required resistance as comanded by the 'game' on the PC.
Or perhaps all they really need to do is to make the stepper motor speed proportional to your road speed (i.e. inertia) when adding resistance so if you hit a 2% from flat at 30 mph the resistance changes more slowly because the stepper motor rotates more slowly where as if you cycle into a 10% a 5 mph the stepper motor should rotate more quickly because you have very little inertia.

I've picked all the new chaingang league rides to be as little affected by the firmware differences as possible. They're going to look quite boring profile-wise but should make for some good competition and some drafting. I liked Ricks bonus sprints so will be throwing in a couple of those too.
Totally agree with the above. Even slamming on the brakes in the real world would not cause the speed to slow so fast. While waiting for bkool to fix it we should be able to avoid the worst and hopefully be able to compete on fairly level ground.

 

[BILL S]

Rightly or wrongly I don't perceive or find the recent changes producing some of the dramatic outcomes some such as Bill describe. Yes, there is now a dramatic slow down as you transition abruptly or not into an incline. But it doesn't seem that different to real life. Perhaps we are all experiencing different outcomes for all sorts of reasons not least the fact we cannot self calibrate our units. Perhaps the fact I don't auto connect and have not done so for some months makes a difference. It might be significant that after the last update and then manually connecting the unit made a lot of noise as it seemed to recalibrate perhaps. It worried me at the time! And there don't appear to be any issues with bkools ant+ fec implementation which only works when the turbo is manually set up in Bkool.

Thanks for that Bob. I think I'll have to give this manual connection a try.

 

[BILL S]

Anyone know if it's possible to get the present league to end before it's scheduled ending of Wednesday 29th? I suspect that it's not as I don't see a way of doing it. The problem being that I'd like to be sure that the new league will be active by the 30th so we can do our usual Thursday 7pm. Also, due to bkools strange timing quirks it's possible that the league won't start in time if we just go for a Thursday league start. A group can only have one league active at any time so we need the old one to finish before the new one starts. @gbrown any ideas?

One option would be to run this next chaingang league from the mountain goat group. This might be the best bet. Anyone here not in the mountain goat group? Please request to join.

 

[gbrown]

Anyone know if it's possible to get the present league to end before it's scheduled ending of Wednesday 29th? I suspect that it's not as I don't see a way of doing it. The problem being that I'd like to be sure that the new league will be active by the 30th so we can do our usual Thursday 7pm. Also, due to bkools strange timing quirks it's possible that the league won't start in time if we just go for a Thursday league start. A group can only have one league active at any time so we need the old one to finish before the new one starts. @gbrown any ideas?

@BILL S you can end a league at any time, can't remember exactly how, but I think you just edit it and choose end now!

Can't check as I'm in Italy at the moment. Hope there is still a UK to return to, honestly I leave you alone for a few days and the country falls to bits, the PM resigns and the opposition implodes.

 

[CXRAndy]

Bill, I have not had that happen. I take it you were still applying pressure to pedals and have not stopped pedalling because of the sudden resistance?

I have zero speed a couple of times with do you want to end session

 

[BILL S]

@BILL S you can end a league at any time, can't remember exactly how, but I think you just edit it and choose end now!

Can't check as I'm in Italy at the moment. Hope there is still a UK to return to, honestly I leave you alone for a few days and the country falls to bits, the PM resigns and the opposition implodes.

Thanks Geoff. Hopefully civil war won't have broken out before you get back.
I've tried ending the league but the option for me to do that doesn't seem to exist. I think perhaps only the admin who set up the league is able to end it before the end date. @RickB would you mind please having a go and seeing if you can end the league as I think everyone has finished now? If you're off on your holiday now, no worries as we'll find another way. Have a great holiday Rick and we'll see you when you get back, or at least we'll see you later when the weather gets cold.

 

[berty bassett]

ive had to go out and buy a new laptop this weekend and thought it would be easy peasy to put bsim on - i am a faller at the first hurdle for a start it told me it needed something from windows to be downloaded ( net 2 3 was part of things mentioned but i cant remember ) i downloaded it but now everytime i try to install it , it does roughly 20% then says it timed out !! its different each time and i have tried it on other downloads and yes i have turned it off and on again but now i am bamboozled - any ideas ?? thanks- it downloads and installs other things ok

 

[CXRAndy]

What version of OS have you got?

I have had no problems installing bsim on win7 pro, win10 home or win10 pro.

 

[gbrown]

ive had to go out and buy a new laptop this weekend and thought it would be easy peasy to put bsim on - i am a faller at the first hurdle for a start it told me it needed something from windows to be downloaded ( net 2 3 was part of things mentioned but i cant remember ) i downloaded it but now everytime i try to install it , it does roughly 20% then says it timed out !! its different each time and i have tried it on other downloads and yes i have turned it off and on again but now i am bamboozled - any ideas ?? thanks- it downloads and installs other things ok

Manually download the latest .net framework offline install (4.6.1) and install that way.

It's here
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=49982

 

[bobinski]

Andy, can you try the mountain or pretzel route in zwift and see if the same thing happens? In the set up screen make sure the kickr is set up as a controllable trainer. Bottom right of screen. You don't have to do the whole ride. As you go up the mountain there are sudden dips into sharp inclines and it would be interesting to see what happens. You will have a 4-5km warm up before the mountain starts and would need to allow a good 45mins.

 

[BILL S]

I think it's time to say Well done AAAC and Bridgy for coming first and second in the league. Also well done to everyone who competed as there were some seriously challenging rides in there. And thanks Rick for making all future rides seem like a walk in the park .

So with it being time to start the new league I think we'd better run it from the Mountain Goat group so that it can start ASAP. I am unable to end the present league so if we wait for it to end that could make it touch and go as to whether the new one would have started by Thursday at 7pm. Anyone not already in the Cycle Chat Mountain Goat group please request to join and post here to let me know and also let me know your bkool user name. I'll be setting up the league tonight so it'll hopefully it'll be ready by tomorrow. However, tomorrow is Geoff's weight handicap ride so your attendance will be expected there at 8pm if possible . I'll post another reminder about that tomorrow.

 

[CXRAndy]

Andy, can you try the mountain or pretzel route in zwift and see if the same thing happens? In the set up screen make sure the kickr is set up as a controllable trainer. Bottom right of screen. You don't have to do the whole ride. As you go up the mountain there are sudden dips into sharp inclines and it would be interesting to see what happens. You will have a 4-5km warm up before the mountain starts and would need to allow a good 45mins.

will do

 

[RickB]

Thanks Geoff. Hopefully civil war won't have broken out before you get back.
I've tried ending the league but the option for me to do that doesn't seem to exist. I think perhaps only the admin who set up the league is able to end it before the end date. @RickB would you mind please having a go and seeing if you can end the league as I think everyone has finished now? If you're off on your holiday now, no worries as we'll find another way. Have a great holiday Rick and we'll see you when you get back, or at least we'll see you later when the weather gets cold.

I think it's time to say Well done AAAC and Bridgy for coming first and second in the league. Also well done to everyone who competed as there were some seriously challenging rides in there. And thanks Rick for making all future rides seem like a walk in the park .

So with it being time to start the new league I think we'd better run it from the Mountain Goat group so that it can start ASAP. I am unable to end the present league so if we wait for it to end that could make it touch and go as to whether the new one would have started by Thursday at 7pm. Anyone not already in the Cycle Chat Mountain Goat group please request to join and post here to let me know and also let me know your bkool user name. I'll be setting up the league tonight so it'll hopefully it'll be ready by tomorrow. However, tomorrow is Geoff's weight handicap ride so your attendance will be expected there at 8pm if possible . I'll post another reminder about that tomorrow.

Bill

Sorry for the delay in getting back but just got online and eventually found the kill switch! You're good to go with a new chaingang league!

 

[theboxers]

there are no active cyclechat leagues what are we gonna do

 

[rob01792]

Bill

Sorry for the delay in getting back but just got online and eventually found the kill switch! You're good to go with a new chaingang league!

dam I didn't get chance to complete stage 6