I’m in the middle of building a new home gym, which will be centred around my Lifefitness GX spin bike with Powertap P1s pedals which I use on TR at least 3 times a week.
After seeing a couple of fantastic videos on coloured light hacks in Zwift, I’m wondering if anyone could help with something similar for TR.
I’m hoping to buy a set of Philips Hue Light Bars which i’ll place at either side of the room.
The goal would be for the colour of the lights to change to match the wattage colour during my TR workout - so when I’m on target, the walls are all green, but if I start slipping down on power, the dreaded red will appear!!
I know Philips now have their own software app (Hue Sync), but I think it scans the whole screen to produce ambient colour - if there was a crop tool so that it only concentrated on the power bar then I would be laughing, but I don’t think it can do this.
Considering the hacks that have already been done to Zwift, I imagine what I’m after would be quite trivial for someone who knows what they are doing.
Just wondering if anyone had tried it or can point me in the right direction?
I know its not the most pressing of problems, but hey, I’m only going to do it once, so I might as well do it to the best of my ability if I can. Plus, anything that encourages me to go out to train is always welcomed!
That is such a cool idea - in principle.
However I am not sure what the actual effect would be - I am not sure I would want green light most of the time or flickering when you are on the cusp of being on or off target.
Interested to hear how it goes.
I could probably buy enough lights for the whole house for the price of a Neo!
There seem to be so many apps and hacks out there for the Hue system that from the light ecosystem point of view it shouldn’t be too difficult.
It may come down to how hard it is to get TR to talk to the lights with the appropriate commands.
Maybe some of the TR development gang could let us know if its even possible - as I know the Zwift hack was done by one of their own developers which means he was dabbling in the source code.
I take your point John, but it would be great from my point of view.
As I’m using a manual power setup, I have to watch the power quite closely - this would give me freedom to not have to concentrate quite so much on the screen as everywhere I look around i’d know exactly where I was effort wise!
In all seriousness though, I’ve thought about trying to set some hue lights up in the garage. I’m off to look at the Zwift hacks as I do my TR workouts with Zwift running. This might be fun!
The Hue lights run on zigbee. You can get an arduino zigbee transceiver. Im pretty sure you can also get an arduino ant+ receiver. From there its a small bit of code to link power signal to an RGB value.
Love this idea. However, I’m going to connect to a color changing searchlight mounted on my roof ( think bat signal but with a TrainerRoad logo). Now I have real time accountability to my cycling buddies across the city. They can text me mid workout kudos or HTFU messages. …wait a minute…now I have to do all my training at night. Damnit, it’s always something!
Does anyone else work with the lights off in order to reduce any temp increases in the room? I just changed to LED floodlights in the basement so maybe it isn’t really a thing anymore, but I think my previous bulbs did contribute to higher temp.
Not sure where you live, but locally in Texas there’s a shop called “5 Below”. I was in there today and saw a color changing LED light strip they carried in stock. It’s only $5 so not sure the value. But along the lines of what you were thinking at a cheap enough price. If you knew how to wire it up then maybe it would work. Otherwise, at least you could have the ambiance.
If you’ve ever done a Precision Running Class at Equinox in one of their Running Labs (I think only in Boston and California right now) they do this for intervals. The lights are static until the end of the interval they go from red down to orange to green when it’s over and then blue during periods of “rest”. It’s actually really cool and keeps you engaged through the set.
It would be easier to do this where the color adjusts based on actual power, vs. where the color adjusts based on the delta between actual power and target power.
The reason for this is for the former, you could have an app running that reads actual power from your power meter/trainer, and use that app to then control the color of the lights.
Vs. with the latter, you have to also know the target power that Trainer Road is communicating to your trainer, and that’s a more difficult thing to pull off - as I believe the TR app can only have one smart trainer connection at a time (either your actual trainer, or an app that you’d create to emulate a smart trainer). It’s possible this approach may work if you have a dumb trainer, and create an app to mimic a smart trainer, and use that app to get the target power data from TR.
In summary, if you go down this path, I’d recommend the former approach as i think there are less obstacles to overcome vs the latter approach.
Couse, this also would require you to be able to write code to create an app, but that might be part of the challenge here!
Agree with DaveWh. Easier to work with the actual power readings. You would otherwise have to get the training session exported to a file to be read by the Arduino. In fit/tcx format.
There are a bunch of libraries available that you could get your hands dirty with if you want to try programming your own.
Just reading about the Hue Sync. If you have these lights and a bridge, then install the Hue Sync Mac/Windows app, and go into its settings. You’ll need to define an entertainment area in the Hue app as well beforehand and assign the bulbs to it (they must be colour capable obviously).
Then set a keyboard shortcut (scroll to bottom) for capturing the desktop area…eg Ctrl+Shift+C. Then close settings and open TR and load the workout. Make sure its in a position (Window/Minimal) that you are going to use beforehand. Then go to Hue Sync and Ctrl+Shift+C…you will then be able to click and drag an area over the TR app where power is displayed. That should do it for you.
Ah ha! We have a winner!!!
Thanks so much Andrew, I didn’t realise you could choose just a selection of the screen with the hue app.
This instantly gives me exactly what I’m after…no programming or APIs required!
I’ll report back if I get it all up and going…just need to get the garage actually finished first.
Motivation is where you find it. What motivates me might bore the crap outta you. My pain cave is pretty much as good as I can make it but a finishing touch would be to have HUE lights that were linked to my trainer or heart rate monitor. They would change colour as the intensity rises and in short be very cool…at least for me.
Is there a simple way to do this that even a tech adverse person like me could accomplish?
Anyone do this for changing the colors based on power (not just the “on / off target” slider on TR)?
Looks like there is an Ant+ library for Arduino so that with a $35(ish) Raspberry Pi, Ant dongle, and some code you should be able to read a power source (trainer, pedals, PM, etc), divide by your FTP, and adjust colors based on percent FTP (full sliding scale) or zones (recovery grey/white, endurance blue, tempo green, sweet spot yellow, threshold orange, VO2 red, anaerobic purple).
Screen selection should work on the TR intensity bar, a very small area on minimum view to select. Haven’t tried it myself but may give it a go, I currently go with the Zwift sync, like the cave turning red as you enter the volcano…
