I am very, very disappointed in Wahoo. Despite having had a couple of V1 KICKR Bikes and dealing with many issues with them (noise, dying shifters, etc.), they have now, essentially, ended future firmware support for them (along with the V5 KICKR).
We had been promised for years that we would get braking and shifting integration with Zwift and other platforms. Now, KICKR Bike Shift and V2 get those features, but V1 is not supported.
I expressed my frustration to Wahoo, who essentially had nothing but, “Sorry for the disappointment!”
Is there any action to be taken, or are Bike V1 and KICKR V5 folks just SOL?
Doesn’t surprise me with Wahoo. And I won’t be buying any Wahoo products in the near future. They said the Kickr v5 would get virtual shifting, then backed out on that plan and decided they’d rather just make people buy new stuff. It seems they do a lot of promising but don’t actually deliver. It’s hard to buy a product knowing they’ll stop supporting it when the new iteration comes out.
Going with the JetBlack Victory. I sold my v5 as soon as they said they won’t do virtual shifting for it.
Foreseeing the future in hardware design is hard, and sometimes you get it right and sometimes you don’t. It is entirely possible that there are fundamental hardware limitations which prevent things - not malicious decisions.
As always though, noone should be loyal to any company so if you can’t reconcile/accept something, shop shop shop.
I mean I think the issue is that I’m now saddled with a second smart bike that will gradually fade and die. My SB20 ended up being so inconsistent, that it was essentially unusable.
I can’t sell either one easily as they can’t be shipped and I never have liked people coming to my house to get stuff.
They fixed most of the problems with V1 with the V2 Bike, but are now pretending like the V1 bike doesn’t exist, all while selling refurb back stock.
That is kind of surprising. How many people have their v2 bikes. It can’t be that large of a number. But there has to be a reason for dropping support (hopefully more than greed) like processor capability, or memory deficiencies. Nothing lasts forever, but that sucks. It seems too soon to jettison all those users. Given the cost of that bike, they should figure out a way to upgrade the existing bikes rather than giving their users the finger.
Foreseeing the future in a product made as cheaply as they could is so unlikely. I’m not surprised they did this BTW after the history of their contracted hot mess. Adding an extra couple meg of storage would cost under a buck per bike, but over the possible number of bikes could cost millions. So they chose to market for the now with a small amount for possible expansion. Sad for all the owners. (I’m wondering when my Neo Smart will be junk as I look at it. It’s already a gen 1 missing the new shifters)
Maybe there’s a way to hack the bike somehow. shrug
They are actually selling old stock while they are basically declaring it dead? Or is it a v 1.5 with an update for newer firmware? That’s kind of brave peddling old junk to new users. Wow…
Point taken, but false equivalency. First, the KICKR bike is far more expensive. It was also promised that all of its features would be supported, at least over time.
I would actually say that Apples ongoing support is much better.
This is a situation where some transparency from Wahoo would good a long way. I dont know if they have somwone monitoring an threads online, but a simple clarification regarding why or why not support is not being extended would go a long way. If it is truly a hardware limitation, then so be it.
My guess that there are too many people with v1 bikes who are happy with their v1 bikes. The market for an expensive electronic bike is limited, and they want to force more of us to upgrade.
I am all for a good conspiracy theory but I doubt that not supporting a firmware upgrade for virtual shifting and braking in zwift is a secret push to make consumers buy a new one. I mean maybe but there’s probably more to it.
Not sure why you think it’s a conspiracy theory, it’s actually the industry norm.
The product being discussed is 5 years old. When was the last time your 5 year old electronics got a firmware update? It’s certainly not because they couldn’t.
The issue for me isn’t the push for an upgrade, but rather following through on basic promises. We were promised since 2019 that these features would be implemented and part of the reason of buying the unit for some was likely due to that.
So, we paid for something that we aren’t getting.
The bike does broadcast the gear it is in, along with button pushes. Works in indieVelo / TrainingPeaks Virtual. I guess Zwift decided they wouldn’t implement the protocol Wahoo already had in place, and instead Wahoo had to implement the Zwift specific protocol instead for things.