Any other Powerbeat users out there? Specifically the Gen 2 type
How do you find them? I have been using them for about 6 months and after realising phone chargers mess with their signals, they have been ok. Except for high power. Any sprint efforts above ~500w, the signal drops out until I back off again.
I saw DC Rainmaker had these issues but in the 800w range. Waiting to hear back from Watteam, but I haven’t found their support to be the greatest.
Wondering if anyne else is experiencing this issue?
This might be slightly off topic but how do you connect them to trainer road? I’ve been using the desktop app and if I connect via ant+ I don’t get power. Are you using bluetooth? Phone App?
I am using ant+. I have a PC with an Anself ant+ dongle, as recommended by TR. I used their drivers too.
Is yours transmitting on BLE? Can you phone see it? You can use the app to change from ANT+ to BLE, but it is so hit and miss, so annoying as I want to run TR on my phone then send it to the telly with the AppleTV.
Thanks! I stepped away from it last night and read a bit more and realized that I was just doing it wrong. I was able to get cadence and power set up last night after a little bit!
Smashing!!
Do an all out sprint if you can. Mine stops transmitting data when I do sprint drills. It’s so annoying!
I have a ticket in with Powerbeat, waiting to hear back from them…
I’ve been using the Gen 1 PowerBeats for 11 months and they’ve worked great with TR, Zwift, and on the road. Power matches up nicely with my CycleOps Magnus trainer and gives me consistency when I’m not rising on the trainer. I did have a spell where the meters were off for a bit following an accident (slid across a slimy boardwalk). Fortunately, it was remedied with remounting everything (the strain gauges were fine, just the other hardware) and repeating the full calibration. I’m not powerful; according to TrainingPeaks, my all time 5 second power record is 970 watts. That particular effort was using Zwift. I’ve got 11x 5 second power readings over 800 on Zwift and TR and one over 700 read via by Edge 520 in the real world. 75% of the time I use TR and Zwift with a PC using a Garmin ANT+ Dongle on an extension. The other 25% of the time I use one of my Samsung Android devices (has ANT+ built in) to run TR, and have not had any issues there either.
Well that is reassuring!
I am not as powerful as you, well I don’t know, as mine drops out before I can see a PR! Saying that, outside on one commute I saw over 1000w whilst shouting STRAAAAVVVVVVAAAAA!
I get the drop outs when on the trainer with a USB ANT+ stick, and on my Garmin Fenix 3. I have heard back from Powerbeat, they want pictures of my installation. I can see this being a long painful process!
Here is the last drop out I had during one endurance workout.
AFTER week of “using” my new powerbeats, They worked just well about hour after calibration. But due to bad epoxid the strain gauges gradually unglued and their readings gradually fell to zero
SO TODAY …I´m just trying to glue the strain gauges 2nd time with another epoxid. Supplied epoxid was not good. Normally, I flay strain gauges down from crankarm with my nail. No contact at all. So if you have same problems, try to glue them with another epoxy…
I´ll update report after 2nd gluing.
My connection to TR is via BlueTooth Dual to mobilephone with android, normally paired, worked well. I´ll also try to ant+ dongle with notebook…
I have been running the 2nd Gen for almost a year now. I went thru several sensors before I finally got Watteam to professionally install them. Since then they have been pretty consistent. Only thing is I have never been able to sync them with the phone app. The calibration on my Garmin 510 doesn’t always calibrate the first time but I have found the trick to get it to calibrate. Tonight I was doing English which was 1 minute at 127% FTP. On the second set i was getting on and off drops of power causing the workout to pause. This is the most frustrating thing when your mid interval. It even dropped out on my final cool down spinning a few times. I have it connected via ANT+. My ANT is actually very old and I was wondering if replacing it would help, but I noticed that the HR kept reading even during the drop outs of Power and Speed sensor. Anyone else have similar issues?
Yup, that’s the same issue I am experiencing.
I have a ticket open with them, but it had a rocky start. I found them quite patronising and they suggested that the piece of electrical tape I placed over the sensor was limiting the data transmission at high power
After a few more ridiculous suggestions on their part I sent them my feedback and finally got an answer I can work with.
Their latest is that if you ramp up your cadence quickly ( I do as I am on a dumb trainer ) and the interval is less than 5 seconds, the PowerBeat cannot keep up. As it measures force and cadence, without the cadence it cannot display power.
I was asked to connect to the Bluetooth on my phone and do some intervals. Man, getting these things to connect to Bluetooth has to be up there with one of the most hit and miss things of all time! Waiting to hear back now.
That all makes sense to me. Except that sometimes I experience these drop outs at lower cadence.
Another factor in the signal reliability is not to have any phone chargers in the area.
I am still annoyed as there is nothing in their documentation that mentions the rapid increase in cadence. That is when I need these sensors to be performing. I hate VO2 Max so want to record every last one of them!!
Get any issues with your Powerbeats figured out ASAP.
You may or may not know that they don’t seem to be on good ground right now:
I spoke to Ofir not too long before the announcement and he didn’t offer any hints of what was to come. Reached out to their team 1 day before the announcement and there was no reply.
It’s a bummer ! Much like Brim Bros. I was interested and wanted them to do well.
(And FWIW, if you need to replace your PM, don’t hold out for the Shimano one. That’s advice directly from Shimano).
I have just received the power beat g3 but, I am not able to create an account on their app because it said it had sent me a verification email but, I never received and I tried 3 different emails. Does anyone know what I should do?
Good luck. Sounds like an automatic system that has been turned off. Can you return the G3 just in case?
I have an open ticket with them, not heard a peep in a few weeks…
Might be worth downloading an earlier (g2) version of the app to see if it works with your g3. You can google watteam powerbeat app 3.0.9 apk.
The problem i am having is that the older app version won’t detect the powermeter. The figures do appear on my fenix 3 and on the wahoo utility app on my phone, but the powerbeat app won’t detect anything. Anyone had this and found a solution?
Unfortunate but glad its not just me with issues on the App not working.
Just bought a Kickr Core and have been running my PM to my Garmin while riding. Even after calibrating a few times it runs 10-15 watts lower than the Kickr. Any others try running it alongside their Trainer? What have been your results?
I just upgraded my phone and the Powerbeat app wants to validate my email but it’s just not working. The PM works but if I ever need to fully calibrate I’m SOL. Hope someone steps in and buys them as it’s a great idea just poorly suported
