powerdrops with a 4iiii podiiiium powermeter

Wonder if this is a 4iiii problem or Garmin? Wish it could be figured out. I have sometimes found when I lose signal if I backpedal a rotation or two, it will come back on, seemingly quicker than if I just keep pedalling regularly. It's been more than 1.5 years on 4iiii and during the whole time, I experience this at random times.

I see the same on my Garmin 1030. Never had an issue with Stages or PowerTap. It is their cadence sensor not the strain gauge. I notice cadence drops to zero for 10 seconds or so, and that causes power to also go to zero. Because as we all know, power is force times cadence. So 4iiii power meters apparently have an issue with their internal cadence sensor.

That's possible, but in my activities the power always drops a second before the cadance does, so it could be something different as well.

I don't think it's related to either the strain gauges or the cadance sensor (it's pretty hard to make the actual hardware fail in this way), I'd say it's a bug in the software running on the power meter that causes the unit either go to sleep or crash and reset itself. The fact that it always lasts for 10 seconds indicates something is happening that either waits for 10 seconds (waking up again?) or takes 10 seconds (booting up?), when the actual sensors would sometimes pass incorrect data to the unit's processor, I'd expect a more variable recovery time. (or none at all)

Anyone ever contact 4iiii and get an answer out of them?

I have contacted [email protected] a while ago, and in the end they told me to contact my dealer and request an RMA for repair or replacement.

I don't think that will make any difference as other units appear to have the same problem, but I did so anyway, and now my dealer is (a few weeks later) still trying to get 4iiii to replace the unit. Apparently they're getting back there's nothing wrong with it.

I've been suggested to contact Garmin on the matter, I run a Edge 830 and have the drops as well...

I have the same exact issue. It is the cadence sensor in the 4iiii. They want me to send it back to be repaired. When cadence drops, then by definition power does also. Maybe every 2-4 mins it drops for maybe 10 secs.

My dealer was told by 4iiii that they'd seen this a few times before, but that a new unit should fix the problem. So my unit was replaced, but the new one had the exact same issue. (as I expected, I still think it's a firmware issue)

In the end my dealer agreed to replace the unit with a Stages, and I've not had any more problems since. Too bad 4iiii wasn't able to resolve this issue, because I prefer the rechargeable battery (and the lack of logos) of the Podiiiium, but ultimately I care more for accurate power readings.

I recreated the same 4iiii Podiiiium issue on both my Fenix 5X and 1030. I wonder if I paired to an external cadence sensor if it would fix it? If the Garmin sees cadence go to zero it will report power as zero. So if the 4iiii is reporting force in Nm, then power would not drop out.