This discussion has been locked.
You can no longer post new replies to this discussion. If you have a question you can start a new discussion

Edge 530 for Indoor Training with Smart Trainer

Has anyone used their 530 in Indoor Training mode coupled to an ANT+ / Bluetooth FE-C Smart Trainer?  If so, some questions:

- How well has that worked when you simulate a Course or a previous ride you've got on the 530?

- Can you setup and see more pages on the 530 beyond just the elevation profile and Virtual Partner pages?  i.e. can you create a page with speed, distance, cadence, etc.

- Does it do a good sending slope information over FE-C to the Smart Trainer to instruct it to alter resistance and simulate the grade?

- If the answer to question 2 above is Yes, does the Grade field show the simulated grade or just show 0 because the GPS and altimeter are not seeing any grade change?

- Is this a viable use model to simply do an indoor simulated ride of a ride you've done outdoors (winter is here, more riding going indoors)?

- Any thoughts or suggestions you have?

Thanks for your thoughts !

  • My two cents worth.

    To make it work I had to:

    Select live segments off

    Select turn guidance off

    Yes, the trainer does alter the resistance based upon the previous ride gradient. I found the gradient changes on a micro level were really abrupt and not very representative of my actual ride but on a macro level the ride was similar. Because of these abrupt inconsistent changes I would go from spinning relatively easily to nearly stalling such was the increase in resistance. It would go from 3-4% to 13% with no real transition. The grade shows the simulated grade. Yes, you can set up speed, cadence, grade data fields. Your position on the map also moves along the course. Using a course created from Connect or Komoot may work better if there is some sort of smoothing of the elevation data, as opposed to a recorded ride which may have more erratic data. Not sure about this though. My example was ridden using a iPhone 6 recorded Strava ride on an Edge 530 paired to a KICKR. 

  • I will receive by KICKR next month so I was not able to test it yet. Do we probably have to change the recording interval to 1 sec?

  • That's a really good insight.  With a short recording interval the absolute changes per data point will be much smaller.  Unfortunately I have a wealth of rides using smart recording so that's what's in my computer database for now.  This will be a really good question to experiment with.  I think I'll do my next few rides at 1 second recording to have the same rides in both formats and see if I can detect a difference when on the trainer.  

  • Have you tried 6.22?

    The Changelog mentions "Fixed issues with grade, power, and resistance controls for smart trainers"