I’ve just upgraded from Vivoactive 4 to the Forerunner 265 and just done my first Spin class with it, I was very happy it picked up not only the cadence/speed (which my Vivoactive also did) but also power.
I couldn’t see a how to for the TechnoGym Spin bike so I thought I’d share here.
My leisure centre uses the bikes with a basic screen, these broadcast ANT+ signals for both speed/cadence and power, they can also listen to the heart rate from your watch over BLE/ANT+
Now if you centre has the bikes connected and you can see a little WiFi symbol you can pair the phone to the bike using the MyWellness app, then to get the bike to listen to your watch enable broadcast during activity and start an indoor cycle (this saves power over broadcasting always) when you start pedalling press the heart symbol on the spin bike, press once for BLE and twice for ANT+ (I find ANT+ works best) keep the watch close to the screen until it displays your ANT+ ID. The bike auto connects to the drive with the strongest signal.
Now if you want the data to go from the bike to your watch you will need the ANT+ ID of the bike, I couldn’t find this anywhere on the bike and not on a menu, so I did the geeky thing and one day after class I stayed behind, the centre numbers the bikes so that helped. I turned the pedal of each bike in turn and got my watch to scan for sensors when it appeared I wrote it down in a table on my phone and now I have a list of all the bike numbers and IDs.
In the indoor bike settings or sensor settings scan for devices there will be two for each bike with the same ID one is cadence/speed the other is power, connect these two and your ready to go. As a tip after I’ve added the sensor I usually turn it off this stops it automatically connecting when going to the next class and you end up with a different bike.
I notice the forerunner lets you name the sensors this might also be useful as you can name them the bikes number to save looking it up.
Oh one other thing, sometimes I pedal backwards to use different muscles if you also do this you will notice that the power meter on the bike goes crazy for a while you might even get the x10 label come up because your power is over 1000, satisfying as it is the Garmin will also pick up this skewed data, but otherwise I’ve found it accurate. If your cadence drops below 30-35 for two long the bike will go to sleep (usually it flashes first unless your bike has a low battery) it’s really annoying if your on a really high resistance if it happens the sensors will reconnect but you will have to press the heart button to connect heart rate again.
Hope this is helpful :-)
