I want to maintain some fitness over the winter through using a turbo trainer with either trainer road or zwift. I have a stages power meter on my road bike and have an ipad.

I’m thinking of buying a new electronic turbo trainer but am unsure how the trainer and power meter will connect to the ipad and either zwift ( when its released on ipad) or trainer road.

Anyone have this setup and has any advice – dont want to spend more than £300 on a turbo trainer. I also assume i will need some dongle to attach to the ipad? Which trainer would you advise?

Will all work fine over BLE (Bluetooth) on the iPad without a dongle.

The app (trainer road or Zwift will read the power from the power meter and use it to control the turbo.)

As for trubo. If you want the resistance controlled from the app then you need a proper “smart” one. Best of the bunch just a shade over budget is probably a Tacx Vortex Smart (can be had for around 310.)

You could get a non-smart turbo but you don’t get quite the same experience with Zwift. The app just tells you what power to ride at but can’t control the turbo.

Tacx Vortex Smart and ignore your power meter would be my suggestion – the Vortex will work out your power accurately enough for Zwift etc and connect via Bluetooth to the iPad.

Thanks.

Good to know the stages and the turbo will connect through the ipad bluetooth, so i dont need a dongle for the ipad.

I’d not ignore the stages power. You can tell TrainerRoad to use the power meter power in preference to that reported by the turbo. Always a good idea if you have one. Turbo reported power is a bit rubbish in comparison. And you’ll have more consistency with outdoor efforts.

Might depend on how old the ipad is? Older versions probably won’t support BLE.

If it’s new enough to run Zwift it should be OK.

I use a kickr, iPad with trainer road. Works via Bluetooth. If I use the bike with stages you have the choice of which one to connect to. I also had to swap from the garmin cadence and hrm as they are only ant. Wahoo rpm and tickr work great with the iPad. Really good setup takes seconds to get up and running which is important for pre work morning sessions

Good point made by fifeandy. Have a look at the wifi row here for your iPad…

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPad#IPad_series

You need Bluetooth 4.0.

Vortex Smart used to be a bit cheaper, but I guess has proved popular, and now it’s turbo-buying season. Max bargain at the moment seems to be the Flow Smart, only sold by Halfords and Decathlon. Seems to be a Vortex but with slightly lower max resistance. £199 at the mo in Halfords:

http://www.halfords.com/cycling/turbo-trainers/trainers/tacx-flow-t2240-smart-turbo-trainer

My Vortex has its limitations, but overall is pretty good. I find using TrainerRoad with it and a power meter good, but not perfect – the software cocks up pretty regularly. I *think* but am not sure, that the TR powermatch do offer attempts to regularly send recalibration signals to the turbo. These frequently don’t get through, and it all goes tits up. I’ve no idea why they don’t just leave the turbo’s internal calibration well alone and just do that all on the TR side, sending resistance requests in pseudowatts instead of watts.

I’ve had a few issues with my Vortex when using in combination with a power meter (C1 Chainrings).

I find it all works happily if I ignore the power meter. Software happily reads/sends to/from the trainer.

There’s a discrepancy between the meter and trainer, and thus I wanted to try reading from the power meter.
When I tried reading from the power meter and hoping that it would simply increase / decrease the resistance on the trainer it all went a bit odd. The resistance started making large step changes and the ‘ride’ was all but impossible.

So I’m back to reading from the trainer and ignoring the power meter while on the turbo. And that works pretty well for me.

TACX voretex here, best investment made. Have permeant setup. trainer road Zwift and sufferfest

I’m thinking of buying a new electronic turbo trainer but am unsure how the trainer and power meter will connect to the ipad and either zwift ( when its released on ipad) or trainer road.

Double check and see whether or not your iPad is new enough to use native Bluetooth by following the link below: Minimum System Requirements

Depending on which smart trainer you’re looking at you may be able to have full resistance control with the iPad. Other trainers, however, will need to be connected over ANT+ to be electronically controlled. You can learn more about ANT+ connectivity here: ANT+

If you run into anymore questions or concerns, shoot an email over to support@trainerroad.com. They’ll be happy to help. 🙂

Community Manager at TrainerRoad — Cycling’s Most Effective Training System

Are you a closet Zwifter Mrblobby? Rachel Elliot is doing really well in the Zwift academy! I think she’s just been given a free Kickr Snap and power meter for getting into the last ten hasn’t she?

I’ve still not tried Zwift. I’ll give it a go sometime. Don’t have a smart turbo yet (though very happy with the LeMond) so can’t really see the point. If I take the plunge I’ll probably go for the Neo, but that’s a fair wodge of cash. See how bored I get over winter 🙂

Rachael is doing superbly this season. One of the fastest ladies in the country. She had, by her standards, a disappointing national 10, but other than that she’s been incredibly quick setting course records all over the place. And yes, she has made it into the last 10 in the Zwift Academy. She’s been using a Vortex and following plans on Zwift. Not sure if she has the Snap yet.

Trainer road won’t control the resistance on a Vortex Smart,at least with an iPad.
Their support desk told me they’re waiting for info from Tacx to be able to make it work. When I asked Tacx about it, they were no help at all.
Doesn’t really detract from the experience, but can sometimes be difficult to maintain the combo of cadence and power you’re after (depending on your gear spread)

As I understand it, Tacx trainers will do ANT+ FE-C just fine, but the bluetooth protocol is proprietary. So TrainerRoad certainly can control the Vortex Smart, but probably only over ANT+. I don’t know whether an ANT+ doofer for an iPad would work. I use a PC.

Zwift is in beta for ipad and won’t be publicly available until ‘the winter’. You need a newer ipad too…

I’ve got a similar set up
– stages power meter
– Tacx flow smart (bought from Halfords significantly cheaper than £199 earlier this year thru combo of their special weekend 20% off then BC 10%)
– Bontrager duo trap (cadence and speed widget built into frame)
– iPad Air
– running trainer road

Did an intervals session at lunchtime today and it all worked perfectly. Only I don’t currently have metrics on, which I do on the road through garmin, is heart rate as I’ve not invested in a Bluetooth HRM.

All connects to the iPad through Bluetooth with no issues.

Tacx are launching a new direct drive Flux smart trainer. It won’t have all the features of the Neo, but will be a fair bit cheaper (well outside your £300 budget, however)
http://www.dcrainmaker.com/2016/08/tacx-flux-smart-trainer.html

I’ve used Zwift a little bit this year and I’m planning to use it a lot more this winter. It’s definitely a big improvement over the Tacx training software I previously used, and doing a structured workout over a virtual course (instead of abstract intervals) is better for motivation.

It’s worth getting a permanent setup in the garage or a spare room if you can, so you don’t have to mess around plugging things together when you want to train. A big fan is also essential.