I’ve always done it through force of habit, not knowing if it was really necessary. Maybe more so in winter when you’re on the turbo inside one day, and out in the cold the next.

bob_summers – Member
Anyone using Stages with a Garmin 520?
My 500 used to offer to calibrate the Stages when it detected it before each ride. The 520 doesn’t and I have to delve into the menus (which I ultimately don’t). Does calibration even matter that much?

Got the same set up as yourself and somewhere in the settings (don’t have access to the Garmin because I’m at work atm, so don’t know where it is exactly) there is a feature that allows you to re-calibrate the stages straight after the start up.

there is a feature that allows you to re-calibrate the stages straight after the start up.

Ta for that Andy, didn’t know. As above, maybe not strictly necessary especially this time of year when temps are similar from one day to the next, but I’d rather it ask me anyway.

Hmm, I’m currently torn between P1 and Vector.

Not too worried about installation – don’t expect to swap them about much, and can just use a torque wrench to do it properly. I’d rather have proper Keo compatibility – have Keos on the other bike, and the Vectors are slightly cheaper, slightly lighter and have slightly better cornering clearance.

However some people do seem to have reliability issues with Vectors, and occasionally you hear of pods being damaged.

Anyone think of any other major factors…? Otherwise I’m inclined to just go for the Vectors.

Ta,
Gray

Hmm, I’m currently torn between P1 and Vector.

I’m selling my P1’s if you’re after a set 😀

Might be! Why are you selling, and for how much please? I’m Graham dotty Searle on Gmail if you’d rather email. Cheers.

Realistically it’s probably unlikely actually, thinking about it. With the current 17% discount on Wiggle you’d have to be letting them go pretty cheaply for me to prefer secondhand.

17% ends 3pm tomorrow. Buy buy buy!

I resisted the urge to say something along those lines! I see as of Tuesday they have 50 units ready to ship, although they’re now doing some testing on them

The weekly Limits update on their facebook page is one of the most addictive soap operas out there 😀

I see as of Tuesday they have 50 units ready to ship, although they’re now doing some testing on them

All I’ll say, it when I saw that news I made sure I went to church at the weekend

So Limits have bought 50 pairs of someone else’s meter pedals and gutted them then? 😀

I’m just wondering whether the magnet stuck to my chainstays for the Pioneer would affect the Stages should I refit it. Would the magnet affect any of the Stages internals to give spurious readings. Since the magnet is stuck on, I wouldn’t want to have to remove it if I swapped betweent the Pioneer and the Stages.

Just to add my experiences with the Stages to this. I’ve got an Ultegra version on the road bike, and XT M785 on the MTB.

The Ultegra was a Gen1 which worked really well, until it started eating batteries: warranty with a Gen2 which has been fine so far.

The XT has been replaced 3 times now, the last one it just died. A new battery didn’t do anything, no signal at all. This is now been returned.
I’m not sure it is really worth all this crap.

Battery died suddenly on my P1s the other day (was Zwifting, so I noticed immediately), no warnings, Garmin still reported “new”, and it appeared to be both pedals, which was odd. Fitted new ones and they were perfect again, but still not entirely sure it was the behaviour I expected.

Just a word of warning for anybody considering a purchase from P2M. My Rotor 3D+ based powermeter had a problem after less than 1 year of use (the spider came loose from the crank arm). P2M immediately decided, without any investigation, or examination of the item, that it must have been my fault, therefore they would not fix it under warranty. I will be sticking to brands I trust in future, and have just bough a Quarq Elsa, because SRAM understand Customer Service.

Joined the forum for a bit of venting?

Surprised to hear that though, P2M I think have a pretty good reputation for customer service.

the spider came loose from the crank arm

Is it not just attached via the spline and locknut?

They also don’t really have a choice, burden is on them to prove it was your fault. Not the other way around. Welcome.

Got a 4iiii Precision 2.0 a couple of weeks ago. All good so far however have only used it for 4 or 5 rides.

This looks interesting…

http://www.cyclingweekly.co.uk/news/product-news/zwatt-power-meter-267898

Another kickstarter effort. Bit of a different model with the 2 year monthly fee and “dada upload”.

2 months since the last mention of Limits power meters and from looking at their FB page it would appear that they still haven’t managed to ship any units yet having found an ‘accuracy issue’ with them.

I wonder if they’ll even manage to ship any before the end of the year?

Bought a second Power Pod. I’ve found them to be rather sensitive to the speed sensor (needs one to know speed for the calculation), but now on the TT bike all looks good with pretty believable power numbers. I suspect the baseline may be not perfect as it needs a CdA from my TT position, but relative effort is spot on. Will calibrate it against a Powertap soon disk wheel, then my Stages.

First one is going back for a repair because the USB port has failed.

Support from teh company is outstanding.

suspect the baseline may be not perfect as it needs a CdA from my TT position

Really is a shame it doesn’t have a function to work with a PM and wheel speed to calculate CdA. Must be possible. I wonder if you could use the data it generates alongside a direct force PM to do this? Suspect the data isn’t raw enough for this.

It does exactly that. The Powerpod will take a direct force measurement of power then using your speed, wind, incline and acceleration, calculate real-time CdA. It records all data internally for download at the end of a ride.

It will also transmit this value over the open ANT+ protocol. Garmin does not yet read this, so you can’t see it until you load the ride into their Isaac software (which is very impressive).

Cool, eh? That’s my next step 8)

Without the DFPM, it needs to know the CdA, and that is generic – so road hoods, road drops, TT. It can estimate it from a calibration ride too using a rather neat algorithm.

Hmm interesting. So you can pair the PowerPod and a DFPM to the Garmin at the same time?

I wonder if you could write an app for the Garmin that’d display it in real time? Also wonder how sensitive it is? (I seem to remember something about it only displaying to a couple of decimal places which wasn’t much use.)

Also, does it do BLE or just ANT+?

Yes you can pair the DFPM to the Garmin and the powerpod simultaneously. One could then pair the PP with an app if written. BLE is coming but it is ANT+ at the moment. I expect they are working on an app too as I type.

Will keep you posted.

This seems like a pretty good idea…

Quarq Prime bringing DZero power metering to stock bikes in 2017

Buy a bike then just swap out the spider if you want a PM.

Can anyone help me out with some questions about my new PowerPod? I’m now waiting for a speed and cadence sensor so I can start using it but in the meantime I have a couple of questions:

1 – I like to log all of my miles on Strava. If I start my Garmin recording at the beginning of a ride while the PP is calibrating (i.e. going from 0W – 100W) will this throw out my average power reading?

2 – I’d like to use it for my commute. I do this on a bike with a pannier, which will obviously be very unaero. Can the PP be set up accurately account for this? And as my commute is under 40 minutes, if I have to re-calibrate for the ride is the power data going to be meaningful if the first 7 minutes are the unit calibrating.

Thanks in advance

Sounds like a questio for TiRed!

Interestingly on question of measuring CdA, see this coming from Argon 18 at Eurobike…

http://velonews.competitor.com/2016/09/bikes-and-tech/the-biggest-breakthrough-technology-at-eurobike_419677

Real time CdA using a box of electronics and a pitot tube. If it’s sensitive enough to measure minor positional changes and works well, I’d be tempted. Given that a basic wind tunnel or velodrome session can be close to a grand (and much more depending on who and how long) it’ll be interesting to see how they price this.

bitasuite – the powerpod only needs to calibrate if you’ve disconnected it from the mount and not put it back in the same position. If you’re not uploading the data to Isaac and are just overlaying power onto strava then you don’t need to remove it other than to recharge it every 20hrs or so. Your best bet though is to simply never remove it, I just bought a 3m long usb lead and charged it and downloaded from it whilst it was in situ.

It can be set up to recognise 2 bikes but the change between them will need the recalibration process to take place so the Monday morning ride will be a bit off as would the Saturday ride on your other bike.

You could (probably) set the aero penalty of the panniers on the commuter by analysing back to back none pedalling runs over the same terrain with the difference in estimated cda being as a result of the panniers. You’d obviously need to add the weight of the pannier to the weight of the bike for the none panniered run though or else the weight difference will introduce another variable. There’s probably an easier way of doing it though so I’d ask John Hamman on the Powerpod forum.

http://ibikeforum.com/viewforum.php?f=93&sid=65a3d28db476527c609049be127693c0

As above really. No need to recalibrate every ride but swapping between bikes does need calibration. Panniers won’t make a huge difference to your cda or weight to be honest.

Mine seems more reliable with the old dual magnet sensors, but the speed only hub sensor does work too. It doesn’t recognise my Giant integrated speed cadence sensor.

I haven’t paired with a direct force power meter yet. When I do, i’ll take it on some closed circuit loops at hillingdon and compare with aerolab cda via cheung on Golden Cheetah.

I now view it as fit and forget, it gives reasonable numbers with the right distribution.

But I find swapping to be a bit of a pain. The recalibration after every ride is when it runs a self test for orientation, tilting the unit will give nonsense or superman power, depending on one’s perspective.

quite a few Limits on eBay – whats the deal with them now

http://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/Power-Meters/177842/i.html?_from=R40&_nkw=limits+power+meter

They don’t really work to any useable degree, there’s questions about their physical reliability and the vast majority of backers haven’t even received them yet so seeing them on eBay isn’t a great sign.

The DC Rainmaker blogs relating to them are a bit of an eye opener.

After months of faultless use of my Ultegra G2 stages suddenly getting power drops every 2-5 mins where it just zero’s out then spikes back up. Battery fine calibration fine firmware fine, thinking it could just be a battery door connection issue so got a new one on its way before the hassle of warranty. XTR G2 still working a treat FWIW.

Hope no one was waiting for a Brim PM…

Bad news from Brim Brothers – their shoe based power meter is dead

Some cheap stages in the Evans ex demo section – XTR being the cheapest at 279

Tempting for the price though would definitely check out the warranty situation!

warranty is 6mths limited – would an XTR arm fit on an XT spindle?!

Is there a link? I cant find them!

my stage meter has been great for multi pal times a week for over a year now.

Well it won’t be Brim Brothers wearable, that’s for certain.