Zwift power dropout over companion app?

I’m having problems sending power data to Zwift via the companion app, power intermittently goes to zero despite both devices being on same wifi with a reasonable signal.

Pretty annoying, especially in the middle of a race 😥

Has anybody else had similar issues?

Via the companion app? What set up do you run Zwift on op?

Direct to my phone (Galaxy S8) is fine for bluetooth or ant+, but it is hard to race with such a small screen and the phone can overheat after a while.

High end but old laptop does not have bluetooth 4.0, sometimes the bluetooth is relayed fine over the companion app on phone, sometimes it refuses to connect on the setup screen unless I restart the app a few times, sometimes it connects fine but then has intermittent dropouts while riding.

Now have a no-name £10 ant+2 dongle, sometimes it connects and works fine, sometimes it refuses to see HRM or power meter without restarting a few times. I have a spare wifi card with bluetooth but would need to hack the BIOS whitelist to get it to work.

Zwift is a pretty annoying app insofar that it has no computer hardware setup/config screen, and a crappy GUI – cannot change routes without closing the whole app. Maybe there are some log files somewhere?

The companion app connection to the game is very sensitive. I had no end of problems with that till we got a mesh network. I think something as simple as the phone bouncing between the 5g and 2.4g WiFi networks will drop the connection. I still get occasional issues when my fan is pointing in just the wrong place (interference). If I were you I’d preserve with ant+ direct to the laptop. Have you tried putting the dongle right by the trainer on a long usb lead?

There are logs files yes. Use zwiftalizer to inspect them.

I have Zwift running on a desktop PC connected to the trainer/hrm and cadence sensor via ANT. Has always worked flawlessly luckily,I have a long extension cable to have the dongle about 2 feet from the trainer.

The companion app runs on an Android tablet which must connect via bt I assume, as it doesn’t have ANT.

Definitely get the dongle as close to the turbo and your hr monitor as possible as it’s very common to have issues when the dongle is a bit of a distance away.
Always worth a reinstall of Zwift on the PC as well just in case. Ditto uninstalling/reinstalling dongle too.

Edit: What turbo do you have by the way?

Companion app connects To the game via WiFi.

Thanks I’ll track down the log files and try zwiftalizer
I’m using Favero Assioma pedals and rollers. The Ant+ appears to be more of a dongle-PC or dongle-pedal handshake problem rather than SnR. The companion app might be a different borderline latency problem or something.

Per nixie the Zwift companion connection is pants.

I’ve had to spilt the ssid for my 2.4 and 5ghz WiFi so I can force my phone to stay on the same as my pc, switching 2.4 to 5ghz or vice versa mid race (which your phone will seamlessly do to maintain signal strength) will kill the connection for the companion ap.

As for the ant+ I seem to have issues relating to which order I power up and launch etc. If I start zwift before powering up the turbo it does not play nicely, ditto if I’ve my hrm on before zwift finishes connecting to the turbo.

Frankly the software side of zwift is lousy.

Yeah I deliberately forced both devices onto the same router/frequency but power intermittently goes to zero, perhaps when they’re switching between different bandings.

Sorry doing this a bit all over the place, only just looked at the Zwift machine, from what I can work out from having a quick look at the logs.

Zwifaliser gives some top level information but there is a lot of other potentially useful stuff in the logfile.

Timeliness threshold for other riders data is 10 seconds – hence how some people found themselves riding next to people 7 seconds or so ahead/behind them.

On startup Zwift appears to go through a sequence of allocating ANT connections, moving the dongle between ports, or another app competing for the ANT ports is probably going to confuse it.

Zwift trys to establish connection to the phone app a 1 minute intervals – need some patience when doing a zwift companion sensor connection.

Appears that Zwift companion sensor data is cast over UDP, if your wi-fi drops any data packets then that power data goes byebye.