eagletree

I have my Elemnt Roam and Hammer playing nicely with one exception (which unfortunately, is what I wanted it for), it will not work correctly in simulating a route. It provides no elevation based resistance while "playing back" a route I've downloaded. It shows the elevation and progress correctly, but the only way I can get it to give me resistance while the route is playing, is flip over another mode and set either Resistance up or Wattage up. Then I can ride my route and get a great workout, but the resistance of course has no relationship to the elevation. Another oddity, is if I do start a route, and play with the resistance or wattage, the Roam show absurd MPH. For example, in high gear, I can ride the route and easily hit 220+ Miles per hour. Interestingly, when the history file uploads to strava, the silly miles per hour figures have vanished, and something more realistic is shown as max and avg, plus the actual miles of the route have not relationship to this strange MPH figure.

I've watched the Elemnt Videos and looked at the Hammer help pages, both seem straightforward (of course rather sparse), yet using what they say just doesn't work.

I've attempted to do it as Wahoo recommends in their video, pressing the start to initiate the ride, then moving to the Route mode and selecting my route. As mentioned, this is where the only resistance it provides is if I select it from the other modes. I've tried setting the other modes completely off, and that's where I get no resistance. It makes it quite easy to KOM my segments, but of course that is not the idea ;-). When I do that, it stops doing the silly mile per hour figures at least.

The setups I've tried is connect to only the "Hammer nnnnn" device or to the FE-C device, plus I've also had it connected with both. All have the same results and in fact, it doesn't list those names as the sensor, just a generic sort of trainer name. In all cases, my Powertap P2s are connected too, but the Roam seems to ignore them when the Hammer is feeding data (I think... it's hard to tell who is providing cadence and power during the Indoor session).

I've not calibrated it, because I simply can't get the thing up to the 18-22 MPH, the calibration requires. Standing up and pedal as hard as I can (sprinting), I can only get it up to 15 MPH. That is using the Saris App on the phone that is made to calibrate it.

I'm really hoping I'm doing something very stupid, because sending something back right now would be a little of a mess with all the current events.

Does anybody have this combo (or close anyway, e.g., Bolt and Hammer) and does anything stick out that I'm doing incorrectly. The place I bought both of these from is Clever and they are pretty good, but they don't seem to know much about the Hammer.

BTW, a couple of extra data points... Planned Workouts do work correctly and vary the resistance according to the Roam's built in Planned workouts. (edit: No, they don't, I mistakenly had left on one of the resistance methods that work, Planned Workouts don't work either) The second is that the route I am testing with has a maximum elevation of 3%, very flat route, but doesn't feel at all flat riding the real road. I wondered if it's so far out on calibration, that it just doesn't bother to do anything with the gentle uphills of this ride.

eagletree

I'm going to respond to my own thread since I now have an answer, and hopefully, this will get spidered and save someone else weeks of trying to get something to work that does not.

1. Wahoo says the Elemnt Roam will not drive a different brand of trainer for Route Simulation, they recommend using a third party application.
2. Saris agrees that it is the fault of the Elemnt Roam.

Bottom line is probably that I should have researched more carefully when I purchased my head unit. It stands to reason that if a company makes both a head unit and a trainer, they would do something to make sure people bought their trainer. In this case the "standard" is apparently not supported to the extent it should be. What I found was that both Route Simulation and Planned Workouts mode fails miserably when driving a non-Wahoo trainer from the Roam.

Be cautious about this when buying a head unit. The retailer I purchased from told me that the Hammer would work with the Roam and everyone assumes that with FE-C all is well, but it isn't. Some things work and some things don't. Unfortunately, the only thing I wanted the trainer for does not work. A Garmin 1030 apparently supports everything correctly and that is what I should have purchased.

I once again need to ask of the forum (already had a thread on this). Is there an application that will drive Route Simulation (taking an existing route, and riding it with elevation generating the resistance) from my phone, that doesn't have a monthly fee. Saris recommends Rouvy but I was hoping for a non-subscription program that can just read a route and generate the resistance. So simple I'm surprised someone doesn't write an open source one.

I did ask if Wahoo plans to provide firmware upgrades that will fix this, since it's clearly about half implemented, it follows the route, but just doesn't generate resistance. Plus has strange visual bugs when you do. I'll post back to this if they respond so others don't have to go through the same process I did. I've wrecked a lot of evening rides wasting my time trying to make these devices play together.

eagletree

I'll add to this monologue since someone out there in the world may run into the same problem. The problems I have had with what my specific application is, would occur for anyone trying to use a Wahoo head unit with anything other than a Wahoo trainer to attempt to do what I am doing.

Hammer and Rouvy work great and I fully anticipate when I get a Garmin head unit, it will also work great. I would bet Zwift would be fine with it too but I don't want the online monthly subscriptions so neither Rouvy nor Zwift meet my application. With the Roam shut off, both Saris and Rouvy can calibrate it and Rouvy can control it. I have no idea what interaction the Roam had in that but it appears it attempts to do a job it's creators say it will not do, and do it incorrectly. The Wahoo product has been the source of many days frustration. I hope the 1030 Garmin will prove to be the solution it appears it is. Till then, I guess I have to subscribe to Rouvy.

Aside from this, for my preferences, it turns out that other nagging irritants which I've had with the Wahoo, should also be fixed by jumping ship to the Garmin (Wahoo can't control lighting profiles for Varia and Bontrager, extremely hard to use button system, crude and hard to read display without reading glasses in some light).

unterhausen

I didn't know a gps unit could do this. Do garmin gps units have a mode where it drives a trainer?

eagletree

Both implement a standard called FE-C which allows this, but Wahoo only supports the Wahoo trainers. Certain Elemnt trainer functions work on other companies trainers, the simple ones like Resistance and Wattage, but Routes and Workouts do not work. Normally, if implemented correctly, you upload routes into the head unit and can then ride your normal routes you have ridden in the real world. This may change in the future with an update should they decide to, but there is no plan at present that I could tell (and I'm not really into waiting now having seen the comparison in technology between the Roam and 1030). Rouvy allows this functionality from the phone, but requires you be connected to the net even though there is no need to be. Additionally, even when riding the route via Rouvy, the Elemnt gets in the way and messes up the ride if I don't set off it's tracking of the ride.

People normally don't seem to know much about this or use the head unit route feature, I'm guessing because most people wouldn't want to ride their normal routes when inside or their inside riding is a social media thing. Normal routes are all I want to do, no desire to look a screen and ride in France or Germany or use the net and ride with friends, my interest is practicing on what I ride in the real world and developing fitness in a predictable environment.

I have to stop short of vouching for the fact that the Garmin 1030 will work because to test it, I have to buy one. I realized after comparing them, the 1030 appears to be next gen compared to the Roam but there is no guarantee it actually works for all the things it advertises until I get it in my hands. Saris (maker of the Hammer I have) recommended the 1030 for this application which is promising since they don't sell head units and would have no reason to trick me.

unterhausen

Okay, thanks. It does appear that some garmins will do this. This might be useful. Although my power meter is sitting in the basement, unused.

surak

I believe you can reride routes with Golden Cheetah controlling your FE+C trainer. Golden Cheetah is free, open source, and very powerful, but has a complicated UI that requires a bit of Internet searching for instructions.

Edit: found instructions on how to do this in the GC users group.