grolby

I use 10" average almost exclusively. More out of laziness than a belief that 3" is inappropriate; I don't want to display 3" and 10" simultaneously, and I can't be bothered to switch back and forth between them. Just using instantaneous power is worse than useless, though.

tetonrider

3" is pretty much as close to instantaneous as is practical, IMO.

mike868y

new garmin 520 vo2 high score: 70

revchuck 

Mine has me at 48, and I'm friggin' ancient.

dz_nuzz

Haha, yeah it seems to enjoy pegging those numbers sort of high, I consistently see it telling me 67.

mike868y

wait so does this mean i'm better than you? when do i get my upgrade?

dz_nuzz

Just submit your strava files to JD, I am sure he will give it to you.

spectastic

for those of you with stages where the power drops out... is it basically the power going to zero, and sometimes going to dashed lines, before coming back again? how long does it usually happen for?

jsk

I've started getting this several times a ride with my Powertap wheels (both on the road and TT bike). I've been using a Garmin Edge 100 with this meters for over a year with no problems, this just started happening with one of the recent firmware updates and I'm pretty sure Garmin screwed up something in the ANT+ code that's causing it.

spectastic

I don't recall any firmware updates with my garmin 500 in recent history. This is a warranty unit they sent me, and it happened out of the box

jdms mvp

in my experience it was one of two thing, but might as well check

Ant+ runs into issues while next to routers as i believe* the ant+ frequency is close to that of routers
Battery door loose, do you have the updated battery door? if not , stages will send u a new one for free as the battery is loose and power drops

ntnyln

Ant+ struggles with the 2.4 ghz frequency. I used to get a ton of drop outs with my Quarqs when indoors (3 of them with multiple Garmins) until I moved everything in my apt to 5 ghz. I still get occasional drop outs because I can't make my neighbors switch, but they are few and far between now.

dz_nuzz

Same.

So to answer @spectastic . When you see the power go to Zero and then dashed lines that means the unit has stopped transmitting. What that happened with my Stages it sometimes came back 20-30 seconds later, and sometimes I needed to put a new battery in / pop the battery and reset the unit.

jdms mvp

I got a stages new battery door then to add a little assurance did a little rolled up tube of electrical tape on the battery for snugness, After that i didn't get any issues with stages again other than my issue with left side power only lol
@ntnyln

spectastic

???...

spectastic

ok, I'll try putting in some filling in between the battery door, to see if it helps.

jdms mvp

yea inferring that i had issue with having a left only power meter (preference). I used two head units and crank based + stages for about 1 months worth of riding and training at multiple zones and short / long durations. I think* it has to do with leg fatigue over time and also asymmetry that my z2 was nearly spot on giving me dandy TSS and other metrics, but as the zones would increase in intensity (for the reasons stated above) the percentage change was not linear. z3 delta was maybe 5-8% then at z4 the percent change was 10% , and then short HARD efforts, were no where near. Which threw off metrics but also i couldn't reliably train with. So lets say my 'number' was 300w for a 10minute effort. Going by my stage power meter seeing 300, my crank powermeter was reading 330w. That's a completely different effort..... but at 175w both read 175w.

shovelhd

I never did the two head unit thing but by RPE I see similar discrepancies between my SRM and Stages. I can't tell you where the inflection point is but the Stages does read low at higher output.

spectastic

i see. that makes sense. considering my right leg is dominant, my z4+ is probably also off, and max power too probably. I think pioneer has a chainring based meter for the same price range as the stages.

you don't see that as a problem? having power drop out on you for a period of time? i know it probably won't affect you too much with training or racing, but we're paying quite a bit of money, and I feel like we should be expecting the unit to function 100% of the time. I mean if I had a laptop that drops the wifi on occasion, it's not really going to affect my productivity, but it's enough of a nuisance to make me want to say something.

so this dropping out is expected for all powermeters, not just stages? that sucks. I noticed that when my power drops, my cadence doesn't. It just goes to zero. why is that? the power and accelerometer should both use the same signal, right? how come one looses connection while the other just reads 0? is 0 the default reading or something in the head unit when it looses connection? (actually I could check right now, but I just got back from a ride, and I'm too lazy to do it)

the battery door is the newer one, I think. They sent me 2, with a couple of extra o-rings, so the cap is solid.

Heathpack 

My data issues with Stages were far worse than just momentary dropouts of power (which is why there are no longer any Stages in my life), but I'm not exactly sure why power drop outs would fail to affect training. Power that drops to zero during a 1 min interval screws up the interval. For me, various Stages issues happened frequently enough that it absolutely affected my training. Thankfully by the time I started racing TTs, the Stages had been replaced. But if my gameplan for the day included being able to glance at my power during my TT, it would have certainly affected my racing to have my power data drop out.

Different people have different needs. But like you, I saw a pretty big problem with the Stages and the endless cycle of updating firmware, replacing battery doors, replacing batteries, sending units back for refurbishment, lather rinse repeat. But again, my problems were far worse- complete loss of power data not just drop outs.

Are problems expected with all power meters? No. It really depends on the strength of the ANT+ signal. I have no Stages now and no data problems now.

mike868y

speaking of stages, i hadn't received a response to my last email for a few days so i called them and i guess whoever was assigned to my ticket isn't in the office on thursday and friday. like...in that case shouldn't their tickets be forwarded to someone else? at this point i'm going to be w/o a powermeter for a week plus. just going to be happy if i get it rolling before ksr.

Duke of Kent

SRM battery is dead. I've heard that some wired SRM units can be upgraded to wireless transmission when you send them to their facility in Colorado Springs. Anyone had this done? If so, how much does it cost?

Mine is a Hollowgram SiSL 130mm BCD unit, if that makes any difference.

rankin116

Anyone using golden cheetah 3 something know how to get Normalized Power to show up? All I see is xPower, which isn't the same thing, but I read somewhere it's on the new GC.

rankin116

Never mind, I figured it out

mike868y

i know it's a different algorithm, but how different are the XP v. NP end result?