shovelhd

I started racing in 1981 and the fields were pretty full then. 1984 was a catalyst but the interest was there previously. At least on the wattage deprived East Coast.

Ygduf

Something must have changed because you all have crazy watts now!

Blackdays

Anyone have data drop out issues with Stages?

On my second unit now via a warranty with the new gen Stages, connected to an edge 500. Data (cadence/power) drops out constantly on the warranty unit.

However, the garmin is flawless with my Quarq so I know the head unit isn't the issue.

May just have to go Pioneer.

spectastic

my stages loses power. It also saps power on idle, so I have to take the battery out every time. They sent me a warranty arm, which is the 9000 because they ran out of 7900, but it was well used, so I'm not too crazy about that.

Blackdays

Pioneer it is!

Wylde06

It appears that quarq updated the Rikens to show power balance. It isn't true left/right like a set of pedals...but im going to update mine tonight. Will be interesting to see what it shows with the history ive had with my right leg/hip issues

TheKillerPenguin

Do y'all with L/R power balance find it useful info to have? I think it'd be cool data to have but obvi powertap doesn't support that since it's hub based.

topflightpro

For the most part, no, I don't find it useful. That said, I am told it can be useful if you really want to get into the weeds of your performance and power output. Someone explained the value of it to me awhile ago, but it was so technical and got into such minutia, I sort of zoned out of the discussion. So, I really can't expand on that at all.

grolby

My understanding is no one has yet found a use case for power balance outside of special cases, e.g. injury rehabilitation and other situations where extreme imbalances may need correcting. Which isn't to dismiss it, it's good there's a tool for those cases. But for normal training, it doesn't seem useful. Pretty much everyone has a slight imbalance between legs, it's not something that needs "correcting."

queerpunk

yes. also with an edge 500. it was very confusing: stages transmitted just fine to my computer with an Ant+ dongle; Edge 500 received data from other PMs just fine. It seemed to be that combination of those garmin and stages units. frustrating.

spdntrxi

I wanted to know l/r power because I had major knee surgery .. Now that my surgically repaired knee seems slightly stronger then my other... I don't care much

Blackdays

Did you try it with a different head unit?

Not to say I would entertain the thought of parting with my beloved 500, but...

grolby

On data drops with Stages: this appears to have been issue with lots of units. Sometimes it's a battery contact issue (basically the first-gen battery door design was all sorts of crap). Bending the battery contact up can sometimes solve it. that worked for me.

Another thing to be aware of: if you are experiencing data dropouts mostly indoors, wi-fi interference is a possible culprit. The signal bands for wi-fi and ANT+ overlap. The solution, in my case, was to go into my router settings and set the channel to as far away from the ANT+ frequency range as possible. Basically you have a range of wi-fi channels from 1-11 or so, and one end is pretty safe from interference - I think the high end, but I'm not 100% I remember since I did this over a year ago now. The default for routers is generally to pick a channel automatically, and if it happens to pick a channel near the ANT+ frequency, it's going to cause problems. But you can lock it on one channel.

TheKillerPenguin

So you're saying your wifi goes to 11?

wens

Where did you see this? I'm looking at the firmware release notes and it looks like the last version was released in June...

Wylde06

Power balance now enabled for Quarq Rikens: Triathlon Forum: Slowtwitch Forums

I guess its not so much an update the power meter itself but an update to Qalvin to be able to enable power balance

Harlan

Returned 4 arms to Stages (two sets twice) for the excessive drain issue. Last time we got the new 9000 arms and sold 'em. Not a fan. I want a Pioneer but can't stomach 1: $1500 for it and 2: having it on my rain bike (which I train solely on, rough life). Maybe a used powertap is in the cards. I take it out in salt and all sorts of crap. Wrecked a chain in 1500 miles cleaning it after every nasty ride.

spectastic

what was wrong with the 9000 arms? and I think the ultra version of pioneer is more like $6-700, right?

Harlan

Nothing wrong, they were BNIB when I sold them. After two sets of failures I was all set.

I seem to recall the left only arm is something like that. Not sure how good that model is.

spectastic

wait, your warranty was new 9000 arms? did they upgrade you from 7900 to 9000 through warranty, or were you using 9000 this whole time? I just want to know whether the problems on 7900 have been addressed with their gen2

Harlan

Purchased 7900, second set was 7900. Third was 9k with new pod, was sick of it at that point. They claim to have addressed the issues with the new generation. Had an opportunity to break even on the deal so we did.

spectastic

so you never rode on the 9000?

Harlan

Sorry to drag this out. Never rode the 9000 arms as they were BNIB when I sold them.

Damien09

i have the garmin 520 and also experience very short drop outs of pwr and cad for 1-3secs ,but not alot of them. i was thinking maybe the out front mount adds to the weak ant+ signal? this is on one of the newer gen 2 arms. i may have to try a on the stem mount.

Blackdays

I can confirm they haven't addressed the issue.

I'm on my second 9000 second gen arm and it's already crapped out on me after 2 days.