I’ve recently relocated my setup and struggled with the Kickr Climb: it didn’t respond to the gradients on screen, it didn’t even respond to the manual controls… Until I turned the fan off… With the fan off, the Climb operates just fine. With the fan on, it doesn’t.
Not asking for a solution, that’s simple: don’t use the cheap fan.
But I’d like to know how though? My knowledge of electrics is pretty basic, but still would like to understand how this is possible. Any technicians in the room that can explain this?
---- UPDATE ----
Well after I’d ran it without the fan, trouble kept coming back. To the point that the machine was pretty unresponsive, no matter what. I contacted the minions and after a few troubleshoot events, they replaced the Climb. Seems that it wasn’t the fan to begin with.
The motor in your fan will likely be of the brushed DC type, there will be sparks between the brushes and the commutator as it spins, sparks have a very wide bandwidth radio frequency (RF) emission.
Usually this type of motor is fitted with capacitors across the motor terminals to reduce arcing and RF noise and fitted with metal shielding to contain the RF emission,
Thanks for posting this about fan RF noise. I had completely failed to consider the fan while trying to track down very sporadic single second long dropouts from my KICKR Bike that I only see over ANT+ on any of my cycle computers, never over BT, despite the fact that the ANT+ device is right next to the bike and the BT antenna for the computer is 6 feet away with minor obstructions. I have ruled out the router in the room, the computer, monitors and printer, but I didn’t consider the fan which is extremely close to the bike. Not enough dropouts to show up on any summary statistic, and easy to detect and correct, so I stopped looking for the cause. Since it’s winter, I will try opening the windows to cool the room before the ride instead of using the fan, even though that requires planning and will make the cat unhappy.
You’re still going to need your fan to keep cool. My pain cave is a detached, uninsulated double garage with a full width up and over door. Even when it was -10c last winter I still needed the fan on with the door fully open.
You might want to try a tin foil hat on your fan motor housing to try and contain the RF noise, making sure not to block any ventilation holes.
Yeah, my cheap fans all have 3 speed shaded pole AC motors, which produce no RFI. Speed is chosen by selecting different windings. It’s possible some types of fans with active speed controllers would generate RFI.
