Yeh, that’s pretty much it. It replaces your front wheel and moves you up and down in response to encoded changes in gradient. It’s very smooth. What it doesn’t do is lower your rear though so it’s not a perfect sim of climbing but pretty darn close. The Kickr Bike does actually lower the back end a bit as the front end moves up which would really be ideal but I don’t have a Kickr Bike (until I win the grand prize this year, ).
It’s amazing to me just how much more engaging a ride can be with it. If you go to any of the other places like Zwift or RGT or Rouvy with real world and virtual climbs the engagement goes up 1000% percent because as the road kicks up so do you and when it goes down so do you. Like I said, I wouldn’t be without it now that I’ve got it
Like @Glen.Coutts said, it makes it so much more immersive. Try it on Norway and you”ll be desperate for the moment it levels out on that big climb (and the next time, you’ll be dreading the moment it kicks up)
Lots lots harder My power numbers went WAY down when I switched to wheel off smart trainer. The reconditioned KICKR units can also be had for a few hundred dollars cheaper (at least in pre-COVID days). The ERG mode is phenomenal to really test yourself and lets your focus way more on riding. It’s also way quieter, and pretty low faff compared to changing wheels to a trainer wheel for on-wheel trainers etc.
I don’t know - my KICKR now is pretty close to my crank based power meter, but i didn’t have a power meter back in the days of my Kurt Kinetic fluid trainer, so sadly can’t compare. I’m sure some of the other veterans might know.
I think the main issue w/ wheel on trainers is inconsistency - i.e. so much is determined by how hard the wheel is screwed on to the resistance flywheel, if your PSI is exactly the same, if the trainer is calibrated properly etc. etc.
Mounting my Kickr and bike on a home-made rocker plate to simulate motion, and provide a little more compliance in my saddle area. Its only side to side motion, but for me its so much better than my previous rigid set-up.
The two most important ones were already mentioned - CLIMB and HEADWIND. They’re both nearly perfect and a great addition, although there are two minor things with HEADWIND that I’d love as a change/upgrade, secretly hoping some of the Wahoo guys are listening .
The rear is height adjustable, while the front is not. It’s not a problem if you have a lot of space in front of your bike, but the closer you are, the more you need to lift the front up to direct airflow at you. So without a DIY redesign, you basically need to put something underneath the front to prop it up (old manuals in my case).
The fan speed remote control via Wahoo app (and HR/Speed BLE sensors) is great, but it would be nice to have an option for external 3rd party BLE control too. Ideally if there was a developer kit documentation for BLE Services and Characteristics, so we could develop our own. This could be an extra gadget (simple remote), or something that can be automated based on different metrics and data (power, temperature, humidity, …). People can make these tools quite easily these days, as long as they know how to use the BLE interface the way Wahoo app is using, which is not currently documented.
Apart from that, I can share two recent additions
The first one is the road bike dropper post.
Me and my wife are sharing an extra bike, that’s dedicated to a KICKR trainer and never taken outside. It is more or less a compromise sizing wise, but pretty close to ideal for both of us. The only significant metric that was variable was saddle height and setback, which in turn kept other values within ideal range. After some months with 4mm allen bit and torque spanner (and few bolt replacements ) I’ve finally found a compatible dropper seatpost. While for MTBs there’s of course amazing variety of choice these days, road frames are a bit limited due to the size of a seat tube (27.2mm on this TREK Domane). I’ve finally found the Brand-X Ascend II (ChainReactionCycles / Wiggle’s own brand, manufactured by TranzX) and it works quite well. Ignore the positioning of the remote lever - the only tube with usable diameter in the vicinity was the radiator pipe . Another MTB world difference - handlebars. Anyway - works a charm, all we do bike swapping is press the lever and set the seat height.
The second one is USB power source.
Cable management and power is always an issue, especially when you’re using more devices and/or doing longer rides. This one is the standard Anker USB Desktop Charger with various cables available, attached to the Wahoo Indoor Cycling Desk. Simple, but effective, always within reach.
Sonoff Mini R2 and water proof case for it. Total cost ~£8. Put it between wall socket and fan. Allows control of fan by 1) timer 2) phone 3) Apple Watch 4) button (with Zigbee bridge and button). The chip inside is common so you can easily flash it to prevent bricking and it has a LAN mode. You don’t even need the waterproof box if you’re sure it’ll stay dry. Any cheap project box would do. Just the mini would be ~£4.50 on AliExpress. Never used an R1. Can’t see much having changed.
These switches look great… could be used for so many applications… would be great if there was a way to read HR/Power dates from the SUF app and send on/off commands to the switch, and £8 headwind!
There is in Zwift I think. I also had this idea and thought I was being original but then found out it already existed on another platform. I haven’t looked in detail but I think that’s in that Zwift already have the data centrally and can just expose it there whereas Sufferfest would need to expose it in the iOS/android/PC/Windows App individually. I think you’d probably just need to run ‘home assistant’ in a virtual machine on your PC. There’s already a Zwift ‘integration’ created. Haven’t looked in detail at what it does as I don’t have Zwift. Definitely seen in in the store though. Could simultaneously run Zwift and Sufferfest I suppose. I think people do that anyway. Think you need two ANT+ dongles.
Probably not hard to get the data from an ANT+ USB stick but I was hoping someone else had done the hard work but there’s no integration in Home Assistant already. I searched.
The free Open source software ‘Golden Cheetah’ gets it already and is on github. I was going to look at the code and see how complicated it is to get but realistically I’ll never bother. I’ve installed a small battery powered touch button with a sticky pad on my treadmill (button is Sonoff and needs a Sonoff Zigbee bridge. About £15 but I wanted Zigbee anyway and there’s a cheaper Zigbee USB stick anyway. That way it’d be about £8 but you’d need a computer to plug it into and go through the faff of setting up a ‘Home Assistant’ in a virtual machine).1 click is treadmill fans. 2 clicks are cycling fans. Long click is fans off. I can alternatively use my watch or start a timer before hand. I don’t have a table for my phone. I suspect a Home Assistant integration would be best as then you could take into account Pain Cave temperature and start the fans earlier on a hot day. I should do that. Most of the code already exists. Look up ‘sonoffLAN’ on GitHub. I wonder if Golden cheetah has an external API already… that would be easy. It’s free and runs on PX/Mac and Linux.
That works well if you have a basic ON/OFF fan and I’m using these (and similar) for other devices. But what I’m talking about is Wahoo HEADWIND. It is fairly powerful and so to control the air it has 4 different fan speed settings. While the option to control the fan speed by your Heart Rate or Speed BLE sensors is already available and works great, in practice it’s more like a gimmick as both are not precisely tied to the actual cooling needs. There are rest/cold days when speed setting nr 2 makes me too cold and intense/hot days when speed setting nr 4 is just about right. Also, the demand changes - in the warmup I want it lower, during the race/workout I want it at max.
So basically my problem is not ON/OFF before/after ride, but more like ON-1-2-3-4-OFF that changes during the ride
You can do all that in Wahoo app, which is OK. In practice I would rather have an option to either build my own sensors/automations to control the fan speed (think advanced power/temperature/humidity logic, or even something predictive based on workout profile), or make a remote/panel with big +/- or 1-4 buttons so I can control the fan remotely and easily, rather than picking up the phone, opening app, waiting for device to find sensors and then change setting. That’s a bit of a pain during efforts. Yes, I could probably make a “fake” HR sensor sending arbitrary HR values based on my actual needs, pair it with HEADWIND and control it that way, but it seems unnecessary when all I need technically is to set a value of one BLE characteristic.
).
My power numbers went WAY down when I switched to wheel off smart trainer. The reconditioned KICKR units can also be had for a few hundred dollars cheaper (at least in pre-COVID days). The ERG mode is phenomenal to really test yourself and lets your focus way more on riding. It’s also way quieter, and pretty low faff compared to changing wheels to a trainer wheel for on-wheel trainers etc.
.
) I’ve finally found a compatible dropper seatpost. While for MTBs there’s of course amazing variety of choice these days, road frames are a bit limited due to the size of a seat tube (27.2mm on this TREK Domane). I’ve finally found the Brand-X Ascend II (ChainReactionCycles / Wiggle’s own brand, manufactured by TranzX) and it works quite well. Ignore the positioning of the remote lever - the only tube with usable diameter in the vicinity was the radiator pipe 
