Direto XR problems with ERG mode

[JohandeWit]

So I did some more testing today. First Elite asked me to sent them a csv file of a workout in POWER mode (100,200,100,250,100,300,100 Watt). I noticed that the XR reacted rather quick to a (manual) power change, see the picture (I ended up having my wife operating the mouse so that I could focus on maintaining rpm as smooth as possible )

Test 90 POWER (Klein).JPG (39.74 KiB) Viewed 8807 times

So this triggered me to create a workout and repeat this in ERG:

Test 90 ERG (Klein).JPG (38.02 KiB) Viewed 8807 times

Unfortunately during analysis i found I made a mistake (2nd block is not 250w), but nevertheless I would argue that in ERG mode the performance IS different than in POWER mode. It seems the lag is far more noticeable.I see this is most of my test runs.
Both test were made with 34x20 gearing.

oh oh I can only add 3 pictures so I will continue in the next reply.

[JohandeWit]

SO to continue my previous reply

After this I made some more test with even lower gear as elite949 suggested.
I will spare you all the test results (about 2hrs of testing and comparing) but will show 2 more (final) results. I also played with power smoothing. And those 2 picture also show the effect of this parameter.
First is ERG interval, keep RPM of about 90 power smoothing set to 1, 34x28 gearing:

ERG 90rpm 34x28 sm1 (Klein).JPG (39.47 KiB) Viewed 8807 times

And after changing the power smoothing back to default (2). Increasing it even more will lead to more noticeable delay when stepping the power

ERG 90rpm 34x28 sm2 (Klein).JPG (40.49 KiB) Viewed 8807 times

You can clearly see the effect of the power smoothing, it dampens the variation in power read-out
This is actually the best I can get in terms of respons to a power change. And I would actually be quite satisfied with this performance. I mean look at the first 5 steps. Nice. Ok, the steps down are not good, but they do not really matter. I can live with that. But what happened in the last 2 power increments? Here we see a noticeable delay again. I saw this often. I can not help to think that the delta in power step might be of influence as well.

So what did I learn of all my testing:
1: The respons of the trainer can be good. Because when you set the load manually (POWER mode) the respons is very quick. I think the ERG adds another control loop in the trainer, and that seems not to be tuned perfectly.
2: For now, when entering (short) interval sessions, maintain a low gearing(34X28) and try to maintain a high rpm (~90).
3: Elite is not there yet! Performance must be improved. I hope they listen to us.

[guiperpt]

@JohandeWit,

Any chance can you export and share the workout and the sheet with the analysis, so we can try to repeat the same test across different devices? Pretty sure mine doesn't have the time to adapt issue, at least when going from a lower to an upper power, or at least I don't feel it, but happy to give it a try.

[urdel62]

Hello,
When we see the all the graphs, it seems pretty clear than all direto xr are not acting the same.
We can see that some of us needs somthing like 20 secs for power adjusting, whereas other like me it tooks 2-3 secs maximum as you can see on my graph :
My cadence is not that great but power is adjusting quite good, still with power variation quite important.
FYI I was using rouvy for this workout and didn't adjust any power smoothing value in the elite app.
And I was using 34/23 I believe.

[arno]

I filed a ticket with Elite about - I would say - the very same issue: big delays in target power adaptation. For me the issue started to become annoying when I upgraded the firmware from 067 to 073. I urged for a downgrade and finally they sent me instructions for a downgrade to 067. The 073 firmware according to Elite "smoothes" the power in Erg Mode, but I did not like this as well due to the mentioned issue. IMO this is still a bug.Long speech short: I finally downgraded to 067 again and this works a lot better for me in terms of target power reactivity during sharp jumps of target power as usually occurring in interval workouts.

Ok that is good to know. I never used 067 so don't know how that behaved.
I also opened a ticket and just got a request to sent them a csv file. I will do so tomorrow.

How did you downgrade? Did you receive special file from Elite? Or is this something everyone can do?

You need a download link from Elite, load the downloaded file locally to your smartphone (in my case an iPhone) via USB and then after Upgrado start you can select via a "disk-button" the option to downgrade/upgrade/apply settings from a local file. Key is: You would need to request 067 from Elite support.

[JohandeWit]

Hello,
When we see the all the graphs, it seems pretty clear than all direto xr are not acting the same.
We can see that some of us needs somthing like 20 secs for power adjusting, whereas other like me it tooks 2-3 secs maximum as you can see on my graph :
My cadence is not that great but power is adjusting quite good, still with power variation quite important.
FYI I was using rouvy for this workout and didn't adjust any power smoothing value in the elite app.
And I was using 34/23 I believe.

Wow this certainly is different! I wish mine behaved like this then i would not complain any more And indeed your cadence is not even that smooth nevertheless the respons is nice.

[JohandeWit]

@JohandeWit,

Any chance can you export and share the workout and the sheet with the analysis, so we can try to repeat the same test across different devices? Pretty sure mine doesn't have the time to adapt issue, at least when going from a lower to an upper power, or at least I don't feel it, but happy to give it a try.

Sure,
find attached a zip with the .zwo file you can place in Zwift so that you have a custom workout (I assume you know how to do this). I also added the xcl file i used. Please note the you will need to copy the csv data into the table. What I do: use Golden Cheetah to add my workout (activity .fit file) and export it to .csv from there. Copy that data into the table to make the graph.

[JohandeWit]

You need a download link from Elite, load the downloaded file locally to your smartphone (in my case an iPhone) via USB and then after Upgrado start you can select via a "disk-button" the option to downgrade/upgrade/apply settings from a local file. Key is: You would need to request 067 from Elite support.

Ok that's clear. I did ask them yesterday so let's see what their response is.

[BelgianFlandrien]

Hi,

I also contacted the Elite support, and they also told me to create a custom workout in the Elite app. I rode it twice, once with on my 50T chainring and once on my small 34T (middle of the cassette in the back). Both times the smoothing was set to the default value of 2.
The ride was clearly smoother when on the small ring. When on the 50T, the trainer was even unable to lower the power to 100watt (as you can see in the last block).
Elite told me the results were looking fine, but advised me to set the smoothing value to 6, and test again. I did not yet had the time to do this new test in the Elite app.

I did however test the smoothing 6 on a Zwift ride (see second screenshot). The power increase and decrease at the end and start was very good and felt smooth. Also the 190watt blocks felt smooth with little to no issues. (It had some trouble the first couple of seconds, but I think thats normal coming from a fast spinning flywheel with the high watt blocks).
The only problem I had was with the sprint blocks. In the 20sec sprint blocks I could feel the resistance kicking in as soon as the block started, but only not hard enough. I almost never hit the set 290watt in the 20sec block as you can see in the screenshot. The cadence is not in the spreadsheet, but I can assure you, I was focusing very hard on it being as smooth as possible (rpm +-90)

At last, a couple of weeks ago I contacted both DcRainmaker and GpLama. DcRainmaker would ask Elite about the special update they received (v068) while we received version67 out of the box, and GpLama was happy to help and perform some tests, but (understandably) only want to reply via a public forum. I linked him this thread, so maybe we can expect some reaction from one of these guys soon

[guiperpt]

Just performed JohandeWit workout in Zwift, and here are the results. The test was done with smoothing 2, and a 36x23 gear. Ignore the first seconds, it got stuck with the ERG bug, and had to put some watts to get it moving.

Screen Shot 2020-11-24 at 6.45.35 PM.png (156.32 KiB) Viewed 8690 times

Quite happy with the results to be honest. My Direto XR after manually adjust the belt, has the calibration only 1 value from the value written under (before it was like 4).