Direto XR problems with ERG mode

[JohandeWit]

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.



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).

Hi guiperpt, i can understand you're happy I would like like this as well.

Hmm perhaps i should consider to follow that calibration procedure as well even though my calibration number is only 2 apart from the sticker.
But I will wait a bit until Elite gives some feedback to my ticket.

[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.



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).

Hi guiperpt, i can understand you're happy I would like like this as well.

Hmm perhaps i should consider to follow that calibration procedure as well even though my calibration number is only 2 apart from the sticker.
But I will wait a bit until Elite gives some feedback to my ticket.

Keep us informed of what Elite says. Good luck with it!

[enesto]

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

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).

Hi Guipert,
nice results.
Far better than mine.

Can you share the calibration procedure (the manual one you had to achieve the same number of the sticker on the trainer) for the DIreto XR?
I cannot find the specific steps for the Direto XR?
I found something on youtube, but for previous models and not for the Direto XR, and it seems to me that the Direto XR has different screws to tight/losen...

Thanks a lot.
Ernesto

[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

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).

Hi Guipert,
nice results.
Far better than mine.

Can you share the calibration procedure (the manual one you had to achieve the same number of the sticker on the trainer) for the DIreto XR?
I cannot find the specific steps for the Direto XR?
I found something on youtube, but for previous models and not for the Direto XR, and it seems to me that the Direto XR has different screws to tight/losen...

Thanks a lot.
Ernesto

Here it goes, https://elitesrl.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/a ... ack-Pulley, second video.

Interesting note from Elite in the bottom of the article

if your calibration number coincides with the OFFSET code (± 1),
you can use your DIRETO

Be careful, I guess there is some risk on the procedure, for me it was pretty straight forward, but it's at your own risk.

[thomas.luckner]

if your calibration number coincides with the OFFSET code (± 1),
you can use your DIRETO

My Direto has the same Problem - the calibration is with "6497" 3 digits from the offest "6500" that comes with the trainer.
But surely I'm not willing to adjust the belt.
If it doesn't work it goes back to the dealer.

I'm still waiting for a firmware update that corrects the problem

[daday]

Hi Guys,

anyone have the following problem?
Whenever i start a workout that depends on the trainer reacting to input that dictates the watt i should pedal - the resistance starts to ramp up way higher than it should be. I have this in Rouvy, Zwift and the Elite My E Training App. In My E-Training for example i set the resistance to 100watt - start pedalling and after a few seconds i have to push 300-400 watt to keep the trainer moving.

I tried reconnecting all bluetooth connections and restarted the trainer and my computer and smartphone that i use to manage the trainer several times... it does not change

Currently its unusable for me as i cannot use it as a smart trainer

[enesto]

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 )

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

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.

Hi JohandeWit,
I made a test to check if in POWER mode the direto performs better in Power mode than in ERG, not only in reactiveness, but also in stability.

I made a steady 200W for 3, 4 minutes, and I made some analysis respect to a 200W sets in a ERG workout structured as 100-150-100-200-250-200.
Numbers say that the result in power mode are better (I would say not perfect,but better).

Tested with smooth = 2, 34/21 chainrings, cadence on 85 rpm (using the internal cadence sensor)
In ERG mode I 've excluded the first 10 second after the change in power, to let the trainer adjust the power
In POWER mode I've excluded the first part and thelast one in order to select the "best performance" of my cadence.

These the main results:

steady 200W power mode:
Difference in Power (WATTS)
< 5 64%
between 5 and 10 26%
between 10 and 15 8%
>15 1%

Higher delta 18 AVG of deltas 4.8

200W ERG mode (first set):
Difference in Power (WATTS)
< 5 57%
between 5 and 10 26%
between 10 and 15 13%
>15 4%

Higher delta 24 AVG of deltas 5.8
200W ERG mode (second set):
< 5 44%
between 5 and 10 25%
between 10 and 15 17%
>15 14%

Higher delta 28AVG of deltas 8.2

In POWER mode 200W I got 90% of the values under 10 watts in terms of difference on the request (in absolute values)
In ERG mode 83% best case, 69% worst.
In both tests, about 98% of my cadence was between 82/87 I would say "damn" stable.

[mordorr]

Hi,
I've been using Direto XR for short time and mainly in ERG mode and I have to admit it is bit ...demanding in matter of patience

first of all i did upgrade to the latest FW (071) and now i see this could be wrong decision.

I don't know how it was working before but now is far from perfection.
I went thru this thread and almost everything is known, but let me share my feedback as i am using mainly Wahoo Elemnt Bolt as controller (of course i did some runs on Zwift but can't see much difference)

User story one:
I hit into "spin up" bug when resistance was growing up to maximum once connected to wahoo. I thought it was Wahoo problem but then figured out quick spinning up trainer avoid this problem

User story two:
last week I've planned warm-up for 5 mins at 150W, then 10mins at 280W and wanted to have 5mins segment of 320W as next interval.
everything was "not as bad" until 320W when trainer lost contact with the world. resistance stuck at about 160W and whatever i did was not increasing.

i break up training and did some investigations. last think I've tried was CALIBRATION in Elite app. after this step i could re-start training and finish it more-less OK but still far from perfection due to long "transition" time.

User story 3 with some pics:
I've started reading forum thread and found You guys having same issue. so I've done test similar to yours and put results into similar spreadsheet.
i did not realize that TrainingPeaks wrongly interprets ramp, so instead of ramp at the beginning of test i have 1 min@110W and 1 min @72W
i also by my mistake skipped transition from 250 to 150 and back to 250, but result is bad enough to share anyway.

2020-11-27_16-35-10.jpg (94.17 KiB) Viewed 9438 times

Here most annoying is delay in watts adjustment on resistance drop. it drops way below target and in fact never reach target.
i could live with it once on end of work small rest is not bad

2020-11-27_16-43-33.jpg (92.86 KiB) Viewed 9438 times

here, with smoothing set to 6 this delay hardly let trainer set resistance within 1 minute.
but my feeling was not bad in this setting at all. i felt continuous power without sudden steps. for longer intervals it seems to be OK.

I am not sure if I should bother Elite support with it - perhaps i will open ticket for this issue at least letting Elite know that not everything is OK.

[JohandeWit]

Hi,
I've been using Direto XR for short time and mainly in ERG mode and I have to admit it is bit ...demanding in matter of patience

first of all i did upgrade to the latest FW (071) and now i see this could be wrong decision.

I don't know how it was working before but now is far from perfection.
I went thru this thread and almost everything is known, but let me share my feedback as i am using mainly Wahoo Elemnt Bolt as controller (of course i did some runs on Zwift but can't see much difference)

User story one:
I hit into "spin up" bug when resistance was growing up to maximum once connected to wahoo. I thought it was Wahoo problem but then figured out quick spinning up trainer avoid this problem

User story two:
last week I've planned warm-up for 5 mins at 150W, then 10mins at 280W and wanted to have 5mins segment of 320W as next interval.
everything was "not as bad" until 320W when trainer lost contact with the world. resistance stuck at about 160W and whatever i did was not increasing.

i break up training and did some investigations. last think I've tried was CALIBRATION in Elite app. after this step i could re-start training and finish it more-less OK but still far from perfection due to long "transition" time.

User story 3 with some pics:
I've started reading forum thread and found You guys having same issue. so I've done test similar to yours and put results into similar spreadsheet.
i did not realize that TrainingPeaks wrongly interprets ramp, so instead of ramp at the beginning of test i have 1 min@110W and 1 min @72W
i also by my mistake skipped transition from 250 to 150 and back to 250, but result is bad enough to share anyway.

Here most annoying is delay in watts adjustment on resistance drop. it drops way below target and in fact never reach target.
i could live with it once on end of work small rest is not bad


here, with smoothing set to 6 this delay hardly let trainer set resistance within 1 minute.
but my feeling was not bad in this setting at all. i felt continuous power without sudden steps. for longer intervals it seems to be OK.

I am not sure if I should bother Elite support with it - perhaps i will open ticket for this issue at least letting Elite know that not everything is OK.

I would strongly encourage you to open a ticket. The more complaints the better! See my reply next, I will post what Elite tells me. It is far from satisfying, they do not really think we have a problem.

[JohandeWit]

So I got some feedback from Elite support after I uploaded the the .csv files Elite requested. In the mail I sent the text I also pointed them to this thread. Furthermore I suggested that perhaps the previous firmware had better response to power steps, and I asked how to downgrade.
The answer I got was the file to downgrade and instructions. No answer to the .csv file and my questions.
So I replied with the question if they agree that I have a problem, i.e. my trainer has serious lag. And whether they would react to the .csv files I sent them.
This is the answer I got:

God Morning

For having a more power stability stability the trainer of course need to be a bit slower in fact if the trainer is quicker the stability is impossible to obtain, so stability and reactivity need to be compromised

We think and all who has tested the firmware in beta phase that the compromised that we have obtained is the best possible
In fact the trainer reach the target power - 10/20W in about 2-3 seconds than some more seconds is needed to reach the last 10/20 W but considering that during the pedaling a difference of 10W we believe (and from this we are supported also from all the ones that have tested the firmware in beta phase) that this configuration is good

We remain at disposal
Regards

So...they think they gave us the best they can do with the latest firmware. That really sucks imho. I wish that it was "about 2-3" seconds, and "some more". In my case it can be about 30s.
I think they do not really pay any attention to our messages and complaints at all.

Sometimes next week I will downgrade to the older firmware (since I never used it) and want to test this.