Current Specialized app sometimes fails to record rider power on Vado SL 5.0

[jason.flood]

oh that’s interesting. Have you only noticed the data missing post ride? If so perhaps the next thing is to stick with your current setup and make sure you are monitoring both rider power and cadence on both a TCU display and the Specialized App to see if they metrics ever go blank on one or both devices.

If both devices loose the live data then perhaps a sensor or wiring or TCU intermittent fault. 1 in 10 though seems quite rare for a hardware issue unless external factors like temp humidity vibration are varying wildly

If only the App live rider power & cadence data are lost then it begs the question - are multiple Bluetooth channels used to send the data from TCU to App?

If yes, perhaps limited Bluetooth comms failure. If no, perhaps an App bug.

does anyone remember any discussions on the BT comms protocols used by the Matermind TCU?

 

[Jeremy McCreary]

Have you only noticed the data missing post ride? If so perhaps the next thing is to stick with your current setup and make sure you are monitoring both rider power and cadence on both a TCU display and the Specialized App to see if they metrics ever go blank on one or both devices.

Real-time rider power and cadence always show correctly on the TCU. The issue is only in the app.

First 2 times it happened, noticed it only after closing out the ride in the app. No idea when recording failed in these instances, cuz I had no power field showing on the app at the time. Added one thereafter.

In subsequent cases, I think recording failed from the start, as in your case. Only in the last instance did I think to try stopping (but not finishing) the recording. Resuming that ride started power and cadence recording. All 3 subsequent rides recorded properly.

In my mind, all of that points to the app itself. Will see what the dealer finds when I take it in next week.

 

[Stefan Mikes]

App/phone/Bluetooth. We have the culprit.

 

[jason.flood]

Real-time rider power and cadence always show correctly on the TCU. The issue is only in the app.

First 2 times it happened, noticed it only after closing out the ride in the app. No idea when recording failed in these instances, cuz I had no power field showing on the app at the time. Added one thereafter.

In subsequent cases, I think recording failed from the start, as in your case. Only in the last instance did I think to try stopping (but not finishing) the recording. Resuming that ride started power and cadence recording. All 3 subsequent rides recorded properly.

In my mind, all of that points to the app itself. Will see what the dealer finds when I take it in next week.

It does sound like more of an App or phone issue. There is a lot of multitasking going on with phone but generally they are pretty good these days.

@Stefan Mikes I know you rave about Wahoo, but do these devices record all the live data and allow you to scroll through your route post ride and see the instantaneous metrics at any point in the ride in the way the specialized app can?

 

[Stefan Mikes]

@Stefan Mikes I know you rave about Wahoo, but do these devices record all the live data and allow you to scroll through your route post ride and see the instantaneous metrics at any point in the ride in the way the specialized app can?

The FIT file you can export contains all these data. Can I process the file? I don't know!

BLEvo app for pre-Mastermind e-bikes had all the capability with graphical display for any point on the trip and even an XLS file with all ride data. Specialized has killed BLEvo.

I prefer having something that works than that sometimes works (Wahoo vs Specialized app)

 

[Jeremy McCreary]

App/phone/Bluetooth. We have the culprit.

Unless the sensors involved in rider power and cadence are themselves Bluetooth, not wired, I'm not ready to blame Bluetooth just yet.

 

[leifg]

I can't say I see exactly what @Jeremy McCreary sees, but I have seen loss of sensor data as @jason.flood mentioned within app due to connectivity issues (whether that means bluetooth, app issue, etc...I suspect app issue are not a low level bluetooth issue since all my bluetooth device work fine). I'm on a big Vado 5.0 by the way.

At times I would get a message from app at the end of the ride saying data captured wasn't reliable or something along those lines. I would then see sensor data was not captured. The phone app uses phone GPS, so at first it looks like ride was recorded. And you can record a ride even if app is not connected to bike, so sometimes it just never connected and only found out in the end.

If you have android, maybe check apps background behavior -- press and hold app icon to get to app info. From there, check Mobile Data Usage and App Battery Usage and try enabling background usage for both if not already enabled. App can use all the help it can get with maintaining connection given the issues it has at times