Mike - Yeah still troubleshooting this one... I'm suddenly very interested in this feature because on group rides I've found the manual iWoc power setting impractical... an example would be the group goes charging up a hill then crests the hill and backs it off coming to a slow easy pace (this is how most of my group rides go). I'd have the power level at
Level 3 (full power) going up the hill but would then have to press the iWoc button quickly to Off or Level 1 when cresting the hill (difficult to do and impractical). (Otherwise if power is left at
Level 3 you cant spin easily and slowly because the bike takes off at almost 20mph!)
Having the HR Auto Assist would help IF IT WORKS!? I tested this yesterday with very mixed results. It seemed to work at times but was mostly highly unpredictable. I'm going to test indoors (using a fake GPS app to fool the ebikemotion app into seeing motion and actually recording something).
Observations thus far:
* I'm using a tried and tested BLE HR monitor but the ebm app (I'm on the current Android version) seems to hang and frequently doesnt show changes in HR
* The latest Android update screwed up MPH and now the app doesnt seem to show speed on the screen correctly
* The Override Max HR setting in the Settings menu seems to be the only place to enter a target HR but I dont believe this impacts Auto Assist... it just effects the HR circle display on the app screen.
* I have no idea what the sensitive adjustment does at this point. The app manual is somewhat clear on intent, but not on how it actually works.
* Sometimes Assist would not come on until the target HR had been exceeded, but other times it continued after my HR fell well below the target (this might have something to do with the sensitivity setting which seems to be designed to keep you within a range around the target HR. I just dont know of 0 sensitivity or full sensitivity turns this off). For the ride, sensitivity was set at 5 out of 10.
* Also dont attempt to save a file when you dont have a good data connection... the save will fail and the app may crash... there seems to be NO local cache of the data!
I'm thinking that tweaking the custom Power Map for Levels 1-3 may also help achieve the auto assist we want.
While I understand what they are trying to do with HR its not really the best approach due to the variability in HR (due to temperature, fatigue, etc.) What I ideally want is assistance over a certain power output level. But since that would be hard to implement, a Cadence/Speed/Slope solution would seem more practical. The bike sensors already measure cadence and speed. And Slope is available from GPS position and/or the phone tilt sensors (some calibration before each ride might be needed for this). In other words... I only want assistance if I'm going faster than say 16mph OR am on a slope greater than 1.5% etc. This could be a custom curve for each rider.
I hope to report back when I have more data on the use of Auto Assist
