Power Pedals on Creo?

[sbhelms]

Hi all. New to the forum and while I did search the subject, if I missed it, please point me in the right direction. I am a relatively new owner of a 2021 Creo SL Expert. I have had it about 30 days and have about 350 miles on the bike. So far, I love the bike and I admit that I was a bit surprised at how good of a workout you can get. I run it in the ECO mode most of the time. Been riding for a long time and finally took the plunge for the assist. I am running a Garmin 130 plus and I have it configured and reading the power/torque sensor from the motor. The average seems not too bad, but the 3 sec power reads seem to be all over the place. I was considering putting power pedals (Favaro) on the bike. While I have been riding off an on for years, I am new to power. I do have a Peloton where I have been doing power zone training so I want to take that to the road. My question is, for those of you using the power reading from the motor, how happy are you with the perceived accuracy? Has anyone added power pedals or are does anyone have any suggestions for or against adding power pedals?

Thanks!
Steve

 

[JonFox]

I have read that the Creo can output both bike power and rider power. Likely, you're more interested in rider power as the measure of your effort for training purposes, like you see in the Peleton data. However, I have not yet seen a clear way to get the Creo to display/record power data on a Garmin. Hopefully other Creo riders have succeeded and will share their experiences.

 

[Stefan Mikes]

@sbhelms: I'm a little bit confused. Your Creo has all the information regarding your leg power (it is necessary for the Turbo Control Unit of your e-bike to properly calculate the amount of the motor assist). In my opinion, power pedals would be an overkill. Have you tried the BLEvo smartphone app? It is not only showing your instant leg power on the ride but also recording your power curve during the ride; and it provides plenty of statistical data on your own performance. You even don't need to have your smartphone mounted on the bars: it can stay in your back pocket during the ride.

Or, did I misunderstand your needs?

 

[sbhelms]

Thanks. The Garmin 130 Plus picks up the power sensor but it is from the motor. Occasionally the read outs make me think it is reading total power (me and the motor) and other times it appears at a level that seems in line with my output levels. Here again, I have never run a power meter on one of my road bikes but I presume the variability I am seeing is not typical of dedicated power meters. Just looking for feedback from those with more experience with power meters than me.

 

[Stefan Mikes]

The only thing I can tell you is the BLEvo app gives the Biker's Power and Motor Power as separate data. You can even export your ride data to Excel for the ultimate post-ride analysis!

I'm not good with data analysis: Just created this funny graph from BLEvo records for one of my recent rides with Turbo Vado.

 

[sbhelms]

Thanks Stefan! I’ll check out the app. It would be good to see the two compared for a better understanding of the data.

 

[JonFox]

Blevo looks great in terms of the data it preserves, but for training purposes it would be great to have real time rider watt output so you can train to that. With Blevo you could see that data on your smartphone, but is it possible to see this data (real-time rider watt output) on the Garmin? Many folks don't want their smartphone on the handlebars.

 

[Stefan Mikes]

Many folks don't want their smartphone on the handlebars.

I do agree, and have no answer as I don't use Garmin.

 

[NBS]

I have a Garmin 1030 and the power readout is me, not motor. That said, I have Quark power meter on my non-assist Trek and have found that there is a big discrepancy between the numbers I see on that vs the Creo. I actually did a field test to determine new training zones on the Creo.

 

[JonFox]

@NBS, Interesting about the discrepancy in power readout from Quark to Creo. How did you get the Creo power to show on your Garmin?

 

[sbhelms]

For me, on the Garmin 130 Plus, the Creo broadcasts a power “sensor” that is detected by the Garmin. I have not delved in deep enough yet to determine if the Creo is broadcasting 1 or 2 power sensors. I do not have the”fake” channel enabled via the Specialized app. For the third party app mentioned earlier in this thread, it is supposedly picking up motor output and leg output which would lead me to believe the bike is broadcasting both sensors. Perhaps the Garmin has been programmed to pick up the leg power sensor only, but just speculation at this point.

 

[Stefan Mikes]

Oh, I'm not sure. Turbo e-bikes do not transmit the motor power; they transmit the current drawn from battery (amperage) as well as the current battery voltage. BLEvo just multiplies voltage by amperage to get the "Motor Power" (in fact, actual Motor power is V * A * efficiency). I guess Turbo e-bikes transmit leg power only to Garmin.

 

[NBS]

@NBS, Interesting about the discrepancy in power readout from Quark to Creo. How did you get the Creo power to show on your Garmin?

I just added a data field for power. If you have the 1030 you do it under bike profile-activity pages-add data screen. Then you go to “power” and there are a number of options (average, 3 second, lap power etc). Once you have the field added the Garmin just picks it up. I am quite sure it is rider power, I haven’t seen any way to get a read out for motor power, I don’t think the Garmin connects to the Creo that way. Although you can get it to display battery power if you want to see a % instead of just lines on the Creo (in the eBike category). FWIW I also considered getting pedal based power meters bcs I didn’t trust the accuracy of what I was seeing from
The Creo but didn’t want to spring for the $ and decided that just establishing new training zones for the Creo was adequate for my purposes. I have always been curious to see motor power as well as rider power but the BLEVO app didn’t work for me as I don’t want to have a phone on my handlebars and wanted to see the info as I was riding.