Smart Control Heart Rate

mordase

Member
Went ahead and tried the Smart Control feature in Mission control to maintain a minimum heart rate whilst riding my Turbo Vado 4. All well and good in as much as I paired my Garmin DualHRM to MC, set a target heat rate (120) and set minimum assist to zero so that below the target heart rate there would be no assistance. Went off on a ride including some fairly steep hills and as expected no motor assist below the target heart rate. Once the target was met, assistance started but the level of motor assist was way to low for the hills. As the heart rate went up the amount of assist seemed to remain constant and didn’t increase in proportion to the heart rate. A quick push on the controller button engaged Turbo but that only stayed on for a few seconds before reverting to Smart Control. There didn’t appear to be a way to override the Smart Control and engage extra assist. Another anomaly was that if the heart rate fell below the target, assist continued for quite a while before stopping. Has anyone else tried the Heart Rate feature and if so did the level of assist increase with increasing heat rate? Perhaps I’m doing something incorrect and it’s a picnic issue (problem in chair not in computer). In the end I turned off Smart Control and just manually engaged assist as required.
 
I don’t have any personal experience with your specific issue - I use an Apple Watch for heart rate and MC doesn’t - but I have had similar experiences with Smart Control.

In my case I was using it to get all the battery life I could when I started a ride and realized didn’t have enough charge for the length of the route. Smart Control reserved battery life, but assist changes did not reflect the riding conditions which it should have recognized do to cadence and torque sensors. Hills up, hills down, wind, stopping at intersections And so forth.

The Smart Control concept is wonderful, but the algorithms are not yet adequate. Since the underlying bicycle technology, the sensors and controllers and so forth, is quite capable. Specialized needs to invest the time and money to make Mission Control as good in fact as it is conceptually. (End of rant.)
 
@mordase: You might try the BLEvo smartphone app (it is inexpensive one time purchase). BLEvo is in any way superior to Mission Control and it supports Smart HR feature probably better than the MC. I cannot confirm it 100% though. I just know BLEvo supersedes MC in all aspects, so probably HR feature there is good, too.
 
Would be good to know if Blevo performs better than MC regarding heart rate smart control. As you say it’s cheap enough so will probably give it a try. However, If anyone has experience then please let me know. In particular, can you override the smart control power setting using the push buttons on the bike remote control or do you have to press something on the phone screen. I’m not a fan of having my smartphone out on the handlebars. Anyhow, it’s not a big issue as the bike is brilliant. One of my better purchases in 2020.
 
In particular, can you override the smart control power setting using the push buttons on the bike remote control or do you have to press something on the phone screen.
I think you might try overriding the SC by double pressing the + key. Not sure of that but I'm not riding today and cannot verify it.
 
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