Used smart control for the first time today (would love to hear experiences of other owners using it)

[Captain Slow]

Well, technically I did try to use it a few months ago but my HR strap came off under several layers of clothing and so no HR readings and I didn't get any assist.

Today it was warmer and I put my HR strap on and didn't have to worry about layers of clothes on top and potentially undoing the Velcro and losing HR data.

I set it up so that the motor would only come on once my HR hit 135 bpm. As I was riding I kept dropping my ride companions and I heard motor noise so I figured something wasn't working because the motor was making noise when my HR was below 135 bpm. I figured I did something wrong and the motor was coming on far more than I had intended.

But when I got home I saw I used only 45 wh of the battery on a 70 km ride with 463 metres of elevation gain. So in theory at that level of assist I could go about 500 km's on the battery. Now we were crawling along for some reason. I guess the group was kind of sluggish today. That surprised me because one of the riders is a guy who usually wants to go faster, but today he was pretty mellow.

I'm not sure why the motor makes noise when it isn't assisting but given how often it was making noise and how little battery was used it couldn't have been assisting a lot of the times it was making noise.

 

[Captain Slow]

No one else uses Smart control? There must be someone else who uses it.

 

[NBS]

I tried it once, briefly. Didn't like it. I hated that I couldn't set the assist how and when I wanted to. I guess I'm too much of a control freak

 

[Captain Slow]

Do you mean how all you get to set is the minimum assist level? I was wondering if it assists more when your HR goes higher above the threshold. I didn't really get to test it out too well since we did such a slow ride.

I guess that's what I'd like to know. If one sets the HR so the motor comes on at say 130 bpm and a minimum assist level of 10% does that mean when you hit 150 bpm that the assist is much higher, say like 50%, 160 bpm is 80%, etc …… I'd love to know if that's how it works and if anyone is regularly using it that way.

 

[NBS]

Do you mean how all you get to set is the minimum assist level? I was wondering if it assists more when your HR goes higher above the threshold. I didn't really get to test it out too well since we did such a slow ride.
I guess that's what I'd like to know. If one sets the HR so the motor comes on at say 130 bpm and a minimum assist level of 10% does that mean when you hit 150 bpm that the assist is much higher, say like 50%, 160 bpm is 80%, etc …… I'd love to know if that's how it works and if anyone is regularly using it that way.

Hmmm. I didn’t try it that way. I just set it for length of ride and how much climbing to go

 

[Sierratim]

No one else uses Smart control? There must be someone else who uses it.

I believe there were a couple of recent posts where the rider used a heart rate monitor with the Mission Control app and was happy with the results. It's not popping up in a search so maybe I'm 'mis-remebering', or doing poor searches...

 

[Captain Slow]

Ok, so I used Smart Control again and I think that the motor assistance goes up with the amount your heart rate exceeds the pre-determined limit you set in Mission Control. I say think, because I use a Smart watch for my recording so I can't see the values as I'm riding. So I don't know for certain but I strongly suspect it does.

Once again I set the motor assistance to kick in when my HR hit 135 bpm, and I set a minimum assistance level of 20%. When I was done it said the average assistance level was 60%, so I think that must be because I was pushing hard a few times and getting my HR well above the 135 bpm. The previous time I used it I was riding slowly with friends and my HR was not getting that high so the motor assistance was lower. But there are multiple variables so I can't say for certain.

I'll have to either get a bike computer or a mount for my phone so I can see in real time what's happening and then I could say with a lot more confidence. If someone else has experimented with this I'd love to hear their impressions.