Kinetic Inride Issues

Don’t let some of the above put you off.

I have owned a Road Machine for just over 3 years and have some circa 700 rides recorded on it via TR and it has been faultless mechanically.

One positive which often gets overlooked which most trainers can’t do if you use ERG only, is help with pedaling smoothness. Having spent hundreds of hours transfixed at that top left corner trying to match / smooth out Power against Target, I can see if I look back at some of my early rides when I started out, that my power was let’s just say, a little jagged, compared to how it is today. This is not something you actively work on if using a trainer with ERG. On my other trainer I use to just switch off a little to cadence technique, as the power line stayed smooth no matter how choppy / stomping your pedaling got.

I also like the fact that if you are putting out 280W at 90RPM but need to push 290W, you have to pedal just that little bit faster like you would do on the road, so get to train at lots of varying cadences, whereas if I was using my old Snap in ERG I’d just sit at a comfortable cadence and let the trainer work its magic and not experience pedaling just that little bit faster to produce more power, unless @chad reminded me to in one of the prompts.

Another thing which I would recommend, is that a couple of months ago I invested in the Pro Flywheel and I wished I had done it sooner, as it is even smoother than it was before with a lovely feel to the kick over / inertia.

At the same time I also upgraded it with the InRide 3 as I had previously used virtual power but I have always liked the idea of calibrating it so as to rule out variance in knob tightness whilst using virtual power. So far the InRide has been fine, caveat - despite being unable to calibrate it with ANT+, and the cadence being shocking, but as it has been mentioned previously, if you have a dedicated cadence sensor, use it.

If you buy a Road Machine / Rock and Roll you will not be disappointed, and if you purchase one for a sensible price, you should find it will be a half decent investment if you ever come to sell.

Let us know how you get on, and what you go for in the end.

This is why I am entertaining the idea of getting one. Don’t care about cadence – I have dedicated sensors for that.

Had not thought of the pro flywheel.

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Calibration would be great, if it didn’t kill the unit 3 times out of 5.

I got so annoyed having to take the battery out (to reset) that I haven’t calibrated it in weeks. I even tried doing it on the android app, but it was no better.

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I installed the new firmware on my InRide3 today, and got through a calibration and session without it crashing!!! I was going to return the InRide3, but now I’ll give it some time. Download Kinetic Fit (I’m on Android), create a profile, and update the firmware. The app crashed a few times, but eventually I got through it. I’m keeping my fingers crossed my issues are resolved.

Hmm… I’ll have to see if there’s a new version.

I bought one of these about two months ago in hopes of getting a more “real world accurate” approximation of my power for much less than the cost of a real power meter or smart trainer. I experienced all the same issues as described related to spin down calibrations constantly failing and with no troubleshooting option but screwing around with the battery.

I just went back to using virtual power because at least it is consistent and shows my training progression, which is the most important thing. The FTP number doesn’t have any real world significance. I can let my training speak for itself on the road.

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Does Kinetic have any sort of app? I’m wondering if this is actually a TrainerRoad issue rather than Kinetic one.

I’d be happy to try out calibration in that app for a comparison (to see if that also causes the device to be unresponsive).

  • I can’t say from experience, but from what I have seen, the source of the issue is most often from the Kinetic side.

Yep, but it’s horrible

See (recent) reviews and weep :sob:

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[quote=“Textuality, post:27, topic:7180, full:true”]
Does Kinetic have any sort of app? [/quote]
Yes. It’s called Kinetic Fit. I believe there is an Android and iOS version. It’s buggy too, but it worked well enough for me to upload the Inride v1.2 firmware. If you have trouble setting up an account, like I did, go to their website and set up your account there.

[quote=“Textuality, post:27, topic:7180, full:true”]
I’m wondering if this is actually a TrainerRoad issue rather than Kinetic one. [/quote]
Based on problems discussed on the DCRainmaker site, it extends beyond TR.

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Sigh. Looks like it was just a waste of money then.

Ironically I wouldn’t have bought it were it not for the glowing DCR review.

Yeah, a tough lesson. Pays to look at more than just “reviewers” and see what the actual buying public has to say.

Look no further than the Wahoo Kickr18/Core mess. Got great reviews across the board. But the customer experience in the months following release (and still happening) showed many notable issues that a potential buyer should know before clicking [BUY].

It looks like I’ve gone and jinxed it.

To be fair, this has nothing to do with the InRide, more what looks like a commonly occurring dropout of the Wahoo BlueSC mid ride and then the cadence readings coming from the InRide.

It’s strange why it has only just started in the last 2 rides. Nothing has changed other than a Windows update prior to this.

They have an app, and calibration is roughly as bad.

I did update my firmware using the Kurt app - and that seemed to make calibration on TR work, so I ramp tested with inRide as my power data source yesterday. The rude awakening was that my FTP was much lower, especially coming off 2-3 weeks of being sick and detraining, but I am willing to accept that my virtual power number was inflated to begin with. It’s no fun to accept 232 when you were at 288 under a different protocol. But the number is the number, and I’ll see something higher on the other end of build as long as I do the work.

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I’ve been using the previous gen InRide (the one that only transmits over bluetooth) regularly for a little over a year now. Knock on wood, the thing has been stable and reliable when connected with my Galaxy Note 8. No problems with spindowns (I do two per ride, one at the start and one at around the 10min mark), no problems with dropouts. The only issue is inaccurate cadence (but I use a BlueSC for that so it’s of no consequence). For $40 I couldn’t be happier. Hopefully KK will get the issues on the latest gen sorted out for you all.

Returning to this… I tried the new firmware tonight and aside from it taking ages for the app to actually find the inride, it updated without any problems. After that I was able to get three spindown calibrations done in the inride app, and a further two in TrainerRoad without issue.

Maybe they’ve worked it out?

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I decided last week (February 2019) to go ahead and buy an inRide. I already have a power meter (P1 pedals) but I wanted a cheap and easy way to get power when on my kinetic roadmachine (I normally train at the office using an Omnium and my road bike with the P1 pedals), my roadmachine is currently set up at home with my cross bike, and I wanted a way to get power without having to move the pedals every day, and while keeping my SPD pedals on the cross bike.

The short story is that I set up the inRide on my roadmachine and it didn’t work at all. At first it would connect to the TR app (iPhone and PC) and to the Kinetic app, but the spin down calibration failed every time (in all three apps). I tried the hard restart, and I checked to make sure that the firmware was up to date. It still didn’t work, not one successful calibration on any app (either over bluetooth or ANT+).

I decided to give it 10 minutes of riding to see if warming things up would help. At that point none of the apps would even find the sensor any more. Since that time I have not been able to get it to connect via bluetooth or ANT+. I have contacted the retailer and asked for a full refund, which I am sure they will authorize, but I thought I would post my personal experience here to let folks know that from what I have found the troubles with the inRide continue.

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I’ve since had to do one more hard reset. So yeah, it’s clearly not quite right yet.

Sad, but not surprising. Kinetic’s ineptitude with electronic apps and devices seems to continue.

It’s unfortunate, as the device offers so much in theory. It would be great if they could actually make it work easily and consistently.