Update for anyone looking at Kinetic products in 2020 and come across this thread. Avoid them, spend the extra money elsewhere. The InRide sensor crashes at least every other ride, regardless of connection type. The root cause I believe is a faulty battery design. If you run into these issues getting a new InRide sensor will be helpful for a few weeks until the battery connections wear out or vibrate of place. At that point, they recommend bending them back, this eventually destroys the connections and you will be doing this 3+ times a ride.
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Unfortunate. I want to like their electrical products, but they make it hard to do so with repeated comments like this. Just falling short.
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Odd, mine still hard locks from time to time on calibration but I’ve done hundreds of rides without any battery issues / sensor crashes.
Still, I’ll be looking forward to replacing them with a pedal crank power meter setup soon.
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Glad you’ve had better luck then me. Must be a quality control issue. I have had Kinetic replace three InRide sensors and each one has eventually gotten to an unusable point.
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I was about to throw my KK and inRide out the window last week because of all the sensor drops, but I decided to try jamming a little piece of rubber band between the battery cover and the coin battery to snug up everything internal. I think I am on to something - the next ride, zero drops. I think the battery-contacts connection is poorly designed and it can rattle around in there causing all kinds of connectivity issues. I’ll keep the thread up to date on whether the solution is long term or just worked at first.
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Also had major problems with inride. Lots of dropout and alots of mail to trainerroad support. I used a laptop, changed the wifi channel, and it did helped. Later in i got inride 3 with ant+. Huge different. Much more stabile only thing was that it freezed when i did calibration to TR. Tried to firat calibrare in The kinetic app thru my cellphone, when that was sucessfull i calibrated it to TR. Worked 99% of the TIMES. And as soon i didnt do it this way it would freeze. And yes a few times i had to remove battery.
But now i use favero as PM and end of troubles and its all a happy life
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Not sure which version of the InRide sensor you have. The InRide 3, has an oem pad behind the battery cover to do exactly what you are referring, sort of cram the battery into place and stop vibration. Kinetic probably realized their mistake and put that pad in there. It’s a good solution temporarily, however, I have still gone through two InRide 3’s with this. The side battery contact, also loses contact, or the teeth on the main flat battery contact eventually get pushed down flush with the plastic casing, then lose contact.
All and all, I was able to return the entire trainer after several documented complaints well past the warranty. They seemed to acknowledge that under the right volume of use (mv), intensity of ride (sprints, Vo2 Max efforts), the battery contacts will fail and vibrate out of position for a split second causing a faulted state that requires resetting the device. After so many times of bending the contacts back, it will fail more and more often. Good luck! My two cents, return now if you can, I switched to a Kickr Snap, I am soooo happy with it so far
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I have an inRide3 - second unit - so if it ends up fuzzing out on me again I’ll get myself a real powermeter. It’s too bad they couldn’t make the unit more robust – it probably would have added 5 cents to the manufacturing cost.
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Just another feedback here. Started here with TR, from the very early beginning, using only Kinetic Road and its Virtual Power feature, which worked great. Then bought Inride v1, which had lots of problems and, some time later, I stopped cycling for a while (not because of that, but it helped my decision with so many bugs).
After a couple of years I bought the Smart Control v1 and it actually worked OK… until it broke.
Then I came back to the “old faithful” Road Machine, but bought inRide v2, even though v3 was available, after reading that v3 was showing problems again, like v1. Meanwhile, reading about v2 (Bluetooth only), it looked like there were zero problems.
Couldn´t be more happier after more than one year using v2 (don´t need ANT+ anyway). Only actual problem is to know when to change the battery.
So, my recommendation is to buy inRide v2, if it is still available somewhere. But my next trainer won´t be a Kinetic for sure.
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I’m still rolling strong (knock on wood) with the inride v2 for over two years now. No issues, connects everytime, works perfectly (except for the aforementioned cadence calculation). I’ve only had to replace the battery I think twice since I’ve had it as well.
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I purchased my first KK road machine in 2005. I still have this trainer and it works great.
I wanted to update to a smart trainer and I didn’t think twice and purchased the KK T6100 Smart Control. Unfortunately, this turned out to be a big mistake on my part. This unit was BLE only, No ANT+ support. I immediately had lots of connection issue’s with no KK resolve. I plugged it in one day and noticed a flash of blue light and it was dead. (KK replaced the board no questions)
The real issue is that the T6100 doesn’t support ANT+ so you have very few applications that will connect, TR and Zwift are the only 2 that work for me. (With random connection issue’s) Rouvy, Xert and a couple that you cannot connect this trainer. I’m sure there are many more.
The real kick in the chops is that KK abandoned this device and introduced a new product 4 months after I purchased that does supported ANT+.
The v1266 KK firmware notes webpage said that part of the 1266 FW was prepping unsupported trainers for an upgrade adding FTMS to the head unit. I waited for months and no upgrade so I contacted support asking when they would release this firmware.
KK:
“We are working on a FW update for that unit that will switch it over to FTMS, but I don’t have an exact timeline on that update. I think they are still running some tests to make sure it’s going to function as intended.”
I waited another 3 months and inquired again:
KK:
“Unfortunately the devteam has been mired down with other projects. I’ve gotten less than a handful of requests in the last year.”
I took that as “we have no intentions of releasing this firmware update and you are stuck with our KK lemon”
Shortly after this email KK rewrote the the Firmware log removing all information relating to the 1266 FW being a prep for the FTMS upgrade.
I made a bad purchase. Anybody with a T6100 is bagged.
Like so many have commented in this thread. KK cannot build electronic apps/devices.
Run Away!
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Sorry for your luck, and their bad support. Thanks for the info, as I hope it can help shine a light on their limited skills and capabilities. They are just not up to par.
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Thanks for that info. That is an unfortunate letdown. Hopefully they can get their electronics game up to par, because they make some solid trainers. I have who knows how many hours/miles on my KK road machine, and have had it for over 10 yrs. The thing is (knock on wood) indestructible.
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I recently bought an Inride 3 to pair with my Road Machine and I really wished I found this thread before making my purchase. The frustration is palpable.
I never had any issues with my RM and it served me well for a number of years, but when you can’t even complete a calibration (let alone a workout) without faffing with the app or the battery - it really just ruins any motivation to complete the session.
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I have an inride 3 and had nothing but problems with it on TR. TR would on recognize it with a fresh battery for about two weeks, then it wouldnt find it and I would have to forget the device, flip the battery over, then reinsert the battery for TR to find it. I gave up on it in TR and went back to virtual power. Then this summer I started doing Zwift again and it has worked flawlessly in Zwift without changing the battery for three months now. Maybe it is a TR issue?
Definitely reach out to TrainerRoad support, it may be a setting or an update may be needed, the team is super good at isolating where those issues may be though. You can email them at support@trainerroad.com, or submit a request online!
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My Inride has been a bit of a PITA. I have to take the battery out after every ride or it would appear to be dead, which I had presumed was battery drain. After reading this thread, perhaps its because it is the equivalent of a battery flip? In any case, my Polar heart rate strap has the same issue.
I also had lots of lost connection issues at first, but a change in tablets has solved that.
FWIW, the Inride has been the most reliable thing I’ve ever used with TR on my end.
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I wish I could say that. I was also having ANT+ and BT dropouts like crazy on TR with all my devices. TR support gave me all kinds of troubleshooting to try and was never able to resolve it. When Covid hit I started back with Zwift and RGT and have not had one single dropout.
Hi All,
This is my first post here. I bought the inRide recently on sale for $20. I had some difficulty getting it to connect but in the end I think it was my fault. I also figured out that I need to use a separated cadence sensor. You can choose which device to take cadence from in the inRide app and that seems to translate over to TR. kind of an extra step but we’ll see. I like that you can calibrate and it has been working for me so far.
To me, that means it will take into account changes in tire pressure and tension on the wheel. I do take the bike out of the trainer sometimes and ride it outside. In the past using VP, I’ve suspected that this was affecting the accuracy.
I was wondering if the power measurement would be any more precise, or responsive than virtual power, but I don’t see how it could be. If nothing else, I can put my Garmin speed sensor on my mountain bike at it only cost me $20 net to get a speed sensor for that bike.