New Wattbike Atom Announced

:eyes:

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Wowsers, definitely outside of my budget!
I think. Iā€™ll wait for Rayā€™s comments before ordering the Atom 2020.

Going to get some heavy use out of the current one while Iā€™m serving quarantine in the UK on my return from Franceā€¦

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@dcrainmaker Have Wattbike issued their new firmware and any improvements on the Erg mode?

Current delivery times are about 4 months, so will be on the Atom 1st gen for the forseeable!

I assume given the lack of update from Ray that wattbike still has some tinkering to do with erg mode.

Just cancelled my Wattbike order. We were Guinea Pigs with the first Atom and have decided not to take the same risk again. Have gone for a Tacx bike. We really liked the Stages but it was crazy expensive.

Theyā€™ve made some tweaks, but not yet to where I think it needs to be. Iā€™m gonna circle back with them today and see what their plan is. My understanding is they arenā€™t shipping yet (though I havenā€™t checked in the last few days), so Iā€™m basically waiting for that to happen before releasing a review.

They have shipped a number of V2 units in the last few weeks - A friend has had one arrive, still some build issues.

Judging by the posts on the atom group the erg issue appears to still be there, though it also looks very similar to how a V1 handles erg.

They have been shipping the V2 for about 2 weeks. Plenty of folks in the Facebook group have received theirs and given their thoughts.

Wattbike rang me on Friday to tell me that mine would be with the courier this week so should be getting it late this week or early next week.

Iā€™d be interested to hear your thoughts on the erg issue because to me your images looked no different to how mine has always looked on the AtomV1 but also my powertap P1ā€™s which I have both set to 1 sec power?

For what its worth I have been using my Next Gen Wattbike Atom for the past week. ERG mode works well and tracks along nicely with set workouts.

I have been using workouts on Zwift and Wattbike hub with great success. Just need to find a code for a TR trail so I can decide where my monthly subscription will be going.

Very happy with my purchase so far.

Question for the users in here, how do you find ERG mode with TR & the Atom?

Im trying to work out why I keep failing workouts in ERG mode in TR - For me, it seems a very aggressive in the manner in which this applied, more so than using ERG mode on zwift or via the hub.

Im not specifically talking about the spiral of death, but I find I can hold a number (say) 300w for 30 mins in Zwift whilst racing with a cadence of about 95, yet I try to do 8 mins efforts in TR erg mode my cadence drops to 80-85 and im literally falling apart at the end of the 8mins,

Ive failed intervals on TR and then jumped straight into zwift or the hub and done the same intervals at a higher prescribed wattage than I failed in TR.

I just dont get it. Ive used ERG mode years, previously had 2 x Kickrs so understand the spiral of death but this feels like it is very aggressive.

I e seen a post by Wattbike saying the Atom is not optimised to work with TR but kind of dismissed this originally as it was an odd statement to make, but is there something in there.

I do find TR is much more aggressive with cadence changes in Erg mode than Hub/ Sufferfest. If my cadence fluctuates even by 3-5 rpm it does seem like the Erg mode overcompensates.

e.g. In an interval in erg mode the other day, over a 10s period my cadence fluctuated between 98-100 and back, and my power went from from 362 to 425. Having those spikes in a ā€œflatā€ interval is really draining.

I do find, however, that running dual devices with Hub powering the gearing and TR in Resistance mode is much easier to complete workouts.

How are you running dual devices? Ive only been able to run TR in erg mode?

Itā€™s a bit of a faff, but I use an Ant+ adapter on my laptop (cheapest one I could find on Amazon) running TR in resistance mode at 0%, then connect to Hub via bluetooth on my iPad running in geared mode. The benefit of this approach is you get to use the Hub pedal efficiency screens, which are great.

I tend to do this mainly on workout that have <2m intervals, longer intervals or more varied, Baxter-esque workouts I just use ERG.

I havenā€™t worked out wether TR in resistance mode just receives info from the bike, or tries to push settings. It does sometimes feel like something in the chain is trying to take control as I get drops in resistance for no reason.

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When you set up TR on the PC, is it set up just as a power source or does it recognise it as the Atom?

Its similar to what I do with Zwift, set it up as a power source only and then have TR control the trainer. If I could run TR as power source only it would be so much easierā€¦

I just received my V2 last Tuesday, an upgrade from my V1 which had accuracy issues. My first impressions are:
Power seems good, compared against my P1 dual pedal. Iā€™ve done 2 trainerroad erg workouts and they tracked really closely and the overall numbers were the exactly the same.

However I seem to have these issues, itā€™s early days and Iā€™ve only tried trainerroad so far.

-erg mode seems slow to react, slower than the V2 and it over compensates and then shoots way under the erg power before settling in. Eg my sweetspot workout had an interval of 250 watts, I barely change my cadence yet it shoots up to 300+ and then goes under under 200 before settling in!

-on 450 watt 5 second sprints they only got up to 350ish before the time was up!

I donā€™t know if these are the issues that DC rainmaker was talking about and how they are getting on resolving them with updates but Iā€™m confident theyā€™ll fix them

Hi Ray, I received my Atom V2 earlier this week. Iā€™m curious as Iā€™m sure many are to read your review and also about any latest updates going on in your comms with Wattbike?

Are you connecting to trainerroad via the power pedals or the trainer?

Both, I have the Atom connected and controlled via erg on my iPad using Bluetooth and my pedals connected via Ant+ on my phone so I do the same workout simultaneously

So you record it twice or recording to 2 different apps/systems?

How does it behave with the Wattbike Hub?

In my experience there is slim chance of the Atom hitting any power requirements sub 30 secondsā€¦

I find if I move the interval to 35 seconds il get within 5/10% of prescribed power and then the longer the interval stretches the closer it getsā€¦ But under 30 secs and it never settles enough to get close enough to prescribed powerā€¦

@Pete I was advised by support you were product owner that would look at implementing gear resistance from the atomā€¦ Do you know if there is anything specific that would cause TR erg workouts to be more sensitive than other apps in erg?