Been riding rollers for many years but recently upgraded to Inside Ride’s smart resistance rollers and have noticed the front drum actually shooting sparks while riding. I’m guessing it’s building up static electricity and randomly shooting a zap to the metal frame. Any ideas if this is normal, how to stop it?
It happens 5 times in this ~30 second clip.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsid9ssnBXM
Most likely your rollers are rubbing the carpet to generate the static electricity. Resolve that and you’ll likely be fine
not on carpet. Its hardwood with some of those foam floor tiles on top to protect it.
Still it could be touching the foam, especially with all your weight concentrated to the few touch points between mat and roller frame. You can ground your frame to nearby pipes or try putting the frame directly on the wood
AFAIK, the motion & contact between the rubber tire and aluminum roller drum are the real key here. The rollers do NOT have to touch carpet, foam or anything on the floor in order for static electricity to build up.
This is what I was thinking too. Seems like the solution would be figuring out some way to ground the roller drum. How to ground a spinning drum though…
Carbon brush assemblies mounted with springs to maintain contact would do the job. Then you just provide a path to ground.
I am searching to see if I can find a direct option but I picture one of those electronic wire grounding straps used when working on PC’s & PCB. Connected to ground as normal (or even just the roller frame?), then the “open” end uses some light brass wire riding lightly against the front drum.
Just enough force and contact to provide conductivity, while hopefully not leading to drum wear. I could also envision adding a think layer of something like aluminum sheet to the very side of the drum (contact with and glued to the main drum) that serves as a “contact & wear surface” for the grounding wire connection.
Could probably use some copper tape wrapped around the last inch of the roller to act as a wear surface.
Like what’s inside a power tool?
Perfect. That along with the brushes I found above (then wired to the frame) might be the ticket.
It very well could be. Technically just the roller spinning in the air can create static, but not to this level.
My only concern grounding it to the frame would be the possibility of it getting to the smart resistance control module that’s mounted to the frame.
The bearings that the rollers ride on are most likely conductive (unless they are a non-conductive ceramic, highly unlikely). Just ground the frame as I said
Sure, but considering it is sparking to that frame now, it may be OK.
Otherwise, you just need to connect the anti-static brush to a ground source, like those straps I mentioned above. This would avoid the roller frame issue.
I have the same Inside Ride rollers (love the rollers though I only use the sim mode with my PM connected and never use erg mode), and I had this problem as well. I keep my phone on a metal wire shelf next to the rollers and each time I’d reach for it while riding, I’d get a shock of static electricity.
I resolved static electricity issue by using trainer tires front and rear (like these red Vittoria tires). No shocks or static build up.
Interesting, especially since they make no claims about being anti-static.
Curious about why you don’t use ERG mode. My previous rollers were an older model of Inside Ride rollers with manual resistance adjustment that I loved. I’ve only had these new rollers a week and have only ridden on them 4 times, but my initial impression on ERG mode hasn’t been positive. I want to like erg mode, especially since that was kind of a large benefit of these smart rollers, but there’s just something I don’t like about it. Do you connect the rollers to the TR app and adjust the resistance in the TR app or do you use the IR phone app?