TacX 2022
Published by marco on
Garmin Tacx Flux S SmartIt is November, my friends, which means it’s time to complain about Garmin’s TacX software.
I dragged my trainer out of the basement on Sunday. I test-connected it with BlueTooth to the phone and it looked good. I even have a mount for the phone this year. The bike is, once again, pointing toward my iMac, so it’s perfectly positioned for watching series or movies.
I set up The Boys S03, climbed up and started pedaling. The software wanted to calibrate again.
I figured, what the hell, it only took a few seconds the first time, let’s humor TacX. To calibrate, you just start pedaling until you get to 30kph and then let it spin down. It’s literally seconds.
It wouldn’t “take”.
Several times, just wouldn’t calibrate.
There’s a “skip” button at the top.
SKIP.
I started my ride with six minutes of riding flat. Then 0.5% for 90 seconds. Huh, that’s pretty easy. Now 1.0% for 90 seconds. Man, am I in great shape! I barely feel a difference.
Oh.
With or without calibration, the software shows the gradient and speed, but takes the power output from the trainer. Without calibration, the trainer doesn’t change the resistance.
So, I ended up riding flat-out at about 35kph for 40 minutes instead of riding “4 hills”. The software thinks I did the four hills, but it didn’t feel like it at all.
After I’d finished and had made sure that the ride had been saved, I killed the app. Upon restart, I was able to calibrate on the first try.
It’s my own fault for proceeding without calibration, but why doesn’t the software just reset everything after it’s noticed two or three failed calibration attempts? Couldn’t it just ask me, “hey, it looks like calibration is not working, would you like me to reset everything?”. Or “hey, it looks like calibration is not working. You should prolly just restart the app.”
Instead, it offers a “skip” button that suggested to me that I could just ride with the configuration provided by the previous calculation, not that it would just not provide resistance.
What the hell, Garmin? These are basics.