Connected But Not Really

[buirechain]

I had a problem where my Direto XR broke mid ride yesterday, and then fixed itself--but I don't know for how long.

I've sent information about this off to support, but since it's currently working I'm not sure how much help that will be. I'm wondering if anything else has experienced the same problem. Searching here and elsewhere has led me to partial overlapping problems, but no one with fully the same issue.

I was riding intervals on zwift when the resistance suddenly reset to the easiest level and also Zwift stopped getting my power numbers. However, Zwift thought that it was still connected. I tried resetting but unplugging, waiting, and plugging back in and that worked for a minute before stopping again. I tried unplugging, waiting, and unplugging again, and mostly zwift was getting nothing even though it again thought it was connected, but for a second or two I got absurd (10,000 plus) wattage numbers. At some point I also checked if Ant+ would do any better than Bluetooth, but no such luck. I tried connecting to the Elite app on my phone. It thought that my trainer was connected, but it wouldn't get any data from it, nor could it change resistance levels, just like with Zwift. Nor could I calibrate, and when I tried to run the diagnostic program, it wouldn't work.

Since I had some resistance from the trainer, and a separate power meter on my bike, I changed my zwift connection to take power levels from that. I did a lot of spinning of the pedals, but managed to get through the intervals. After the intervals, I tested things again (still no luck) but did make two changes. While I kept power from the bike power meter, I connected the trainer back up to provide resistance. I also disconnected my Garmin watch from the trainer. The Garmin watch was set up to record only, not to be able to send commands to the trainer.

Nothing changed immediately. However, a few minutes later I started getting 5-10 second spikes where the resistance would go up, apparently controlled by zwift, before it went back down. The happened every few minutes. After that happening for maybe 10 or 15 minutes, the resistance staid on. I bike like that for the rest of my workout. At the end, I switched back to have Zwift getting power from the trainer--and it was still giving me absurd power numbers. So I logged out of zwift.

I decided however to run a calibration. This time it worked, it gave me the same number I'd received a month or two before. I hooked it back up to Zwift, and voila, the power numbers were realistic (I haven't compared with the power meter to make sure that they're accurate, but they were the types of numbers I see normally).

Now, this could just be some interference from my Garmin watch. I'm not sure why that would be since I'd been using it to record separately like that since last December, but maybe there was some update (though this isn't the first time I've use the trainer since the last update). I'm also unsure if that's what happened since disconnecting the Garmin watch didn't immediately fix the problem. I'm worried though that the problem is something else, and that while it is working properly now, that it will break again. Has anyone experienced this? Does anyone have any other tips?