Power Meters / Powermeters (SRM, Powertap, Quarq, Ergomo, Vector, Stages, power2max, P2M, 4iii, InPower, Cinch)

I find the lack of empathy for their customers very disappointing

How would you know? You're not their customer.

I have a Quarq dZero that's a couple of months over the warranty....They do seem to be holding their value based on eBay sold listings :)

Yawn. Pedantry your idea of a good evening? Glad I could oblige you.

Oh well. I bought a Quarq for the Mason because I liked their spider mount better than the silly P2M design. Hopefully it lasts a bit longer than 2y8m. I quite liked the fact Powertap could be repaired - do the crank ones just get binned? Oh, have you tried drying it out with rice/silica gel in case it's water ingress?

do the crank ones just get binned?

IME, yes. They can't usually be fixed. I suspect they pot the electronics in epoxy to protect them against water intrusion, but that means that if a component fails it can't be replaced. Not economically, anyway.

Bummer. Maybe there's a market for erectronic hackers out there to mess with the internals.

How hard is it to crack open potted circuits without ruining the erectronics? It would be useful if you could get replacement boards for these but I guess they're all heavily integrated with arms/axles and shit so even if you did replace them they'd have to be recalibrated, etc.

Forgot about this. Paperweight is getting posted to germany tomorrow, so they can 'investigate'.

How hard is it to crack open potted circuits without ruining the erectronics?

Very hard. It will either involve strong solvents like MEKK which will soften the epoxy or very strong acids to dissolve it. And lots of work to physically remove the epoxy, with a reasonable chance you'll damage the electronic components in the process. Then you'd have to do a fault-finding process, and then replace the FUBARed components.

Lots of work, no guarantee of success basically.

How hard is it to crack open potted circuits without ruining the erectronics?

It's one of those things that you'd do to reverse engineer fighter plane avionics if you shot one down, not to repair a consumer device you can buy for £500

I have an Allez Sprint with one of them BB30s. The bike has Praxis Zayante cranks. It used to be I would have been able to send the left crank to Praxis for a power meter (4iiii) retrofit, but that option is no longer available. I have been creak free, so not sure I'd want to test my luck switching to a 24mm spindle. What options do I have if I want to stay with 30mm?

All this is completely new to me, so I hope I have at least those basics right. If not, please, be brutal.

You could fit a P2M NGeco spider to your Zayante cranks.

https://www.power2max.com/en/product/ngeco-road-praxis-power-meter/

Furry muff. I remember scabbing busted electronic devices from the tip when I was a kid and deconstructing them. As fun as that was, there was never any intention to get the things working again :)

Interesting!

Thanks, man!

I remember scabbing busted electronic devices from the tip when I was a kid

Things have changed since then. Only the most dedicated home gamers will want to tackle surface mount, which is one of the major contributors to making consumer electronics small, cheap and reliable but also makes repairs a "swap out the whole board" procedure in most cases for economic reasons.

Yep, hand-soldering SMT components, while possible, is decidedly challenging. That's why one of my friends used to have an SMT reflow oven in his living room. Mind you, he also had an SMT pick and place machine on the island unit in his kitchen, and an industrial spec EMC chamber in one of the bedrooms. He took these things seriously.

That's what I am running. So far so good.

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literally find someone high up and SRAM and get in contact with them directly.

Off topic, but you inspired me Howard. Our oven has been broken for two months and Electrolux ignore my calls. Emailed a CEO and got a call back half an hour later. One of their just-released-£2.5k-wifi-enabled ovens is now en route to our kitchen 😄

Excelllllllent

I bought one of the bike/ant end caps for a G3 hub.
I thought it would go like this:
Swap cap
Connect via powertap mobile app
Calibrate

However. I can't find "calibrate" on the app.
Is there another way?
I mean, I don't have to, it just means can kick out 400w soft pedalling and 2000 when I push down. I know this is wrong. I am tempted to crush a crit on zwift.

I think you can just use another head unit, have something else with Ant like a Garmin?

Ah ok. The only Garmin I have working is an edge 25 and a 200 that is erm flaky.

In which case, what's the cheapest option here?

Get the 200 on, connected and calibrated. You only need to calibrate then you can use the phone for Zwift or whatever

Does the app offer 'zero offset' or anything else that could be calibrate?

Great. Will attempt later.

Don’t think edge 25 or 200 connect to Power meters?

My bad, it seems the edge 200 does not even have Ant+!

Hmm what about another phone app, I know you can calibrate from TrainerRoad but you need a paid account. @Chalfie are you going to be using Zwift or something, maybe that has a calibration option?!