WEST LONDON VR HAS BEEN AT THE FOREFRONT OF STEERING IN ONLINE RACING
West London Cycling have run e-Racing online on the Wahoo RGT platform since early 2020, IndieVelo since July 2023 and CADEsport since October 2022. June 2023 brought Indie Velo and Zwift have now responded to the creative competition with the Zwift Steer.
THE STORY SO FAR….
Amazingly, Zwift had been ahead of the game when the Elite Sterzo came along and offered steering exclusively to Zwift users. Unfortunately, because it didn’t work with other Smart trainers it never really took off. Then came the really innovative CADEsport, with ideas you are now seeing other platforms emulating. CADEsport offerred control on your phone, a cheap solution which required no outlay on pricy hardware but sweat on the screen was the problem. However, in the search for a solution we all discovered three button controls for £10 on Amazon/eBay which we could strap to our handlebars and this is where the enlightened are at, for the moment. It’s cheap, simple and it works.
Then WahooRGt came up with an ingeneous tilting platform in late 2020 … a tray with paddles that you put your phone onto …. but it was expensive and not as responsive as a three button control (like the sort we used for CADEsport). As clever as it is, the Wahoo solution is far from perfect. It can block airflow from your fan (depending on your set up) and, despite being close to the handlebars, still isn’t 100% ‘naturallly intuitive’ as it tilts vertically rather than from side to side in the way we normally steer.
Nevertheless, innovation was rife and Zwift was being challenged. Then, with the emergence of Indie Velo aimed at top racers (but not with a steering offering), Zwift was beginning to look tired. Zwift will have watched the reactions to WahooRGT and in response Zwift came up with the superbly designed Zwiftsteer Paddles set … strapped to the handle bars it is the closest so far to replicating the real feel of steering and braking. Sadly, the courses currently available on Zwift are not particularly designed for these features, so take up could be slow. The ideal scenario would be Zwift Paddles on CADEsport courses ……. hmmmm. It seems that it is not impossible that the Zwift hardware could be used on other platforms, but it is too early to say much more at the time of writing.
Meanwhile, CADE has not really met expectations in terms of take up by riders, and for all of its innovative and brilliant concepts, it needs marketing properly and, also, needs to function a little more smoothly.
And then along came MyWhoosh. To our surpise, we discovered that our three button set up worked automatically with MyWhoosh, this may be coincidence but we didn’t bother looking any further.
Indie Velo has yet to add steering, we suspect that it is not a top priority. The marketplace hasn’t shown a huge appetite for steering, and whilst we love it, clearly not everyone shares our enthusiasm. We suspect that in the longer term, it will become the norm, but it requires a good platform aligned with a good hardware option. We think Zwift have set the standard in terms of hardware, but the platform isn’t commensurate yet.
WEST LONDON CYCLING HAVE BEEN RUNNING STEERING RACES ONLINE SINCE FEBRUARY 2023 0n Wahoo RGT, FROM 3rd JULY 2023 ON INDIE VELO and BETWEEN 18th OCTOBER 2022 ad 30th JUNE 2023 on CADESport.
Here are our takes on the options, starting with the innovative CADEsport which kickstarted the steering advances in 2022 up to an intial take on the Zwiftsteer at the bottom of the page.
CADEsport SOLUTIONS:
Our first steering experience was the CADEsport phone app or the PC keyboard. To go left or right you use the left/right arrow keys and to brake, spacebar on your PC keyboard or the phone app. These keys are good choices as they are nearset to you when riding and are easily identifaiable and more reachable than RGT’s choice of keys A and D which are not particularly convenient.
You could just have your phone on a flat shelf and swivel it left and right to steer, without any extra kit at all. Whilst this is not a natural intuitive way to steer, it is far more accessible that the Wahoo gyroscopic movement wich requires the ends of the phone to tilt up and down, hence requiring some sort of holding mount or being hand held.
We should also stress, at the outset, that sweat on phone screens can mean that they cease to function, so if you live somewhere hot and don’t have a fan …. steering could cease during a race if the screen gets sweaty (applies to CADEsport and Wahoo RGT phone apps).
So, let’s look at the solutions:
CADEsport SOLUTION 1: THE ROTATING HANDLEBAR MOUNT
This mount is actually quite a good bit of kit and can work on both CADEsport and WahooRGT but is more suited to CADEsport because it allows a rider to steer using their bike’s handlebars. Of course, if you are riding a fixed set up like a Wattbike this advantage will not exist for you (Wattbikes etc may also suffer from not being suitable for the Wahoo Kickr STEER see below).
We got this gem of a bike mountb through Amazon, it’s the Wraptor Rotating Smartphone Bar Mount and can be twisted whilst riding to steer the bike if your wheel doesn’t move (see below). Also, the rubber holding straps mean almost any smartphone should fit and, when mounted to the stem, we also found that we could mount it sideways on the stem and there was enough tilt movement to make it work on Wahoo RGT too … not brilliant on Wahoo RGT but it worked!
Overall we are very impressed by it. It holds the phone tightly in the rubber straps, whilst the phone stays steady due to the solid centre section, which because it rotates, means you could actually steer on CADEsport by twisting it from side to side on fixed handlebars. But the main advantage here is, of course, that you can steer by twisting your handlebars, the most natural steering of all. To do this your front wheel will need to be capable of moving, but two sheets of paper under the wheel should do the trick and allow your wheel to move. Alternatevely, the Elite Sterzo Riser will facilitate this. It was originally a part of the early set up for Zwift, which didn’t really take off, so availability may bec declining.
CADEsport SOLUTION 2: THE THREE BUTTON MINI KEYPAD
This is, without doubt, the best current solution for CADEsport. However, rumour has it that CADEsport are developing hardware solutions that may supercede this notion … so watch this space.
You can buy mini keypads with various numbers of keys, but we chose three to cover left, right and braking on CADESport. You could have more keys, or you’d only need two for Wahoo RGT as it does not have braking.
Cadesport makes it really easy to set up keys because it is designed to let youn allocate keys of your choice to various functions, unlike Wahoo RGT (see below).
In CADEsport just click ShiftQ and choose INPUT then allocate the keyboard keys you want to the custom column, leaving the main keyboard column with arrow keys and shift. This means that the keyboard and the mini-pad have different commands independently it’s fantastic!
One word of caution though, mini keypads tend to come with pre-assigned keys. Ours was pre-assigned to 1, 2 and 3 and so when we, initially, assigned 1,2 and 3 to left, right and brakes, we had to change the CADEsport power ups from 1,2 and 3 to other keys. So, we then searched out some software that allowed us to change the settings in the keypad to A,S and D instead of 1, 2 and 3 (see below). This meant we could keep CADEsport power ups allocations as numeric and also this meant that the keypad now coincided with Wahoo RGT’s fixed settings of A and D.
There are numerous suppliers of these keypads on eBay and Amazon with various brand names, but we suspect they mostly operate on the Sayo software, especially if they come from the east. We have a link to the software below. It seems that this software works on various differently branded but identical looking keypads, so if the one above is sold out, it should work on similar looking ones we believe.
Unfortunately our mini keypad came with no instructions, nor any link to the software that allows reallocation of keys. Consequently, we have set out below how this key reallocation can be done using the Sayo software. Firstly, use the link below to dowload the software:
PC https://dl.sayobot.cn/setting.zip
Mac https://sayodevice.com/help/unix
WE RECOMMEND THE THREE BUTTON OPTION AS OUR FAVOURITE SOLUTION FOR CADEsport
MOVING ON TO Wahoo RGT SOLUTIONS:
WahooRGT SOLUTION 1: THE Wahoo Kickr STEER
There is no doubt that this is a great solution and it is quite ingenious. The paddles on the side can be pressed from the handlebars to make the phone tilt and steer the bike. But is is expensive. A great design, but if it is a bit too pricy for you, we suggest that you choose the three key mini keypad option below: The one other possible downside is that it can block a lot of airflow from your fan, depending on your set up.
Wahoo RGT SOLUTION 2: THE MINI KEYPAD
We actually found that the rubber bands on the Wraptor phone mount held the three key min keyboard on the handlebars but some cable ties, rubber bands, string and blue tack would probably suffice…. there’s no need to spend a lot of money on a fixing.
Read above in the CADEsport section to see how to set this up. There are numerous suppliers of these on eBay and Amazon and we have a link to the software above, again, in the CADEsport section.
Wahoo RGT SOLUTION 3: THE ROTATING HANDLEBAR MOUNT
Similarly, see above in the CADEsport section for the details. This is a great bit of kit but is really a third choice for Wahoo RGT because whilst we found that you can tilt it if mounted on the stem, it is not purposely designed to do so. If, for any reason that you don’t want either of the two solutions above, then it is worth a try on Wahoo RGT, whilst it is a good choice for CADEsport.
ZWIFT … The Zwift Steer
Where the Zwift Steer has really cracked this, is that the steering control is on the drops, and so is the braking. This is a natural position and is closer to real life riding than the others. It is intuitive, feels natural and is easy to master. The problem, at the time of writing, is that all of this isn’t really catered for on Zwift’s existing platform offering … we await new developments, but if this could be made to work with CADEsport, then we’d be very excited!