Update Your Lemond Trainer, WattBox ANT+ Power Meter now Shipping

@timmy, @FJ, That is a big exaggeration which everyone keeps repeating.

Do you actually know how loud a jet engine is during takeoff? It’s about 140dB. For comparison, a jackhammer or chain saw runs at 100dB. Decibel is a logarithmic unit. When the level of a sound is increased by 10dB, the subjective loudness roughly doubles, whereas the sound power actually increases by a factor of 10. The Lemond Revolution is nowhere near that decibel level. It sounds more like a vacuum cleaner (80dB – 90dB) when use at full speed. It’s not even close to a jackhammer much less a jet engine.

I would not use this trainer if you live in an apartment with sensitive neighbors but if you have a house with a separate room for exercise or a garage, this trainer will do just fine and it is the best at road feel than many trainers that I have tried.

@David

Mark seems to have a better technical grasp of things than myself. That said, I have the watt box and have tried numerous times to have it display speed and distance info to my Garmin Edge 705. It appears to only display power. I purchased the trainer and watt box for its simplicity (no electric outlet or computer / iOS device required), thus far, getting the watt box to work as described on their webpage and facebook forum (i.e., displays EVERYTHING but cadence via ANT+) has been a problem.

@Mark

Are you positive that the watt box does not send speed/distance info via ANT+? The folks at Lemond say it does and some folks have gotten it to display that info. I am just wondering if we may have received units that are defective.

I’ve been riding the trainer with the watt box for about 1 week. I really like the trainer. I recently synced my Garmin 500, but I can’t get it to display speed. I’ve got cadence and power, but not speed. I continue to communicate with Lemond customer service, they’ve been helpful, but I still can’t display speed. Still a work in progress.

This is for those having issues with their Watt Box not showing speed, or showing cadence and power only on their Garmin. This applies only to Garmin devices and I do not know any other information

As has been discussed on the Lemond Facebook page, it is possible to get three of the four outputs displayed on your Garmin device — Speed, Distance, and power — if you are using a GSC-10 speed/cadence sensor.

In order to get all three to display you need to go to your bike profile and change your speed/cadence sensor settings. To do this you need to go to menu -> bike settings -> bike profiles -> [bike profile you’re using for your Lemond] -> Ant+ Speed/Cadence -> sensor details -> sensor type.

Under Sensor Type select “Speed and Cadence”.

After doing this and a sensor scan, you will pick up the speed sensor output from the Watt Box. This will allow you to get speed, distance, and power readings on your Garmin.

Unfortunately, you can’t get the cadence sensor from the GSC-10 for some reason, even if you hand enter the Ant+ ID number for the cadence sensor in the sensor settings. Lemond is aware of this and is working to resolve the issue.

The workaround is to use a cadence-only sensor. If you do that you will be able to add cadence data and thus able to have speed, distance, cadence, and power readings. However, this probably having to remove your GSC-10 sensor. This isn’t convenient if you want to switch between road use where you need/want speed and cadence data from the GSC-10 and using with your Revolution since the GSC-10 is held down with zip ties.

Solution?? Switching to Bontrager’s cadence sensor and their speed/cadence sensor is an option. They are held down with O-rings / “industrial rubber bands”, and are thus easy to swap out. The downside is having to purchase two new sensors. But it will do the job.

It’s a bummer, but the Watt Box itself does work very well. Getting all of the data you want is another story.

Teething issues always suck.

You won’t get the GSC-10 to output speed only. The speed reading you need is the one from the Watt Box itself.

With the GSC-10 attached to your bike and your Garmin device set to “speed and cadence”, you will now be able to pick up the speed and power numbers from the Watt Box and with the speed number the Watt Box will be able to calculate your distance. What you will not get is the cadence, which is for the reasons you noted above.

Instructions on how to set the Garmin up are in my post above if you have an 800 or 810. I do not know the precise steps for the 500 or 510.

You will get speed, power, distance, and cadence once you attach a cadence only sensor to your bike. As I said above, for ease of use and convenience I went with the Bontrager sensors since they don’t use zip ties. That way I can switch bike profiles and use the speed/cadence sensor (akin to the GSC-10) when on the road and the cadence only sensor when on the Lemond.

Does the watt box require calibration before each use?

The GSC-10 can’t be used in cadence only mode, i’ve been using 2x GSC-10 and trainer road to get power from my lemond revolution.

i wanted to use the speed from one and the cadence from the other as the speed sensor arm can be tilted towards the small magnet on the revolution. I’ve had to live with speed and trainer roads approximation of power.

The garmin head unit will only see the GSC as speed and cadence so you can have it display cadence with watt box and have no speed or switch to sigma / bontrager cadence sensor. As above no real need for speed data with the GPS, but suppose its back up in the trees etc…

5 minutes after fitting everything working fine, thanks for launching this after so long. And boig thanks to Merlin Cycles half price offer!

I have had the LeMond revolution for a couple of years now and it’s been a love-hate relationship. I had a Blackburn Tech mag 6 before the LR. As far as feel…it’s simply amazing and I love it. Noise was an issue in my townhouse but now have detached garage and it’s not anywhere close to an issue…neighbors don’t seem to care either. HOWEVER, I hate have to cob together the speed/cadence sensor so I can use my trainerroad/sufferfest combo. I ride my TT bike (trek SC 7.5) and I can’t use the integrated electronics on it. What I am hoping is that I can with the Watt box, with the bontrager cadence/speed sensor and get power/cadence/speed and not have to go through zip tie craziness every time I want to take it off the trainer.

Erik I received my wattbox today and same problem as you had. Screws were too small so I bodged these with some ptfe tape for now until I come across some screws that will fit. Also my bike frame didn’t fit over the wattbox so I removed the plastic cover so it fits and works fine now. I’m awaiting a bontrager cadence sensor but for now I have power, speed and distance displayed on my garmin 800. Good luck.

Yeah, screws didn’t fit for me either and my compact frame also hit against the Wattbox. After working with the support guys for a while, eventually I just took off the cover and used zip ties.

Kinda ghetto, but it works. Been using it that way for 7 months now.

Cheers!

I’ve just picked up my first LeMond Revolution and am just in the process of getting it set-up. It’s an LR 1.0

At the moment, I use the Polar CS600X for heart-rate, cycling and GPS data – it uses seperate speed and cadence sensors.

I want to train a little more intelligently this winter and get some power data whilst training indoors on the LR. I can see that my first purchase needs to be the Wattbox to actually have the speed/power data sent somewhere.

However, the Polar device already has separate speed and cadence sensors. I know that the cadence will be fine to continue to use, but I am wondering if anyone happens to know whether the CS600X will receive the speed and power data from the Wattbox? I already know that the Polar device “can” receive power data as they talk about it receiving power data from the LOOK Keo pedal set, so I am kind of assuming that it’s being sent via the ANT+ standard, but I can’t see anywhere on the Polar website that actually says whether it’s ANT+ or not!

It would obviously be awesomely helpful if it was… however, if not, I would be extremely appreciative of any other users detailing exactly what kit they are using to gather speed / power data whilst using the LR? If I have to – I’ll get a Garmin somethingorother and use it, but I’d rather avoid having to experiment the hard way!!

Many thanks

Richard

My two cents…I’ve had my revolution for two years and have used the WattBox for one year. I have a Suunto Ambit2 and a Bontrager cadence sensor. Using sticky velcro strips I’ve velcro’d a speed sensor to the rear of the Revolution’s arm and aligned it with the magnet embedded in the trainer’s freewheel. Works fine.

I’ve had my Revolution 1.0 since it came out and bought a Watt Box pretty quickly too and think together they make the perfect combination for dedicated trainer work. With an ANT+ cadence sensor I get all the data I need to train and improve. I mostly focus and time and training load so have no need for speed and distance. They broadcast perfectly to my Edge 500 and to my laptop with an ANT+ stick for Trainer Road, or any other online training tool. It is a loud, heavy and a pain to transport but rides better than any other trainer I’ve tried. Like someone else said on here – it pushes you to ride harder.

I have been following this thread as I have been trying to get my revolution up and running. I upgraded the 10 speed to 11 speed.

Prior to that I was using a bont speed sensor nd my joule 3 to pick up speed and cadence etc.

This year I am picking up nothing from the speed sensor. I assume its the sensor and am not keen to buy another. They should lastmore htan one battery change.

Lemond have had an out of stock on the wattbox all 2015. They’ve even stopped giving estimates of instock, and ignoring queries (from me at least.) I’d check in once every few months and finally got them to refund my pre-order.

This is a frustrating issue. I’ll wait until lemond supply the wattbox or announce their bankruptcy. Its a lot more complicated than it shoudl be

I have a Garmin 810 and use one of the newer, crank arm mounted cadence/speed sensors also from Garmin. No need to do anything special and I get speed, cadence, power and distance readings.