Back in 2022, I wrote about my struggles with the Technogym Skillbike smart trainer. Only Zwift and Rouvy worked with it, neither of which runs well on a small screen. My Garmin Fenix 7S watch couldn’t connect to it either. Now, a few years later, I have some updates.
(I also updated the original post.)
After a long break from using the Skillbike, I finally tried connecting it to my Garmin watch again.1 This time, it worked! I was able to pair the Skillbike with my Garmin Fenix 7S, and it stayed connected for the entire ride. The watch controlled the Skillbike’s resistance and recorded all the relevant data, including power, cadence, and heart rate. The data synced seamlessly to Garmin Connect, and I was able to see my training metrics and suggested workouts on my watch as expected.
It’s not smooth sailing yet, though. The Skillbike’s and/or Garmin’s (lol) ANT+ implementation is still a bit finicky:
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The Skillbike’s ANT+ ID changes every time it’s powered on, so I have to re-pair it with my watch each time. This is annoying, but Garmin usually detects the Skillbike quickly, and pairing takes just a few seconds.
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It’s necessary to pair the Skillbike with the watch before starting a workout. Otherwise, the watch won’t set the initial resistance correctly, and the workout will be off. It’s a nuisance, but it works fine as long as I remember to pair them in the right order.
Getting a meaningful structured workout onto the watch isn’t straightforward, either. Garmin Connect doesn’t include a cycling workout library. Fortunately, https://intervals.icu/ integrates with Garmin Connect, letting you create and upload structured workouts. It also offers plenty of pre-made workouts from the community. As we’ve come to expect, there are quirks here, too:
- It’s not possible to configure a “power range” for indoor workouts. As a result, the watch screams and vibrates whenever my power doesn’t match the target exactly—which, realistically, it never does. This is super annoying, and the only workaround is to clear the “Indoor” checkbox manually for every planned workout, which is tedious and error-prone.
Finally, the watch shows only the current step, not an overview of the entire workout.
I’d prefer to use a simple app like https://auuki.com/ on my phone to
control the Skillbike, but last time I checked, it couldn’t control the
Skillbike’s resistance. It should be easy to look at how qdomyos-zwift
does it, and open a pull request to Auuki. If only I enjoyed indoor cycling
enough to actually do that.
(This post was on the back burner for a long while, but I finally got around to posting it after seeing DC Rainmaker’s post about cycling trainer apps. Apparently, there are many other apps one can try. If only there was a reasonable chance that they would work with the Skillbike…)
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This was inspired by an email from someone who got the Skillbike working via qdomyos-zwift. I tried the app on my Android phone and eventually got it working, although it took a little more effort than expected: I had to build a snapshot of the app from source with a little patch to make it recognise our Skillbike. The setup was quite complicated though, as QZ works as a bridge between the Skillbike and another device/app. This normally requires a second phone, although some apps (like Zwift) can connect on the same phone. It could maybe execute a structured workout itself, but the user interface is a bit too weird. I exchanged a few emails with the author, but ultimately gave up.
And then I tried getting the Skillbike working with Garmin instead, just out of curiosity… ↩