A few random questions I haven’t found the answer to yet.
First, I found the recent thread about the Dec 7 GC 3.0 update that fixed the Computrainer USB to serial adapter issue. That was timely, as I was HOPING to use GC to log data on my CT for an FTP test today. My situation is that I have a bike on the CT with a Garmin GSC-10 on it and I use a Garmin ANT+ HRM. But the bike has no power meter, and I needed power data. But I really wanted ONE data set with HRM, cadence, and Power in it, and didn’t want to have to dig out a Polar HRM and use a damned Windows machine.
In theory, I think I could have used GC for this. It appears that 3.0 should now support getting Power data from the Computrainer itself. It should also support ANT+ devices like the GSC-10 and the ANT+ HRM. So I went to try the new version but failed miserably at getting GC to work with the Garmin ANT+ USB stick. I have the USB2 version. According to the wiki page, it says to use modprobe to find it, but I’m using Lion with doesn’t have modprobe and instead uses IOKIT. But I don’t see any docs on getting GC to work with newer OS X releases using IOKIT. I went into Preferences->Devices and it did do a “scan”, but I can’t tell if it’s looking for the ANT+ stick, or if it was talking to the ANT+ stick and not finding any devices. I was wearing the HRM and it should have been “alive” at that point. shrug Any pointers on this part would be welcome. Since I couldn’t solve THIS issue, I didn’t even try the CT with GC. I dropped back and punted and swapped a bike into the CT that DOES have an ANT+ power meter and GSC-10 and just logged with my Edge 800.
But moving forward, I’d really rather use the other bike and GC, so help in configuring this would be welcome.
Next, a semi-related question: has anyone written any software to let a computer with a USB ANT+ stick that’s also got a Computrainer plugged in become a VIRTUAL power meter? Ie. the ANT+ stick broadcasts as if it were a power meter and just passes through the Computrainer power data? Or can this be done? That way one could just use the Computrainer head to set power manually and then log that along with their other data to something like an Edge 800 (or any device that logs ANT+ power data). I see ctANT+ is kind of the opposite of this, and it’s cool and all, but I’m trying to get away from Windows completely.
If it hasn’t been done but there’s no fundamental reason why it can’t, I may be interested in doing an open source project to make that happen. I just wanted to ask here if there’s a fundamental reason why it can’t (like the ANT+ stick not being able to really be a “client” and can only be a “host” or something dumb).
–Donnie
This is kind of a shame, though, as it’s a pretty high priority for me. I suddenly find myself with little use for GC if I can’t do that. Paying for ctANT+ and going back to the Windows machine appears to be my only option for using ANT+ HRM and cadence and CT power all in one data set.