I would be willing to pay for any tool that allowed my treadmill, Nordictrack 2450, to integrate with zwift. I’m willing to pay for treadtracker but not available right now, NPE Gem Retro but not compatible with Norditrack, and footpods which I have. An app based solution seems ideal.
others can correct what i write here if i’m wrong, but i think i’m right.
there is 1-way communication between zwift and your treadmill. your treadmill talks, zwift listens. whatever you do, your treadmill isn’t going to react to a command from zwift. yet.
there’s an ethernet port in the back of many treadmills. it’s called the CSAFE port. the treadmill is ready for the hack. wahoo made a thing a few years ago called the GymConnect, and it’s for this purpose. it’s since sold GymConnect to another company but the thing is still made.
i have a woodway and there are 3 ways i can zwift: footpod, GymConnect and the treadmill’s own bluetooth signal it sends. they all do the same thing. one is not better than the other, unless the footpod is either slightly more or slightly less accurate (yes, apparently treadmills are not always accurate). the CSAFE part, with the GymConnect installed, and the bluetooth signal the mill emits, do precisely the same thing. neither accepts a signal from zwift and executes based on that signal.
zwift isn’t going to tell your treadmill to speed up or slow down. i don’t think it’ll make that command. what i could see zwift doing is telling your treadmill to incline, or to decline to flat ground. what zwift would need to do, i think, is come up with an algorithm that scales the speed of the mill up or down as the mill inclines, that is, if you’re running along at 7min pace and zwift tells the mill to go from flat ground to a 4 percent incline, the mill would automatically back the pace down to, say, 7:30, or 8:00, whatever the appropriate deceleration. then the user would manually change the speed to suit.
this is if zwift gets to the point where it sends a command signal out. which i think it will, eventually. but it doesn’t yet. so, it’d take a pretty serious hack to tweeze out code that allowed that to happen absent zwift’s help, and zwift will not help you to do that. zwift will send commands to your treadmill when it’s ready, and in that case the CSAFE port will actually have a use. as of now, with zwift, its only value is to send a BLE signal, but your computer is already likely to send that signal.