Zwift Chat

Page may contain affiliate links. Please see terms for details.

Whorty

Gets free watts from the Atom ;)
Location
Wiltshire
I'm not sure I want to publicly publicise the Kickr bike thing but I'm tempted to try it with the Neo bike.....purely for hypothetical research reasons of course 😇

I don't think anyone on here has the kickr, so probably safe saying it 👍
 

Peter Salt

Bittersweet
Location
Yorkshire, UK
I belive in elite races now they all have the same bike effectively (they can choose any bike/wheels so they match sponsors etc but whatever we see them riding on screen, they all have the same performance dynamics) so I guess this takes away the incentive to do what Jeffers did.

That "Nowhere Fast" podcast that @mjd1988 linked to was a good listen - I looked at their feed and they did a podcast on cheating on Zwift 2 years ago (episode 9) which I'm halfway through listening to, and they called out the exact way Eddie Hoole cheated as a viable possibility back then, so it's been known about for ages (typical Zwift!)

They also made the good point in the recent podcast that had he not done that ridiculous and impossible last 5 minutes or so at over 8w/kg, and instead stayed at the front and just edged out the win he may well have got away with it - as he has been for quite some time it seems.

Did anyone hear about the "hack" to get higher watts out of a Kickr bike that a friend of one of the guys on the podcast accidentally discovered? 🤦‍♂️
After reading the document again, I'm not entirely sure that he used this method. It mentions he agreed to take part in a performance test and brought his own power meter pedals. The pedals were off by 25% compared to what they measured independently. He couldn't have used the method presented in the DefCon clip linked by DCR as that requires another device.
 

JuhaL

Guru
New map is coming.
 

bridgy

Legendary Member
Location
Cheddar
That's the thing isn't it? Everyone's focussed on the clever software cheats, but cheating with hardware would be pretty-much undetectable with remote racing.

In the lower Cat community racing, yes. But in the elite racing with things like dual recording and standardised equipment (I believe for World Champs they're all sent the same trainer to use), and needing to film yourself etc. then I think you do need some kind of software hack really to cheat the system.

To be fair I think a lot of "cheating" in the general community is just shoddy, innacurate equipment (I must dig out that old Bkool trainer some time :okay:). Some people I'm sure innocently ride on dodgy equipment and are in blissful ignorance that they're much better than they ought to be, whilst others no doubt are fully aware and carry on anyway because they like winning or being flattered by the numbers they appear to be putting out.

The ones that really go out of their way to actively cheat are on another level IMO
 

bridgy

Legendary Member
Location
Cheddar
After reading the document again, I'm not entirely sure that he used this method. It mentions he agreed to take part in a performance test and brought his own power meter pedals. The pedals were off by 25% compared to what they measured independently. He couldn't have used the method presented in the DefCon clip linked by DCR as that requires another device.

I'm not sure I follow what you're saying? I think it's generally accepted that he intercepted the ant+ data from his trainer and somehow increased the reported power data using some software, which then matched his over-reporting power meter. Why do you think he couldn't have used that kind of method?
 

Peter Salt

Bittersweet
Location
Yorkshire, UK
I'm not sure I follow what you're saying? I think it's generally accepted that he intercepted the ant+ data from his trainer and somehow increased the reported power data using some software, which then matched his over-reporting power meter. Why do you think he couldn't have used that kind of method?
From the doc.:

To give the rider the maximum possible benefit of the doubt, Zwift contacted them with the above evidence and offered them the opportunity to demonstrate that they were capable of such a world class performance in an independent test.
The rider accepted the offer and conducted an independent test of their maximum average power output while simultaneously using the same powermeter that they used for the above named event. This test took them 4 minutes 47 seconds to complete with the following results.
• Their powermeter showed an average power output of 511 Watts.
• The independent measurement of their average power output was approx. 400 Watts.
This therefore conclusively demonstrated that their powermeter gave results that were broadly consistent with their performance in the above named event, but was very significantly miscalibrated (over-reading by greater than 25%) compared to the power they were actually producing.


The method you mentioned requires another device - a computer like a Raspberry Pi or something like that. You plug the Ant+ dongle to that, it runs some wizardry ant spits out altered data at the other end. He couldn't have showed up to an independent test with his own dongle and developer board :laugh:
 

bridgy

Legendary Member
Location
Cheddar
From the doc.:

To give the rider the maximum possible benefit of the doubt, Zwift contacted them with the above evidence and offered them the opportunity to demonstrate that they were capable of such a world class performance in an independent test.
The rider accepted the offer and conducted an independent test of their maximum average power output while simultaneously using the same powermeter that they used for the above named event. This test took them 4 minutes 47 seconds to complete with the following results.
• Their powermeter showed an average power output of 511 Watts.
• The independent measurement of their average power output was approx. 400 Watts.
This therefore conclusively demonstrated that their powermeter gave results that were broadly consistent with their performance in the above named event, but was very significantly miscalibrated (over-reading by greater than 25%) compared to the power they were actually producing.


The method you mentioned requires another device - a computer like a Raspberry Pi or something like that. You plug the Ant+ dongle to that, it runs some wizardry ant spits out altered data at the other end. He couldn't have showed up to an independent test with his own dongle and developer board :laugh:

He didn't need to - his PM pedals were over reporting by 25% anyway.

His race performance data came from his trainer not his pedals - they were just used for the dual recording back up data. It's his trainer than needed the software intervention and the investigation suggested that's what he did (eg the disconnection of a data channel just before the race etc)
 
Top Bottom