Using Bluetooth or an Ant + Dongle on Zwift should be pretty straight forward. But with me as luck would have it I've been having all sorts of problems.
For 5 months my laptop and Zwift had been working in harmony via bluetooth with absolutely no issues.Then as sometimes happens my laptop decided to throw a wobbly and crashed big time. Basically it broke, wiping out everything, suffice to say I had to get another laptop.
So buying a new laptop is never easy and I made the mistake of buying cheap (at the time I like to think bargain) but obviously this proved to be wrong! It worked, but very slowly and dropouts occurred with regularity, what was I to do? My wife came up with the suggestion of me taking her laptop, a far superior one to the one I had just bought and she taking the inferior for just her emails and bits and bobs.
Trying my wife's laptop seemed to work reasonably well, certainly better than the last attempt and so we swapped. After about 2 attempts on Zwift, the bluetooth started to play up. it kept dropping out until finally the laptop refused to pick up the Suito smart trainer. It could see it, but refused to add it to the laptop devices.
Reading up on Zwift forums, I went through my smart phone, picking up via bluetooth on the phone and then via wireless from the phone to the laptop. This seemed to work for a while, but I always felt it was edgy and on the border of crashing. Finally I decided it was time to go for a trial with an ant/dongle connection and duly ordered off eBay.
I had also ordered an extension USB cable so the ant could lay directly under the smart trainer. All this duly arrived and when set up it worked beautifully for about 3 rides. Then one morning on a Watopia mountain ride it failed after 5 minutes, then it crashed the next day on the same mountain ride just as I was finishing, very annoying to say the least.
Now I am at the stage of making sure I don't sweat on the ant, have good connections, (buying a new and better USB extension). Hopefully this will sort out the issues, but I wouldn't hold my breath!
