Stages Power Meter ANT Only Drop Outs.

JesseD

Man Of Lard wrote:

I think it's the hardware - they have a compromised antenna design and are running it at a lower power than otherwise necessary to eke out extra battery life, but if it gets cold that doesn't matter anyway because you can measure it in minutes.

Yep thats what I meant

JesseD

chrisw12 wrote:

Jesse. Stages gen2 with Garmin 510 for me.

If I put the Garmin on the stem, 0 dropouts. If I put it on the bar, intermittent drop outs. If I use an out front mount, lots of dropouts.

For me the distance from Garmin to crank seems to be critical

Be interesting to see if if this issues is more prevalent on bigger bikes then, mine is a large of a 56cm frame with a 110mm stem, lerger riders with a bigger distance between the garmin and cranks,or even the stem and crank must suffer more as the distance must be greater?

How do the crank based ones fair/get it right with less drop outs as they are the same distance away?

Makes you wonder eh!

chrisw12

Man Of Lard wrote:

You'll probably find its the obstruction caused by the bars not the distance. But not seemingly an issue for 4iiii or Pioneer...

That's interesting, i tried the Garmin on the same side on the bars as the stages so they would have had a direct line with no bike in the way but of course, I forgot that my arms would be in the way in certain positions. What I should have done is check to see if the dropouts happened in certain positions.

By the way, I also tried an out front mount on a MTb with shorter reach and no dropouts. I thought the reason was the shorter distance but as said above, it could have been because my arms were out if the way on the mtb.

Stol1975

I've had this issue with a gen2 ultegra 6800 and the garmin 520. My gen1 stages never had an issue with power data drop but the gen2 which I've had on warranty drops when on the out front mount. It's so frustrating so thought I'd get a bike computer that has Bluetooth connectivity to power meters and so I plumped for the wahoo elemnt bolt. Since I did this I've not had one power dropout. In short the wahoo elemnt bolt is effing amazing and dumps on garmin from a great height. Go and get one and solve your dropout issues. I've never had to connect it over Bluetooth cause it's never dropped the Ant+ sisignal once.

JesseD

Replacement Stages 6800 received and fitted to the bike and on second ride out today and yep the power and cadence drop outs are still there!

Paired up via the phone app and the Garmin 520 head unit but the problem is still there, I read the manual and it says not to use the out front mount which is crap as virtually everyone uses the out front mount and chucking it on the stem looks terrible.

Looks like this one is going back as well

JesseD

Hadn't had time to send the replacement stages back before the weekend as I was away, picked up the bike yesterday morning to ride to work and the battery was completely dead so popped into my lbs who gave me another Duracell battery to pop in there which I did and all was fine.

Until this morning, where the battery was completely dead again, popped into my LBS again who were very apologetic and they are now sending this one back and getting me a replacement again.

Was speaking to some other guys in the shop who also have Stages PM's and all of them have had 3 or 4 replacements!! This must be costing Stages a fortune!

To be fair to my LBS they have said that we can look at other options such as pedal based PM's, I did mention crank based power meters but they seem to be way outside my price bracket.

Anyone have any views on some of the pedal based systems, the Power-tap ones were mentioned by my LBS?