Forum home› Road cycling forum› Indoor training and turbo forum

Zwift in the garden shed

colcolcolcol Posts: 10
in Indoor training and turbo forum
Wanting to try zwift but have the bike in the garden shed usually just watch youtube videos on WiFi. Will I be disappointed with connection using zwift, i can't try it until I get a new laptop or tablet as the current ones don't work with zwift. Don't want to spend £ and then there isn't enough connection speed.

Posts

  • pblakeneypblakeney Posts: 22,378
    Try using your phone as a test.
    A laptop or tablet will be similar but with a larger screen.
    The above may be fact, or fiction, I may be serious, I may be jesting.
    I am not sure. You have no chance.
    Veronese68 wrote:
    PB is the most sensible person on here.
  • wavefrontwavefront Posts: 321
    An alternative thought…..I assume you have power in your shed? I used those plugs with the Ethernet cables to pipe my internet down the power line into my shed - worked a treat for me but it does depend on how your house /shed is wired. I was using Zwift, iplayer, and streaming music all at the same time.

    See if you can borrow a laptop to try out a set of plugs (they’re £15-20).
  • super_davosuper_davo Posts: 845
    I've installed a WiFi mesh system with a node in the shed.

    Not too expensive - my set are Tenda Nova MW5s which were about £50 for 3 (and seen very good deals on them recently, check HotUKDeals).

    Main advantage is that it sorts the WiFi in the whole house and garden. I have absolutely no dead spots in my house upstairs or downstairs (which has been extended in a fairly convoluted way). Most ISP routers don't give the best range or performance so even a basic set up with a second node close to the garden should give a significant boost.
  • wavefrontwavefront Posts: 321
    colcol said:

    Wanting to try zwift but have the bike in the garden shed usually just watch youtube videos on WiFi. Will I be disappointed with connection using zwift, i can't try it until I get a new laptop or tablet as the current ones don't work with zwift. Don't want to spend £ and then there isn't enough connection speed.

    I realise I don’t answer the question!. I might be wrong but I suspect that Zwift uses less bandwidth than YouTube videos. The software sits on your machine to do the hard work with the graphics, and streams ‘minimal data’ to change positions of other riders etc. If you can watch YouTube I’d be inclined to think you could use Zwift.
  • colcolcolcol Posts: 10
    My phone won't run zwift, got a hold of another ipad to give it a try seems to work so far, will give it a good test later
  • First.AspectFirst.Aspect Posts: 11,773
    Your internet can't be any worse than mine.

    At the hub we still have only about 6-7 MBps. I Zwift in my shed via a simple TPlink booster, which is probably less than 5 down there. Works fine. There might be a higher graphics resolution available to me in theory, but really you have other things to worry about than that when you are zwifting.
  • DeVlaeminckDeVlaeminck Posts: 8,354
    Give it a go - the sign of a WiFi drop out is everyone else in zwift disappears so you are riding alone - used to happen to me in the garage at our previous house but the WiFi was really weak and even there it was infrequent enough to only be a minor annoyance.
    [Castle Donington Ladies FC - going up in '22]
  • DefbladeDefblade Posts: 118
    wavefront said:

    colcol said:

    Wanting to try zwift but have the bike in the garden shed usually just watch youtube videos on WiFi. Will I be disappointed with connection using zwift, i can't try it until I get a new laptop or tablet as the current ones don't work with zwift. Don't want to spend £ and then there isn't enough connection speed.

    I realise I don’t answer the question!. I might be wrong but I suspect that Zwift uses less bandwidth than YouTube videos. The software sits on your machine to do the hard work with the graphics, and streams ‘minimal data’ to change positions of other riders etc. If you can watch YouTube I’d be inclined to think you could use Zwift.
    For me, Zwift is a massive bandwidth hog for the PC I run it on, and I've seen similar comments from others. It doesn't take all the actual bandwidth on my network, but I just can't run anything else from the internet on the PC at the same time. Weird. But so long as I use my phone to stream Planet Rock instead, it's all good ;)
  • pblakeneypblakeney Posts: 22,378
    Defblade said:

    wavefront said:

    colcol said:

    Wanting to try zwift but have the bike in the garden shed usually just watch youtube videos on WiFi. Will I be disappointed with connection using zwift, i can't try it until I get a new laptop or tablet as the current ones don't work with zwift. Don't want to spend £ and then there isn't enough connection speed.

    I realise I don’t answer the question!. I might be wrong but I suspect that Zwift uses less bandwidth than YouTube videos. The software sits on your machine to do the hard work with the graphics, and streams ‘minimal data’ to change positions of other riders etc. If you can watch YouTube I’d be inclined to think you could use Zwift.
    For me, Zwift is a massive bandwidth hog for the PC I run it on, and I've seen similar comments from others. It doesn't take all the actual bandwidth on my network, but I just can't run anything else from the internet on the PC at the same time. Weird. But so long as I use my phone to stream Planet Rock instead, it's all good ;)
    Possibly processor related rather than bandwidth.
    The above may be fact, or fiction, I may be serious, I may be jesting.
    I am not sure. You have no chance.
    Veronese68 wrote:
    PB is the most sensible person on here.
  • DefbladeDefblade Posts: 118
    pblakeney said:

    Defblade said:

    wavefront said:

    colcol said:

    Wanting to try zwift but have the bike in the garden shed usually just watch youtube videos on WiFi. Will I be disappointed with connection using zwift, i can't try it until I get a new laptop or tablet as the current ones don't work with zwift. Don't want to spend £ and then there isn't enough connection speed.

    I realise I don’t answer the question!. I might be wrong but I suspect that Zwift uses less bandwidth than YouTube videos. The software sits on your machine to do the hard work with the graphics, and streams ‘minimal data’ to change positions of other riders etc. If you can watch YouTube I’d be inclined to think you could use Zwift.
    For me, Zwift is a massive bandwidth hog for the PC I run it on, and I've seen similar comments from others. It doesn't take all the actual bandwidth on my network, but I just can't run anything else from the internet on the PC at the same time. Weird. But so long as I use my phone to stream Planet Rock instead, it's all good ;)
    Possibly processor related rather than bandwidth.
    Could well be, I am running it on a potato.
    Although I did upgrade the potato a while ago, at a total cost of £35 for both a CPU and GPU from ebay... It now plays in the very lowest settings fairly smoothly, most of the time ;)

  • vincesummerskRoxcBTrvincesummerskRoxcBTr Posts: 299
    Ii changed from an old windows 7 laptop on which Zwift kept hanging up, often for 20 seconds or more.
    Works fine on the refurbed windows 10 machine.
Sign In or Register to comment.