How To Setup Zwift on a Laptop With Bluetooth

How I set up Zwift on a laptop with bluetooth..

Last February I signed up for Zwift, the on-line turbo training, multi-player cycle app and took advantage of the free monthly KMs but it didn’t take very long before, just like little Oliver Twist, I wanted more.

Up until now I had been running Zwift on my iphone with the aid of several bloutooth sensors. This was all fine and dandy but I quickly found that the screen was far to small to see any of the stats and information so I set about working out how to get it on a bigger screen.

The obvious candidate was my MacBook Pro with its 15 inch retina display.

To get everything working I first had to download and install the Zwift app from the Zwift website. This is a free download and you can chose between Mac or Windows for the PC.

So even though this film is about how I set up Zwift on my Macbook, the instructions that I’m about to give should also work equally as well for anyone with a bluetooth enabled PC.

Once I’d installed the app and logged in, I discovered that the free 25 kms that I had been using with the iPhone app had turned in to a free seven day trial. I already knew that I enjoyed using Zwift so I decided to take the plunge and start paying the monthly subscription, especially now that I thoughtI would get full use out of it seeing as Winter was here and it was cold, wet and dark outside. Fortunately for me, I was also able to take advantage of the lower subscription rate rather than the recent price increase.

Sadly, my Turbo trainer isn’t a smart one; just a plain old mechanical one without any sensors of its it own. Instead information is sent to the laptop and on to the Zwift app via a bluetooth HR sensor and a bluetooth combination speed and cadence sensor. Both of these can be bought on Amazon or Ebay for less than £10 or $15.

Before anything would work, I had to pair these sensors with the app. To do this I opened it up, and while wearing the HR sensor, clicked on search. Zwift sees my dual cadence and speed sensor as two separate devices so I first clicked search for the cadence sensor and then search for the speed sensor.

Once paired, I was able to start riding and join in the fun.

As I said, my turbo trainer isn’t a smart one so it doesn’t receive any gradient information from the app meaning that it doesn’t get harder to pedal as the virtual gradient increases but what I have noticed though, is that it does decrease my speed as I am climbing so I have to pedal faster to maintain the same speed.

So far, it all works smoothly and I’m really enjoying the experience. But how long will it be before I want an even bigger screen?? Well thats anybody’s guess. I’ve already downloaded the app to my iMac with its 21 inch screen but getting it in to the garage every time I want a zwift session might end up being more trouble than its worth.

On the other hand though, my local gym has a big projector in their spinning studio, so a conversation with the management there might be worth having.

Watch this space!

If you would like to follow my efforts on the bike you can follow me on Strava. My profile is here: http://www.strava.com/athletes/515946