In December, I started using a small red box with my original Peloton bike. That little red box did exactly one thing: Send me power, cadence, and speed via Bluetooth Smart to third-party apps and watches – like a Zwift or a Garmin watch. Intelligenate’s DFC drive is meant to be a set and forget it. Simply connect it to your Peloton bike and it will relay your power and cadence numbers to whatever you want. This is remarkable because neither Peloton Bike nor Bike + have built-in data transmissions of your power or cadence.
For many families who own a Peloton bike, this means you wouldn’t be able to use it with platforms like Zwift or TrainerRoad without installing third-party power meter pedals – which obviously increases the cost of the bike. Sure, you could upload those apps to your bike, but you couldn’t access that power data. But … now you can.
I’ve been using this device for about four months now and honestly it’s one of the only perfect devices I’ve ever tested. It just works. That being said, keep in mind that the unit I’m testing is technically a prototype and also slightly different from the final product (which has multiple ports, especially USB-C ports for Peloton Bike +).
Now, we’re going to keep this post fast because … well … it should be fast – it’s not complicated.
How it works:
DFC means “Data Fitness Connector”, and the little red box is smaller than a pack of books. In essence, the box acts as an intermediary, quietly listening to the power data transmitted from the Peloton Bike sensor to the display. Normally, it is connected by a simple 3.5 mm cable that you connect directly to the display. However, DFC comes with an additional cable, so connect the original cable to the red DFC box and then from there connect the DFC box to the display. Then connect the USB cable to the Peloton USB port. This is just to provide power, just like charging the phone.
And with that – you’re done. What is important in this regard is that there is no software to install or anything modified depending on the software (or even hardware) on Peloton Bike. It’s actually the same as connecting headphones. Behind the scenes, the DFC encodes the power and cadence signals normally sent from the bike to the display and simply retransmits them via Bluetooth Smart using the standard Bluetooth Smart power meter profile. This means that you can easily connect it to applications and devices. When using the USB port on the back of your device, you don’t have to worry about battery life, as it stays charged forever.
So, fully connected, you will be able to search for a Bluetooth power meter and find it. For example, here it is connected on a Garmin FR745:
And here’s the data flow. From the user’s point of view, it is identical to any other power meter for the bicycle. Everything is the same. Simply start the journey inside on Garmin / Polar / Wahoo / Suunto / whatever you would do for any other coach trip.
And here’s Zwift on my iPhone connected to it:
It transmits the same data as Peloton itself, although you will see very small differences of 1-3w in some cases. Below is not actually one of these cases, because my watch is set to 3 seconds of smoothing, and the Peloton bike is not.
But looking at the data itself, I recorded a workout on both Peloton Bike and Garmin, and you can see, the data is pretty much the same, except for the very slight differences from second to second with a watt or two:
These include both power and cadence data, as well as speed, although most cycling training apps will give up / ignore speed (such as in Zwift or TrainerRoad). The system supports two simultaneous Bluetooth connections, so you can pair it with an application such as TrainerRoad, while saving data to your watch simultaneously.
For Garmin and Polar users, this is remarkable in terms of workout load, as previously there was no way to get power data from a Peloton bike to the watch, for workout loading and recovery prospects. And I know, some of you think that “no serious cyclist” would ever use a Peloton bike, but the reality is the opposite. Too often people think of training platforms. As long as you apply the task (a stimulus) in an organized and structured way, you will become faster. It’s really that simple. The peloton also has strength-based training. Doing whatever makes you happy, as long as you pedal, everything is fine.
Now, whether or not the Peloton bike itself is correct is a different story. In all my tests, comparing the Peloton Bike (original) data with the power meter pedals, it tends to read high, usually in the 5-7% range. You can try it technically and recalibrate it, but I didn’t find this to fix anything (and honestly, I also did calibration steps that make it worse – and without the pedal measuring power on the bike you wouldn’t know how you made it).
On the other hand, Peloton Bike + has proven to be extremely accurate – on par and, in fact, better in terms of accuracy than many of the state-of-the-art smart bikes that a typical Zwifter or TrainerRoad user would have. he had in their arsenal. Unfortunately, DFC is not currently compatible with Peloton Bike +. That being said, they added USB-C ports and other bits there to make it compatible on the go. But I wouldn’t buy it today until that happens. While, if you have a regular Peloton bike, it is fully compatible there.
Strange things:
For those who are a little weirder, the company has done enough to allow third parties to expand on it. So, for historical reasons, here are the technical specifications from the company’s listing:
- Built around northern NRF52840
- 32-bit ARM Cortex-M4 processor
- 2.4 GHz Bluetooth transceiver
- 11-pin GPIO exposed in a layout compatible with the motherboard and IDC
- 4 analog or digital pins
- 7 pins digital only
- 16 MS Bit QSPI external flash memory
- Two-way RS-232-to-TTL / CMOS two-way conversion via MAX3222 IC
- I²C JST connector compatible with Qwiic or Adafruit STEMMA QT Connect System from SparkFun
- SWD connections on the front and back of the board via Tag Connect fingerprints
- Voltage regulator from 20 V maximum to 3.3 V
- Two 3.5 mm stereo jacks connected to each other and to the RS-232 driver-receiver IC.
- An off-by-default jumper allows the transmission of RS-232 data through sockets
- Two USB C-type connectors that allow DFC line placement with a USB cable that works up to 20 V
- This experimental configuration, used at your own risk, allows you to disturb the signals present in the USB cable – such as those used by Peloton Bike + – and connect them to the processor
- Configurable paths with jumper headers and soldering pads for USB D +/- and SBU1 / 2
The idea is that, along the way, it can be extended by both the company and third parties.
In particular, this unit does not have ANT + enabled at this time, however, the NRF52 chipset from Nordic that it uses would allow that upgrade if it wished. It’s a software update that the company should pay for (maybe they already did).
Practically speaking, all Garmin devices since 2017 and not only have accepted Bluetooth Smart power meters. So any Fenix 5 or above as well as Garmin FR935 or above supports it. And all Polar and Suunto devices support Bluetooth power meters. However, ANT + is useful and often preferred in desktop computers for Zwift and other third-party applications, plus of course older watches and bicycle computers.
Wrap up:
Frequent readers know that I really like devices that “just work”, and he takes the cake in this regard. I haven’t had to touch it since I connected it in December and it works every time – always there, always ready. My watch automatically connects to it when I start pedaling and I just have to start one workout on the watch. I’m not sure what else I could ask for.
The unit is priced at $ 109, which seems pretty fair, given that the alternative is to buy the power meter pedals from about $ 500 over (and more if you want total power) Definitely use the Peloton Bike data stream it is not as accurate as buying a set of power metering pedals for other applications, so this is an important aspect. For those worried, this will somehow lead to an explosion of inaccurate data on Zwift, the level of accuracy here is not really different from most wheel trainers I’ve tested over the years (which spec +/- 5%, but are often closer) up to 5-10%, especially in sprints).
The company is taking orders on their crowdfunding site now for delivery in early August. Given the lack and long delays for computer chipsets, they (like any other technology company) have identified this as a risk. The other risk is that Peloton could update the data flow on their bikes to specifically break this. The DFC drive is software that can be updated if something changes. That being said, I would be extremely skeptical if Peloton actually has the ability to do this on the original Peloton bike. It would certainly have this capability on the Bike +, but after disassembling the original bike, the sensor system is only connected via a 3.5mm analog cable, which is very unlikely to allow firmware updates. Moreover, it would pose a massive risk for Peloton to upgrade that component to 1.5 million bicycles just to “break” a few boxes.
So, given the fact that today it works great for me on the original bike, I continued and I already made a pre-order for it. If they fix Bike + compatibility, then I will buy another one for Bike +.
With that – thanks for reading!