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Aug 17 2009

(FIXED!) Saris CycleOps PowerTap SL+ Installation Problems Mac OSX

Posted by: Michael Slater in Bike, PowerTap
UPDATE: Jan and Ryan from Saris responded very very quickly to my problem and resolved it pretty much immediately with a beta version of PowerAgent combined with the firmware updater. Apparently an OSX upgrade was clashing with the old firmware updater.

Nice to be out of my state of ‘high dudgeon’. Now I have to stop being irritated with Saris and instead irritated with my lame wattage output tonight on the trainer. I think I soft-shoed it by 10% at least.

This is an expensive product. It comes with a java application to control the powertap (configuration, downloading data, etc).

It doesn’t work on any of my Mac computers even though the literature claims it does.

I followed the instructions exactly (on two separate Macs and also tried a Parallels XP installation) yet it always fails. I did manage to install the (crappy) software on an IBM ThinkPad, and it will find and talk to the PowerTap, but only after I did some gross thing to change the COM port id of the USB jack I was using.

Doubt me?

Here’s where I install the PowerTap driver on my OSX machine.

Then when I run the the PowerAgent software, it cannot spot the PowerTap, and com.cycleops.exceptionhandler.ReadableException throws.

I tried to do some debugging, but nothing works. The online technical support for this product is lamentable. The closest thing I found was TrainingPeaks software help that recommended adding an FTDI driver. This made no difference and everything continues to not work.

USB Prober
USB Prober
Contacting technical support is dubious. CycleOps support gave me a webform tell me to keep my question to under three hundred words. This is not an auspicious start to debugging.
Saris Cycling Group
Uploaded with plasq‘s Skitch!

Apparently they’ll get to me in about three days……………….

Saris Cycling Group

This entry was posted on Monday, August 17th, 2009 at 12:33 am and is filed under Bike, PowerTap.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

3 Responses to “(FIXED!) Saris CycleOps PowerTap SL+ Installation Problems Mac OSX”
  1. PowerAgent Product Manager, Saris Cycling Group says: August 17th, 2009 at 8:57 am

    Hey Michael, we just came across your post. Why don’t you reach me directly at the email I included? I don’t know how else to reach you other than this way. Not sure why you are having such difficulties, but we’ll get you sorted out!

  2. Mike Linnane says: August 26th, 2009 at 4:59 am

    I’m running into the exact same problem. What were the steps you took to remedy?

  3. Silver Case » Of course my Saris Cycleops PowerAgent doesn’t work after I installed Snow Leopard OSX says: August 30th, 2009 at 1:48 pm

    [...] my software worked fine immediately or after the apps updated themselves. All except PowerAgent. Once again it cannot see the PowerAgent unit and gave me a new set of error messages. I hope they fix this quickly; I’ve already sent them [...]

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