Unbricking a $2,000 Bike With a $10 Raspberry Pi

A similar problem is Tacx dropping support for some of their earlier VR trainers like the Fortius and i-Magic. I picked up an i-Magic cheap at the start of lockdown. I guess the owner was looking to offload an unsupported trainer during that rush of turbo-trainer shortages. I wasn't aware at the time Tacx were shutting down access to the software leaving these trainers useless as you can't control the resistance.

The software only really runs on WindowsXP and only the early Fortius software works as Tacx have switched off their licence servers for their TTS software. You can't install it on a new PC as you can't register it!

I run it in a VirtualBox VM on a Mac. It's ok but it's like playing a Playstation 2 version of Tombraider, graphically.

The Fortius/i-Magic trainers connect to a computer using a USB cable so aren't compatible with anything else. But, there's some Python code on github at https://github.com/WouterJD/FortiusANT which converts the USB output from the trainer and broadcasts it as an ANT+ FE-C trainer via an ANT+ dongle.  A second ANT+ dongle is then used to recieve the data in Zwift or any other FE-C smart trainer compatible app. You can run this all on one laptop or for a self contained thing, a Rasperry Pi bolted to the trainer with FortiusANT and one of the ANT+ dongles.

Be careful with buying ANT+ dongles though. Some of the cheap chinese ones are rubbish and will drop signals randomly. I ended up with two Suunto dongles, inc picking up another bit of obsolete kit, A Suunto M5 watch. This isn't Bluetooth or ANT+ either (it's ANT) but came with an HRM strap and an ANT+ dongle included. I just wanted the dongle and it was cheaper than buying a dongle alone on eBay. As a bonus the old (unused) analogue Dual (analogue or proprietary ANT again) HRM strap I got worked with the Tacx trainer head unit.

I ended up with a ghetto Zwift/Rouvy setup with proper smart resistance, HRM, cadence, steering! and a bonus Suunto watch for in total £85.