iPadOS 18.2 [was NOT] cause of Bluetooth data issues - SOLVED

TidBITS Talk
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I have a Joysong rowing machine which I use with the Kinomap app, which shows videos as I row, speeding up or slowing down the videos to correspond to my strokes.

I won’t go into all the troubleshooting process, but suffice it to say, I disconnected and reconnected the rower to iPad and to iPhone (only one at a time, but each show the same problem—connection is good but no data flows when I row), restarted apps, restarted devices (including the rower).

By the time I had tried everything, I realized that I had been seeing anomalous behavior in iPad’s Settings > Bluetooth. The rower appeared twice at one point in the process—“Joysong” and “Joysong BGxxxx”—but more importantly, at times devices appeared in the Bluetooth list with no way to disconnect them (no (i) info button and no ability to swipe to disconnect (yes, I tried that as I could see no other way to disconnect or forget).

The rower connects to Kinomap, Kinomap shows the rower connected, the rower’s Bluetooth icon is steady indicating connection, the iPad’s Bluetooth menu shows only one device connected and that’s the rower.

My educated guess is that the fault lies with the fact that I upgraded the iPad to 18.2 a few days ago, and that’s when the problems started.

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If you can, I’d consider deleting the rower from the app and adding it back again.

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If what Doug suggested doesn’t work, turn Bluetooth off and then on, reconnecting all devices that were connected.

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Thanks for the ideas. I’ve done those things: the rower has been deleted and added back several times. Bluetooth has been off and on.

The odd thing is that the rower does connect, and the Kinomap app and iPadOS both agree it is connected (several green checkmarks in Kinomap) and the rower’s Bluetooth icon stops flashing and stays steady, but no data is received by iPad from the rower when I row. Yet all worked just fine before the 18.2 upgrade.

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I noticed that Kinomap updated their app a week ago to version 11.1.3. and mentioned fixing some iOS 18 problems. Sometimes automatic updates are not applied immediately, so I would check via the App Store that no update is pending.

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Very good idea. I had forgotten about those automatic updates that no longer seem to be automatic. I think that 11.1.3 version predates 18.2 but I’ll do some more testing tomorrow now that I’m sure I have the latest Kinomap. It didn’t need to be forced to update but I can’t be sure when it updated.

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Next day testing results were unimproved. I believe the Kinomap 11.1.3 version was already installed on my iPad before the issues began with data communication. Both Kinomap and Joysong (rower manufacturer) have been informed.

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Update and SOLUTION: The Joysong rower came without a full user manual, and the rower somehow changed modes on its own (I didn’t change the mode because I didn’t know the Mode buttons existed; they are unlabeled spots on the display).

Joysong support sent me a diagram of button layout, and when I corrected the mode of the rowing machine, Kinomap was able to receive data.

It was NOT the fault of iOS 18.2. After I had ruled out everything else, I blamed the thing which had changed just before the failure (iPadOS version), but failed the investigation because I was ignorant of one more factor (“mode”).

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