Tag: GPS

Hammerhead Wahoo

As you may be aware, I’ve gained a Wahoo Bolt version 2. I’ve also gained a Hammerhead Karoo 2. I’ve been weighing up the pros and cons of each, in order to decide who gets the priority on my bars. We shall start with the wahoo. I’ve time for wahoo, I’ve previously used the original ELEMNT, and found it very good.

So, the bolt has had a couple of issues, but they appear to of been sorted with firmware updates. So, feature wise, the bolt is feature sparse. It does routes, strava segments and everything else you’d expect a gps unit to do. It doesn’t have the climber feature that the Karoo has. But what it does, it does really well. I find it easy to glance down, and see what I need quickly and easily. Even in bright sunlight it’s clear and easy to see. The size however can be an issue. At times, it can just be a little small, especially with turn by turn directions where the instruction is quite long. Wahoo have addressed this by increasing the font size, but sometimes it can still be too small.

The map is detailed enough to see upcoming roads and details, it does however lack certain details. The changes wahoo have made to the maps have been beneficial to the bolt, with inbuilt elevation and street details making on device routing quick and easy.

The varia radar works with clear distinct tones, one thing that irks me, is while the radar is connected, the green bar is permanently on screen, mind you this is the same on all garmin units too. Overall, I like the unit.

The Karoo is a beast. Both in size and power. Based on android, it’s closer to a mobile phone than GPS. It is an excellent unit for exploring, with incredible mapping, that includes many POI and details. Where this unit falls down for me, is readability in sunlight. It’s not great.

However, the varia radar bar does disappear when it’s not required. Sensor wise, both units pair to all sensors you’d expect. Power meters, varia, speed, heart rate etc. One bonus for the Karoo, is that like Garmin units, it can control smart lights. Not with the finesse of Garmin units, but it’ll turn them on at the start of a ride, and off at the end. Both units have issues with my stages gen2 crank. Neither will calibrate, and the hammerhead only connects over BlueTooth. Ant+ causes the power meter to drop out often. To be fair, I’ve not tried calibration on the bolt after the last couple of updates, and hammerhead are saying they are working on power meter code. Both units on that note get regular updates, with Karoo every couple of weeks, and the bolt less frequently.

Update: as of firmware WA20-12513. The bolt now correctly calibrates the Power meter. Karoo have also released an update 1.220.1066 which states they have fixed the issue, but I’ve yet to test. Now I’ve given the hammerhead a quick test to see, and it does calibrate. I shall ride with it tomorrow and see about dropouts.

Using the unit, I find myself looking at it far longer than the bolt, partly due to glare, partly due to having to hunt for what I need. Swiping the data rich pages is a pleasure, each page coming on per swipe. But I don’t get that instant data I get with the bolt. And that’s an issue to me. However, if I was exploring a new area, the Karoo is my choice due to routing, maps and accuracy. If I’m just out on a ride, following a route or not, the bolt is on my bars.

New and old

A new bike computer.

So, I managed to get hold of the he Wahoo ELEMNT bolt. This second version adds a new colour screen, new buttons and some new bugs and issues.

So, while most of the bloggers are going on about the new screens, convex buttons and on device routing, I find some of the bugs quite problematic. Especially the elevation issue. It just reads far too high, and no way of calibrating it.

Apart from this, I’m enjoying the new unit. In order to mount this, I also got hold of an Excellent mount, the Form Mount. Installation was a tad painful, but it’s an excellent mount with a lot of customisation.

I’ve also ditched my look keo blade pedals. They required a service as they where starting to sound rough as hell. Could I find away of stripping them down? Nope. There are videos on YouTube on how to service them, and yet my pedals didn’t match anything at all. No bolts, no flats, nothing. So, back on my trusty shimano R550. At least they can be fully stripped, cleaned and greased without any drama.

And oddly comfortable.

Any way, I’m off to play with the wahoo data fields.

Elemnt Screens

Going around the various forums, one of the common questions I see, is “what fields should I have?” when setting up a GPS computer.

I’d previously done this type of post for my garmin so I’d thought I’d do one for the screens on my elemnt.

First Page

The first page is pretty much on screen most of the time. It contains all the critical information.

 

  1. W 5 sec, this simply shows my 5 second average power.
  2. KPH, is my current speed. I’ve found d myself looking at power more than speed recently, so speed is relegated to second field.
  3. BPM, current heart rate I have my heart rate zones displayed on the left hand LED display.
  4. RPM, my current cadence
  5. KM, Distance travelled
  6. Elevation, current elevation above sea-level.
  7. DEG-C current temperature

I don’t need much else on that screen. Using the zoom function on the elemnt, the 4 top items are the ones that are most important and on screen in a zoom state.

Climbing Screen

The climbing screen is pretty much the default. I think I just added RPM and BPM datafields.

There is the default Elevation display at the bottom of the screen.

 

 

 

 

 

Course Screen

2017-07-24 19.34.08

Similar to the Main screen, this screen shows all the important metrics, along with a KM to go display for the currently loaded course and a ride time display too. As the Elemnt lacks the timed course feature on the Garmin, we have to remember the time we are out to beat and do it manually.

First ride with Wahoo Elemnt

So, I’ve changed over from a Garmin 520 to a Wahoo Elemnt. And despite the missing vowel, it’s a worthy Garmin competitor.

Initially, I thought the LED’s where a little gimmick, but they are actually bloody useful. I’ve currently got mine set to display heart rate zone but have also used them for average speed, and found them useful for a quick reference point.

Screen wise, it’s a lot more readable in all conditions than the garmin, with better field presentation. Speaking of fields, setting up screens on the elemnt is stupidly easy. You just select the fields in the app, and drag and drop to were you want them on screen. Nothing could be easier. Non of this many button pressing garmin malarkey.

I’d replaced the maps on the garmin with open street maps from garmin.openstreetmap.nl which where miles better than the tosh you got preloaded. You can’t replace maps on the elemnt, however they are more than good enough to use as is.

All in all, a great bike GPS unit, and one that’s earned a place on my bike. Just a shame it dos’nt support my garmin lights. Yet.

Trying out Route Overlays

I’ve tried using Garmin VIRB Edit to produce an overlay on my video, to show the metrics.

Associated Ride: http://ridewithgps.com/trips/3916087

It works quite well, even if it does stretch out the editing process.

The flow is now:

  1. Join files if required (GoPro splits files at 1.8Gb)
  2. Load into VIRB, and place GPX information with the file, aligning it with an arbitrary point.
  3. Export file with overlay and load it into Premier Pro
  4. Heavy edits in Premiere Pro and AfterEffects.

Then export and do what ever needs done with the video 🙂

Simple really, a little longer work flow than I would of liked, but it works until a better solution can be found. Garmin VIRB is great considering it is a free piece of software. And I think I’m already paying enough for the right to use Adobe…

Statistics. Damn Statistics

I love pouring over data. I collect it how I can, when I can and as often as I can.

One of the tools I use to generate some stats when I’m cycling is my Garmin 510. I thought I’d just take the time to show how I have mine setup, as there are plenty of reviews on the unit already.

So, there are a few activity profiles you can choose from. The way I have mine setup is with three profiles, Train, Commute and Race. I use Train the most, followed by commute. Train is setup to show the most information on each of the available five screens.

The first screen I have as this. Showing:108

  1. Time Moving
  2. Current Speed
  3. Distance Covered
  4. Current Cadence
  5. Heart Rate
  6. Elevation
  7. Temperature

The last two on this, elevation and temperature are not important metrics, and can be removed. But everything else, is what I’d call an “At a glance Metric”, ie, something you want to see when you glance down. This is where I have the unit display data when I ride normally, as it is the most important set of metrics.

The second screen

  1. 40Elapsed time – The total time the unit has been recording, including auto-paused time.
  2. Average Speed
  3. Average Heart Rate
  4. Average Cadence
  5. Total Ascent
  6. Total Descent

This is the screen I take in when I stop, as it shows the information as a set of averages.

The Third Screen142

Shows a little miscellaneous information I find handy to have

  1. Time of Day
  2. Sunset. Handy so you know when the light will start to fail
  3. Maximum Speed
  4. Calories burnt
  5. Battery level
  6. GPS Accuracy

The Fourth Screen

  1. Current Heart rate148
  2. Heart Rate Graph over time
  3. HR Zone currently
  4. % of max heart rate

This is probably the second most active screen I use, especially when I’m pushing. I can keep myself in a HR zone, and closely monitor when I need to push, or calm down. I find the heart rate graph to be incredibly useful to see the pattern over time.

The Fifth Screen

154I show laps on the final screen, not really something I use a lot of, but its good to have it here.

  1. Number of laps currently recorded
  2. Speed of the last lap
  3. Heart Rate on the last Lap
  4. Last Lap Time
  5. Current Lap Time

I have the profile set to Auto-Lap at 2 miles. I dont often take much notice of laps when I’m riding, but it comes in handy on RideWithGPS when I review.

When I’m done with the ride, I’ll head on over to RideWithGPS.com and look there. By far RideWithGPS has the best data handling of the main cycling sites I use. (Strava, Endomondo, Garmin Connect and RideWithGPS).

Head on over, select one of my rides on the site, and see the power you can have, to break rides down into sections, overall stats, and stats on selected parts, it really is very powerful.