Here's the rest...
ibike - part 2 - mounting it on the bike and setup
No real problems here. The ibike is just like many other bike computers and comes with a bayonet-style mount that sits on your handlebars. I chose the standard size but there is also the larger vesrion if needed. Follow the instructions though, as you need to keep the ibike absolutely 'rock-solid' on the bars. I tried using old tyre as padding at first, just to make removal easier, but settled on the double sided tape provided instead. It's easy to fit, just plan where the wire goes first. It has to get down to the forks, where the magnetic pickup gets strapped on. I kept my old speedo in place and mounted the new gear on the opposite side of the bars and forks.
Mounted it looks like this...
And the mounting itself looks like this....
All in all - dead easy. Lots of twist ties to play with but no harder than a regular 'wired' bike computer. The screws that affix the ibike mount to the bars are a bit fiddly, but it's easier on a stand, or turn the bike upside down.
Once connected I powered it up and went into setup mode. All the expected stuff: time, date, total bike and rider weight, plus the 'turn 180' exercise which levels the unit. Again, good clear instructions and I used them (for once in my life). I also zeroed out the wind (I was in a garage) and took a guess as to altitude (later riding down to sea level to make that accurate - hey I was only out by 10m!).
All up - simple and quick.
ibike - part 1 - the purchase experience
OK, so I chose the ibike.
The first hassle was
the ibike shop on the web. They revamped it a bit since but you can't login to the shop without first clicking on a product and pretending to buy it (then the 'log-in' option finally appears). And when you try to log-in the login ID box is unclickable without 14 'tabs' to get you there. I tried 3 different browsers and 2 PCs... they all had the same trouble. Not everytime, just 9 times out of 10. Anyway, the tab-tab-tab until you get to the correct input box works. (Must admit I just logged in fine, so who knows?)
Enough whinging. I bought it online and found that the 'tracking' option didn't work for International US Post. Not to worry, I guess. 10 working days later it turned up fine, but opened by Australian Quarantine Services. Must have looked suss with 'Velocomp' written on the box... hmmm. Go figure.
The box looks like this:
Which is fine, although for around $A600 it's a trifle underwhelming. Still, it's the technology we are buying, isn't it?
And opening it up we find the device itself, which is tiny and very light (which is good, right?):
It's showing average Watts here in this pic but it will also show maximum values.
And then I mounted it on the bike... well 2 bikes, actually. I had bought an extra mount, so I could swap from bike to bike with ease, something I saw as a killer feature of the ibike over almost all its competition.
More soon!
Power to the people - power meters for serious cycling
When I started this riding gig I was 16 and it was 1973. The bike was an Aussie-made Alcon, circa late 1930s and well looked after, if hand-painted. 28inch tyres, 40spoke wheels, diamond outrigger with sliding adjustment for handlebar reach and just 2 cogs on the back. On one side of the wheel was a freewheel and the other a fixie. Cool way to get started, eh? Even cooler was the mechanical odometer that clicked over incrementally with every turn of the front wheel. Ahhh, data! I started writing it down. Curiously it made me ride a bit more, just to get a scrap more data.
In the 1980s I found myself with electronic assistance in my data habit: a cycle 'computer', although all it really did was count wheel revs using a magnet and show elapsed time. It did allow me to see my current and average velocity, rather than doing the usual sums at home after the ride. And it was more accurate than some of the guesstimates I had to make. Now that sort of technology got a bit better over the last 25 years or so, but essentially remains as it was: a bunch of data based on wheel rotation over time, displayed on an LCD. (Although some of these new options are very sophisticated: check out
BikeBrain for example)
Now this did make me ride for longer distances, and do more miles each week, as I could actually and accurately see when I had slacked off. And being data-obsessed I just wanted to push teh totals ever higher. Funnily enough I still had to chase down attacks, stick with the peleton over varying terrain and avoid being dropped, irrespective of what the displayed velocity was. But now I could also go 'ah, look at that average' after a hard crit.
The next leap forward in this history lesson was to the heart rate monitor. In my case it was the mid 90s and a Polar HRM. So now I could match perceived exertion against both time and distance, as well as estimate my caloric budget. It again made me ride, just to get data. Bizarre, I know. I wanted to exceed 200bpm on my local tough climb and set ever higher averages, so again I could go 'wow, that was a tough ride'.
Which brings me to my newest desire:
power measurement. Up to now I've calculated it after the ride, inexactly, and longed to know how many Watts it really took to ride that hard crit.
SRMs, offering measurement at the crank seemed a great option. But SRMs were (and remain) waaay too expensive, especially now I had kids to feed. The hub-based CycleOps option was still a bit rich (and what if I swapped wheels?) and Ergomo Pro was again a tad exxy and suffered (like the SRM) from being integrated into the bike. The Polar option was both expensive and tricky to set up. So I looked at the next-best options - the German
HAC4 and other options from Germany and Italy, which calculated power from time, speed and altitude gain using accelerometers or barometric changes. Of course this only works on hills, but it was an option. Some of these options don't offer download, so it would be a 'write down later' sort of thing - like back to the 80s.
The HAC4 looks great options-wise but is a bit expensive compared with low-end 'real' power meters. I also looked at GPS units like
Garmin's and wondered why no-one had integrated the coolest features into one unit. Maybe one day, I guess.
Anyway, I flipped a coin and went with the simplest, cheapest real-time data logging power meter I could find. The
ibike. It back-calculates power by measuring the opposing forces - wind, friction and inclination - and comparing it to real speed (using a magnetic pickup). Easy to fit, easy to use. It looks the goods but does rely upon (a) your calibration accuracy and (b) unimpeded airflow. Which is to say that it misreads power if you aren't good at entering data (weight, aerodynamic and friction data, basically, although the latter is derived by the "coasting" test) or have impeded airflow (in a bunch, maybe, and certainly in a sharp corner).
I ummed and ahhed about this for weeks (whilst watching the Aussie to $US exchange rate fluctuate, too) and wondered if I really needed to spend $A580 on a gadget. I decided it was now or never and pressed the "buy" button in the
ibike website. I'll tell you more later...
Labels: ibike
