New powermeter rumours

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Epic-o
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by Epic-o

djconnel wrote:Another factor: acceleration-based cadence is challenging if you don't have a way to separate centrifugal acceleration from the bike bouncing up and down. I wonder how they make that work and how well it works, especially at lower cadences (for example, 40 rpm) on rough roads, especially since their accelerometers appear to be on an intermediate radius of the crank arm (where centrifugal acceleration is less than on the outer radius, for example at the pedal).


There is a pretty easy way to calculate this. If you place two accelerometers in the crankarm at a known distance (very little if possible) and you substract the two readings, you can calculate the radial component of acceleration. Neglecting the difference of acceleration between these two point due to the rotation of the bicycle as a whole and applying some sort of filtering you can get a pretty accurate value.

I'm impressed by the weight. Full strain gauges bridge with temperature compensation, accelerometer/s, Bluetooth chip and battery. There must be some sort of electronics WWism

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HammerTime2
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by HammerTime2

J-Nice wrote:Put out a reliable power meter that measures power independently for each leg at a reasonable price point and it will be a niche product no longer.

Everyone who rides will get one. It's a disgrace that after 20 or so years we only have SRM and Powertap in an industry where change to whole bike lines occur every year.
Doping cover-ups are a disgrace. Slow progress in availability of low cost accurate power meters may be a disappointment, but I don't consider it a disgrace.

mca56
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by mca56

Changing the topic slightly: Has anyone spoken with the reps at the Garmin booth regarding updates on the Vector release date? Are they even displaying them? I know this is wishful thinking but the Vectors, as advertised, are ideally suited to my needs.

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jmilliron
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by jmilliron

Yeah, a teammate stopped by day before yesterday and just got the generic info. No timeline, still working on making the product perfect, etc.
2013 Wilier Cento1 SR || 2009 Ridley Crossbow || 2011 Yeti AS-R 5 Carbon

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djconnel
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by djconnel

Garmin had a poster only on Vector. Polar/Look had a non-working demo, but promised to "come back tomorrow" (I was there only yesterday). Rotor Power crank was very cool: best of the three crank arm based units (others were Pioneer and StagesOne). StagesOne was also quite impressive on a price-constraint basis. Likely not as accurate, though, even if they come out with a 2-leg version.
Last edited by djconnel on Sat Sep 22, 2012 12:31 am, edited 1 time in total.

asv
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by asv

mca56 wrote:Changing the topic slightly: Has anyone spoken with the reps at the Garmin booth regarding updates on the Vector release date? Are they even displaying them? I know this is wishful thinking but the Vectors, as advertised, are ideally suited to my needs.


DC Rainmaker has an update but no firm release date.

http://www.dcrainmaker.com/2012/09/the- ... olden.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Garmin’s stance is that they won’t go into production until they can press and ship thousands of units at once. And it was noted that they won’t do that until the quality bar is there. It’s been clear talking to numerous Garmin folks at both Eurobike and Interbike that the technical and timeline stumbles with the FR910XT are still painfully fresh in everyone’s mind. There’s no desire to reenact that again.

That all said, timeline wise the public stance is Q4 CY2012 (end of year). I think we might see some more concrete info and display at CES (first week of January) around their distribution and release plans. But I wouldn’t expect to see a Vector under a Christmas tree this calendar year.

VNTech
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by VNTech

On the Vector, I was told "a few months into 2013."

Also, "it's a $1500 unit. That means we don't want a single return."
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djconnel
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by djconnel

VNTech wrote:On the Vector, I was told "a few months into 2013."

Also, "it's a $1500 unit. That means we don't want a single return."


The Rainmaker article describes how Garmin is setting the quality/reliability bar high (in contrast, perhaps, to Polar/Look).

claus
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by claus

It sounded to me that Garmin wants to be able to have a lot of units ready for sale when they come to the market, while Polar/Look are simply selling the few units that they can actually successfully produce, i.e., to me it looks like Polar/Look also has yield problems, but still sell the items that make it through quality control.

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djconnel
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by djconnel

I was a bit surprised, however, that there I was for my one day @ Interbike, ready to be impressed with how ultra-cool the Look/Polar system was, and they didn't even have it set up.

Come to think of it, I didn't see any working power meter demos, perhaps excepting the Quarq static torque arm-strength contest (winner was around 153, I think, while I got only to 27 :)).

Pioneer's torque-versus-angle diagram (with computed efficiency metric) was very cool. Their dedicated head unit allows more flexibility than relying on Garmin. It would be interesting to test how well it actually works, however.

hornedfrog
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by hornedfrog

Image

Maybe old news but the design of the Dura Ace 9000 SRM powermeter is official. I guess it comes as no surprise that they are still using the 7800 arm.... Looks a little off due to shimano's new bolt pattern.

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J-Nice
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by J-Nice

Anything radical happening at the Brim Brothers booth? I heard their slogan was...

"Brim Brothers. Taking pre-orders on vaporware since 2006!!!"
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http://berzin.blogspot.com/

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euan
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by euan

They were at the Ant+ symposium

diarmuidc
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by diarmuidc

J-Nice wrote: It's a disgrace that after 20 or so years we only have SRM and Powertap in an industry where change to whole bike lines occur every year.

There's a reason for that. It's not as easy as you think to make a cheap, accurate, universal power meter

kulivontot
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by kulivontot

Gee, you have a monopoly by two major players and innovation stagnates while prices remain high? Who knew?

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