10 of the most interesting cycling gadgets

I have always loved gadgets in any sphere (hence why I work in IT !!) it is why I love cycling, everything can be measured and measure yourself against it.

It is why Strava is so popular and why so many love the competitive feel of it.

It is 2015, it is the era of the internet for all gadgets and long may it be !!

Now where is my power meter I ordered ?

Cyclist. I've read the piece again and just can't find the bit that says "buying this thing is a substitute for riding your bike".

Just remember there is some miserable bugger wearing hessian shorts grinding his way up a mountain on wooden wheels and a single massive gear who thinks your notebook is just about the ponciest thing he's ever heard of.

Wow... lot of angry people out there... should take it out on a hill, not other cyclists... we already have enough enemies.

This thread has become a gadget lovers vs traditionalists and it was not meant to be. TBH though, the aggro was started with a post telling us that we don't need gadgets, when actually, what we don't need is to be told what we need.

I thought I would get myself a gadget and remove all need from even using my legs.... Awesome bit of kit means I can spend more time looking at my iGpsstraveHrPowergarmingoggles, saves loads of effort.

As for recording my efforts, that's what a paper and pen are for. Or is that so last century... D##ks.

Yeah, gadgets be damned. I don't even use a bike for any of my training, or my racing - I just run on my own two feet, like we used to. Actually, I haven't even evolved feet. I'm more a sort of a single-celled organism. Y'know, from before mammals and things were cool.

Just HTFU and get back in the primordial soup!!! ///(>_<)\\\

"Never underestimate the ability of business to introduce ever more complications into your activities in the pursuit of profit ..... to the point where the original activity is lost in a swirl of irrelevant and pointless tail-chasing."

Anon.
Harvard School of Business Text c.1989

I think the Fly 6 and Icedot at very good ideas. I ride alone a lot and it would certainly help make my wife feel happier when I'm out on a long ride. Maybe she'd stop ringing my mobile so much after I've been out for 4 - 5 hours. Maybe not!

'Couple of years ago there was a fitness experiment... Loughborough sports science dept V's Army PTI training methods (old skool Hit training v state of the art science and nutrition) the Army cohort smashed the shite out of the science cohort... Have all the gadgets for fitness in the world but they will not do the work.'

I'd love to see the results of that experiment. Suspect it's fairly limited, otherwise all of the GB olympic team (amongst many others) would be following army methods rather than scientific training methods. Were the tests involved just 'forced route march with a heavy Bergen', 'Freckles' and 'Beating the shit out of people in a pub'? I could understand squaddies winning those, certainly.

In an effort to reduce my reliance on gadgets I shall be riding without brakes, those newfangled derailleur gears and possibly even pedals and a chain this year!

Early adopters pave the way for the rest of us to catch up further down the development road. Let them indulge in their fascination, without them I would not use a speed & cadence meter nowadays. I personally love reading maps, understand the geography, explore the side roads, therefore still stuck in the past on that one. Theft security needs a revolution: light, secure, trackable. Inventors to your desks!

Learn about your body instead of gadgets. Find a hill as a test, ride up it, time it, repeat, under as identical circumstances as possible, faster = fitter.
Gadget reliance is taking mindfulness out of cycling.
Learn to read a map, batteries never go flat.
People will be riding with more weight in gadgets than their bike weighs.

Couple of years ago there was a fitness experiment... Loughborough sports science dept V's Army PTI training methods (old skool Hit training v state of the art science and nutrition) the Army cohort smashed the shite out of the science cohort... Have all the gadgets for fitness in the world but they will not do the work.

HR monitor is my only concession to a gadget for fitness, paper, pen and understanding the human body, especially mine. I don't even take a smart phone out... Little all weather Nokia, 15yrs old with buttons and it's just a phone!! Light & robust.

If people matched their gadget fever with quality training and recovery in the same way, there would be many more fit people about.
Uploading this that and the other waste of time, unless you are a competitive amateur or pro level...

Commuter stuff obviously is all good, well, some of it.

To any device which has to connect to another device wirelessly to work: you may be the future of technology but I have no faith whatsoever in your working correctly when I need you to. (The one exception being the laptop I'm writing this on!)

Some cools stuff here, much of it which has been in dev for an age (especially Recon Jet!).

The Hammer Head can only be as good as the direction being fed to it, and given that the Garmin often get's confused when you miss a turning, only having rudimentary info would be even more confusing in this case.

I cradle looks feature packed, but not for the lightweight purists?!

IceDot is a neat idea, until you drop your helmet and your wife/Mum calls you in a state of panic!

Copenhagen; brilliant. Will check it out to see the spec after this, but it looks like a winner. The versatility of being able to swap out for any bike gives it immense scope for use. I can see me using something similar in my late 70's in the Alps!

Recon Jet is the future, or at least the form factor of heads-up display is. For this to stick as a ubiquitous tech though it needs to have the same ability as a Garmin 810/1000 and then some. Particularly worried about battery life? When the price drops to £300 I think it will fly with the masses.

FitBit, meh... one of many devices. Not sure it adds anything.

Siva Atom is a great little device as long as it's weather and somewhat crash-proof. Price needs to drop a bit as well, but I would be surprised if something did not come alongside it as a similar offering to push the prices down.

Wahoo is a nice little gadget for those that did not get it bundled with their Garmin!

Fly6 is a neat package but not conspicuous for a driver to think they are being filmed. Could be a nice way of filming the commuter run in case anything happens and overwriting otherwise, or a cheaper alternative to a GoPro4 or similar.

I love the new angle applied to the SkyLock. It's such a faff with keys when in a hurry to get a train or get to a meeting, but, how vulnerable are the solar panels on this to the same scumbags that would make it off your your precious single speeder?!

What I would like to see Garmin do as a new feature on the Edge is add a pitot tube to factor in how hard a ride is by averaging wind speed and use it to correct the errors recorded for elevation when you stop for coffee and cake!

hmm the SkyLock, it might be solar powered but most smart phones are not so when your phone battery is dead (every day with a smart phone) you can't unlock your bike.

That Copenhagen wheel has been done before as well. A guy at work had an early moped. Basically a bicycle where they put a small internal combustion engine in the rear hub. It looked cool in a retro way but very heavy. When I asked him how it felt going round corners he said 'very exciting, especially when it's raining'.

I've been following the Hammerhead product development for a few months now. I think its a great idea executed beautifully and the concept is much safer for wayfinding than a mapping device such as a garmin.

They say its out in Feb but I'll believe it when I see it. It's $85 (US) by the way.