Hi, I’m Matt, Tim’s brother. I decided to geek out and mount a mobile phone on the handlebars of my bike to use as a cycling computer. Tim asked me to write a guest blog post about it – you know, to contribute to the hive mind. Here’s how I did it.
Get the phone
In addition to my basic criteria for any phone, my criteria for a cycling computer phone is something like this:
* Smartphone – to run cycling appropriate software, it should have a GPS, a decent sized screen, a data plan, and plenty of software options. Right now, this pretty much limits me to Android or iOS.
* Rugged – I don’t want a phone that couldn’t take a few lumps or that would fry with the first rainfall.
I’ve been wanting to do this for a while, so I’ve been keeping a lookout for the right phone. When T-Mobile offered a buy one get one deal on smartphones and my Father-in-law went in for the MyTouch 4G, I choose for my free phone the Motorola Defy. The Defy runs Android (albeit with Motorola’s “Blur” skin on top) and meets my first requirement, but so do a lot of other phones. The salesman was baffled as to why someone would choose this mid-range smartphone over the fancier, faster and uncontaminated-Android G2 when they are both offered for free. But the Defy is water resistant, it has a rubberized exterior, and has a Gorilla Glass crack resistant screen. It has no moving parts and seems like a rugged little bugger. Indeed, I’ve dunked this thing in puddles, I’ve dropped it on concrete and kicked it around to a degree that has seen lesser phones fail. Here is a picture of my G1 which I dropped on concrete:
not appropriate for cycling applications
If I was a true cycling performance freak, I might have held out for one of the new Sony Ericsson Android devices with the ANT+ compatibility. This would allow me to wirelessly hook up a power meter (I love measuring watts), cadence sensor and other devices to the phone for monitoring and recording.
Build the Mount
So now I have my phone, and it’s time to figure out how to mount it on the handle bars. I bought the car mount accessory for the Defy to hold the device. To affix it to the handle bars, I screwed the part of the car mount which holds the phone to the clamp from a handlebar mountable cup holder from REI. It isn’t the most elegant solution, but the two pieces actually fit really well together. Together, they hold the phone seemingly securely with the screen totally unobstructed.
Download some Software
The Android Market has a number of fitness type applications that seem suitable for bicycling including, Move! Bike Computer, Velox, Cardio Trainer, SportsTracker, Endomondo and MyTracks. So far I’ve only tried out Move! and MyTracks. Of these two, I prefer MyTracks because it makes it easy to upload and visualize on the web with maps and tables.
For an example of the data output, check out my Odometer.
Also MyTracks seems to update the speed information more frequently. I plan to try out some of the others as the summer goes on. One feature of Move! I do like is the ability to race yourself. You can load up old ride data and try to beat your previous performance over the same ride.
My first test of my the new rig revealed a near fatal flaw. After only a minute of not touching the phone, the screen turns off. This is normal behavior for a smartphone, but not a good one for riding. I want to be able to see ride data at a glance. Unlocking the screen is tricky enough to be dangerous to attempt while riding, so I need the screen on the whole time.
To fix this without having to mess about in the settings every time I go for a ride, I use an Android program called Tasker. Tasker lets you create tasks that listen for phone events and then trigger other changes to the phone. I found these tasks tricky to set up, but they give a lot of access to the phone.
To start with, I set up a new “profile”. Tasker allows you to create multiple profiles, each of which can be enabled or disabled separately. Within a profile, Tasker allows you to set up one or more “contexts”, or things to listen for. These contexts can be, for example, a time of day, a certain location, or whether the battery level is below a certain level. I set up an “application context” that listens for the state of one or more applications. Then I set up two “tasks” that listen for the context. The first task, executed when one of the applications is running in the foreground, changes the display timeout to the maximum value. Tasker interprets this as never. The second task changes the display timeout back to one minute. I currently have two applications in the context, iBike and MyTracks. When I get around to trying them, I can easily add other cycling applications to the same context.
Conclusion
I’ve taken it for a few spins. It works really well; the phone hasn’t popped out yet, but so far I’ve been careful not to hit any sizable potholes. I’ve been able to see the ride data right in front of me, and I’ve uploaded it to Google Docs and Maps as well. On my way home from work last week, it rained, and the phone plugged away like a champ, delivering the precious real-time data stream. After the ride, I just popped the phone out, wiped it off and slid it into my pocket to dry. No problems.
Relative Humidity: 100%
Negatives – with gloves on, the device is totally inaccessible, you can’t even answer it. Also, in direct sunlight, I’ve noticed some glare at certain angles. However, my head seems to provide adequate shadow in my natural riding position, so I’ve yet to experience this problem while riding. These are pretty minor issues.
I am expecting longer rides to take a serious toll on battery life. So I’m considering a new wheel with a dynamo hub, and some kind battery with USB out – something like this… although $120 plus $100+ for the wheel set seems a bit steep. We’ll see; stay tuned.
Brain Camp by Susan Kim
