My 2011 ANT+ Symposium Presentation

This Wednesday I presented to over 150 ANT+ Alliance members as part of the annual ANT+ Symposium.  Like last year, my speech is primarily aimed at taking all of your feedback and delivering it back to them.  The folks at the conference represent the key engineers and company leaders for every major and minor ANT+ members out there.  This means the message is getting directly to the right people, near-instantly.

But since all of you couldn’t be there, I had the presentation recorded (about 40 minutes long) and then got it all posted.  Sorry for the slight delay here, I had some major airplane issues coming back that kept me somewhat hamstrung for almost 24 hours.  But Canada finally released its grasp of me and I was able to get it uploaded! So sorry about the lack of posts!

The presentation was titled “Feedback from Millions: What Athletes Really Want”.  My goal was to take the feedback I receive on a daily basis from you (the over 3 million views from last year) and consolidate that into a presentation that touched on the different categories of athletes, as well as where I see significant opportunities for the future.  I crunched through hundreds and thousands of comments, primarily from the sports survey I did last year, the recent post asking for your feedback from last week, and then the over 5,000 post comments in the last year (non-giveaway).

So without further ado, I’ll let you watch my talk.  Rumor is folks enjoyed it, and nobody left the room mid-way through (and no, I didn’t lock the doors).

My 2011 Talk

And the great news is that I’ve already heard of a number of concrete examples where folks have made product design or interest decisions based on the presentation – just within hours of it.  Really cool stuff, and thrilled to be able to make an impact on your behalf.

If you’d like to download this year’s presentation (PDF), you can do so below.  Additionally, I’ve also linked to the 2010 presentation.

DCRainmaker 2011 ANT+ Symposium Presentation
DCRainmaker 2010 ANT+ Symposium Presentation

You can look forward to some more in depth posts around some of the things I saw and talked about in this presentation this week, showing up next week.

Have a great weekend all, and thanks for reading!

Cool things I’ve seen so far at the ANT+ Symposium

As you may remember from last week, I’m presenting Wednesday morning at the ANT+ Symposium, which is the annual meeting for all ANT+ companies.  This includes any folks that use ANT+ in their technologies.  The companies you’re probably most familiar with are ones like Garmin, Timex, Quarq, CycleOps, etc…

But in reality, there are far more companies that use ANT+ (more than 400 of them) that you’ve probably never heard of.  Companies like Spantec, Alphamantis, North Pole Engineering, HMM, and so many more.  And it’s these other companies that are showing off really cool things.  Things that are going to fundamentally change how sports technology will look in the future.

As you might guess - things have been crazy busy thus far (not withstanding shenanigans with Viking hats, probably a story for another time).  So I wanted to very quickly give you a preview of what’s coming down the post-pipeline.  Basically a small tidbit of the stuff that I plan to write about in the coming days.  Some things I have photos of already, and other things you’ll get the full photo-montage in the coming days.  With that, let’s get started!

Actually, one last thing to note.  Some of the things I’m going to mention don’t have official names yet.  In fact, probably the most common phrase I’ve heard here is “Have you see that thing from company XYZ?”.  Where neither party actually knows what it’s officially called yet. So just keep that in mind.

O-Synce – Data4Vision Heads up Visor:

I got to go out for a brief morning run (that’s actually a funny story in an of itself) and try out their heads-up visor system, Data4Vision.  This is somewhat similar to the 4iiii system, except instead of using LED lights – they display the actual numbers.  They’re able to connect to ANT+  speed/cadence/HR sensors and then display it on the heads up display.

Here’s what it actually looks like from the inside.

(Look, self-taken shots are never terribly flattering. Especially with the rain blowing into my eyes.)

Again, far more details on this in the coming days.  Btw, for those curious – it’s pronounced O-Science.  Like the letter “O”, followed by the word “Science”.

Alphamantis – Portable Wind Tunnel:

These guys demo’d to me their aero testing system, which allows you to essentially create your own private wind tunnel testing system.  They have a small tube that would stick out the front of your bike and allow you to measure wind speed and yaw – and then make adjustments.  Much of the concept is then tied into Virtual Elevation (which was discussed in this post).  But in short, they’ve been doing work that would ultimately allow you or a coach to go to a track or similar and perform very detailed aerodynamic testing.  Really cool stuff – the ability to compare anything from bike fit/position to helmet aerodynamics, to see the differences.  While our initial meeting was in a hotel room with the window blinds closed, they’re going to let me talk about it here in full detail – awesome stuff soon!

Simon Fraser University Locomotion Lab – Pacing System/Speed Control:

Out of all the things I’ve tested during my time hear – this is the one I’m getting the most questions on.  And it’s also the one that I’ll need to likely explain better in a future post.

In short, their system allows one to remotely control your pace, via changes in run cadence.  In their demonstration system they have super-accurate scientific GPS receiver (accurate within a couple centimeters) that monitors your speed via GPS.  Then wirelessly from across the way they’re able to monitor pace (dude with laptop).  Now layer in the control aspect, which is done by shifting your cadence to match an audible metronome-like tone delivered to you via headphones.

In their demonstration, they were able to have me match paces to run chunks of time at exactly a 7:30/mile pace, then shifted down to a 6:30/mile pace, then to a 5:30/mile pace.  Each time adjusting my cadence via the beeping in my ears to effectively change pace.

(Note: The cap and backpack are merely for testing purposes, an actual production implementation would be integrated into a normal watch/device)

More on this to come, but some really fascinating research work here that’s now ready for broader device integration (the algorithm).

Spantec – Fall Detection:

These guys are working on stuff related to health and wellness via their I-Residence system, primarily around senior care facilities.  Their system (already in use today in Europe) allows one to monitor patients in real-time throughout a facility (building) using an ANT+ mesh network.  This means that they’re monitoring things like heart rate and blood glucose levels, wirelessly, 24x7.

But of interest to sports folks is their new ANT+ fall detection profile, which allows them to determine when a person has fallen, and then trigger an ANT+ communication to occur.  This concept though could be potentially expanded to areas like bike crashes – to detect a fall, and then trigger an alert to a phone or watch, which in turn could reach out automatically to emergency contacts if a response isn’t given to the device on the person.  Everything in this paragraph would require device companies to add such features.

Timex – Blood Glucose Monitoring, Phone Sync:

We’ve got a slew of demo’s that Timex showed as concept products that they’re looking at for future implementation (they aren’t in products today).  At the time, they were up onstage, so getting photos would have been awkward (not that that’s usually a problem for me).  But Thursday we’re going to spend some quality time together and go through all the demo’s in living color for y’all.  In the meantime, here’s some of the awesomeness they showed:

- Continuous Blood Glucose Level (live data) monitoring to an  ANT+ enabled Timex watch.  The desrire is to bring this to all Timex ANT+ devices going forward, though they haven’t finalized when it’ll show up.  This is in conjunction with ANT+ blood glucose level monitors made by other companies.

- Data sync with iPhone (with Wahoo Fitness dongle) and Android (Sony Ericsson/HTC ANT+ enabled phones), showing ability to control watch/timer functions on phone via watch (and vice versa).  As a side note, Sony Ericsson announced that all phones going forward will have an ANT+ chip enabled in it.

- Data display from phone to watch.  They showed an incoming phone call on your phone, with the number then being displayed on your watch as a notification.  The idea here being if you had your phone in your back pocket while cycling – you could be aware that someone was calling you simply on your head unit.  You might ignore the call once, but if you’re like me, when someone immediately calls back again – it’s usually important.  Of course, that’s really just the tip of the iceberg here.

Definitely a lot of cool innovation coming out of the Timex camp, looking forward to showing it to you all.

HTC - ANT+ enabled HTC Rhyme:

Lastly, we were shown a live demo with the HTC Rhyme that has the ANT+ chip in it, enabling you to connect any ANT+ sensor to the phone.  The Rhyme runs Android, and should be available very shortly on Verizon (in the US).  Tons more coming on this, with photos.

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Finally, there’s lots more cool stuff – I just simply haven’t had the chance to talk in depth with everyone yet.  Soon though!

Thanks all for reading, and look forward to hopefully having my presentation all posted to you to watch on Thursday.  Though that might somewhat depend on bandwidth at the hotel/airport.

A bit of a Canadian Rockies Weekend

We bumbled our way across the US (and Canada) most of the day Saturday, eventually arriving in Calgary later that evening.  Normally this would have made for a relatively calm 90 minute drive up into the mountains, but due to the way the day’s timing worked out – we had to end up running our long run after the flight.

Which meant 2hrs and 45m of running. Non.stop.running.

Let me rephrase that. Non.stop.running in the dark.

Without lights.

It’s only the Rockies,  it’s not like there are bears or cougars or lost circus tigers.  No worries.

Actually, the area we were in was mostly outside of the mountains (even though at 4,500ft) – so we actually didn’t have to worry about the bears or cougars.  Though, lost circus tigers was certainly a consideration.

We ran around Cochrane, Alberta for what end up being close to 23 miles.  And it was absolutely beautiful.  Most of the route was along a (very cold) glacier fed river.  As you got right down near the water level you could literally feel the colder air coming off of it.  Like a moving valley of air conditioning.  While our run started in the light and warm (and at about 75-80*F), by time we finished, it was pitch black and rather cold (maybe 45-50*F).  It didn’t take long to get cold.

Towards the end I was running loops around the neighborhood, mostly because it was were the light was.  But still beats the humid weather of DC any day.

Luckily one of the guys that lives in that area hooked us up with a place to run from (as well as pizza afterwards!).  So after the run we were able to change at his place before we continued on up into the mountains an hour away to Kananaskis.  Which is where we rode today on Sunday.

Since I’m up here for the ANT+ Symposium, the ANT+ guys were able to hook us both up with bikes.  Even better was that mine had a PowerTap for the rear wheel – a sweet surprise!  I simply added my Edge 800 and I was good to go.

From there it was off for our ride.  With the weather again closing in on 80*F, you couldn’t have asked for a better day.

Here’s just a handful of photos from our ride:

Note, aside from the signs for elk, there were also those for Rocky Mountain Sheep:

Given my bike didn’t have any aerobars on it, I’d probably lose versus the sheep's horns.  Thus, I made certain to avoid them.

And somewhere off in these woods lives Yogi bear.  The signs just in front of our hotel say so in fact.  There are some areas closed off up against the hotel due to bear droppings, with some temporary signs noting a recent bear sighting.

Hopefully, he won’t make an appearance during any of my runs this week.  And if he does, I can only hope that I can outrun not him – but rather just my running companions.

With that, I’ve got a packed week, and the discussions already started this evening with really cool companies doing really cool things.  Some I can discuss…and some not so much.  More soon.

As always though, thanks for reading!

An inside look at TrainerRoad, a way to make your regular trainer like a mock-CompuTrainer

Last week I had the chance to sit down (well, actually, stand around) and talk with the guys behind the up and coming TrainerRoad application.  Many of you are familiar with the CompuTrainer and the ability to gather real-time data from it – including power metrics.  But at $1,500 – it’s rather expensive proposition for the majority of folks.  Sure, there are other entrants into the market – including companies like TACX, Elite and CycleOps – each with great products…but similarly high prices.

But how is TrainerRoad different?  Well, first off – you use your existing trainer.  Add your existing ANT+ accessories such as heart rate straps and speed/cadence sensors.  Then you grab that handy dandy ANT+ USB stick you probably have too (or can pickup for $20), and get busy with your trainer.

TrainerRoad works by pairing to those ANT+ devices and then plotting and recording the data in real-time on a computer screen.  But that’s not terribly exciting by itself since your regular bike computer already does that.  What differentiates TrainerRoad is the ability to do what they call VirtualPower by using known power resistance curves of certain trainers like the Kurt Kinetic fluid trainers.  See, resistance curves allow one to determine the almost-exact wattage levels on certain trainers at known speeds.  In fact – the incredibly popular LeMond Revolution Trainer works on this same concept – allowing them to predict power quite accurately.

Once they’ve established your VirtualPower (which I’ll just call power from here on out), then they’ll combine the rest of that information and display it on the workout screen.  The remainder of your information comes via the ANT+ sensors on your bike.  And in the event you already have a regular ANT+ power meter, you can use that instead of VirtualPower.  You’d simply pair that just like you’d pair it to your bike computer.

Note that unlike the CompuTrainer – TrainerRoad can’t control resistance today on your trainer, you’ll have to do that just like normal.  It’s possible that down the road some trainer companies will open up the application/hardware interfaces to do so – and the TrainerRoad guys have said they’ll be all over that like white on rice.

But TrainerRoad isn’t just about displaying what you do, because as I noted earlier, a number of folks can do that.  What further differentiates them is that they have an online site integrated into the  application.  This allows you to upload your data immediately upon completion.  You can see below a completed workout, which included multiple intervals – with the data displayed in more detail below it.

Also note that they shortly plan on adding connections to other services so your data/history isn’t land-locked.  For example, first up is TrainingPeaks – which will enable you to easily upload straight to TP.

In addition to just riding following your own plans, you can download and select pre-made workouts.  The application will then guide you through the workouts and provide on-screen instructions if your slackin’ or not doing it correctly.  Sorta like having a coach in your living room.

TrainerRoad can also put together a training schedule/plan for you, based on doing an FTP test – which the software will guide you through as well.  An FTP test is essentially a way to test your power threshold, which enables them to give you specific workouts that help you improve over time.

From a technical standpoint, the application is written on the multi-platform AIR application – which means that it’s both PC and Mac compatible.  Though they are getting the PC beta version kicked out the door first.  This means that the Mac version is on their list, but today they only have the PC version in beta and available.  I know this is a bit confusing because you see a Mac above – but it’s actually a Mac running Windows 7.  Fear not Mac folks – Mac compatibility is super-high on their priority list.

The other thing I love is that they are super-clear with the pairing of devices and your ANT+ stick – allowing you to save devices and show exactly which device ID you have paired (so if you have two folks in the room you can easily differentiate who is who).  And btw – how totally kickass is it that they actually keep track of battery usage when available?  Check out the HR monitor status below.

(Sorry for the giant light reflections…the Vegas show floor is a cruel photography place)

Of course, for many trainer time is about keeping on distracted on a TV or watching Hulu. So the guys have given a bit of a nod to the reality that many folks are constrained to their trainer in small dorms or apartments with only a single laptop.  And for many that laptop has one singular priority: Watching TV or a Movie.

Thus, they’ve enabled you to simply dock the TrainerRoad data panel to the bottom and display anything you’d like behind it – from Hulu to Netflix to the Magic School Bus application if you so choose.

By this point, you’re probably wondering how much and when.  TrainerRoad currently is in beta for another month or two – but they’re cooking along pretty quickly and constantly adding new features.  Once it releases, it’ll be kinda like the paid version of Strava and other premium services and you’ll pay a monthly fee of $10 to use it.

But until release – it’s free if you’d like to sign-up for the beta and give it a whirl.  Like all betas, there may be bugs – but I’m reasonably certain that they won’t cause you to crash your bike.

So give it a whirl and let me know what you think – and as it releases you can expect I’ll circle back around with them and give you a more detailed review.  Given all the trainer-related goodness heading my way over the next few weeks, I’ll have plenty of time to try everything out – just in time for the winter ‘season’.

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For all my Interbike coverage here on the blog you can use this tag to see all the Interbike 2011 posts. Thanks for reading!

One Million Miles

Back in June I hit a minor milestone in the alternate reality that I live in with respect to travel – which I do primarily for work.  As of June 16th, I crossed over the threshold of flying 1,000,000 miles on United Airlines.

Now, it’s probably important to take a minor diversion and explain how Million Miler programs work – as different airlines treat and count miles differently. For United it’s actually really simple, and rather very pure.  They ONLY count what are known as Butt in Seat (BIS) miles, and ONLY on aircraft that have a United logo on the airplane (aka United metal).  Meaning, that if I flew from Seattle to DC, I’d get 2,306 miles credited to my lifetime miles, regardless of which class I flew in or any bonuses.  This is different from some airlines (for example, American Airlines until December anyway) that count all miles you earn – regardless of source – i.e. credit cards, bonus, promotional, etc… That’s an entirely different ball game.  Other airlines have programs that offer some variation of the two schemes.

In my mind, the United program is the most pure – as money doesn’t play a factor but rather simple butt in seat time does.  Of course, while I hit the threshold of 1,000,000 miles – I’ve actually flown far more than that on United.  Award flights (like when I go on vacation) don’t count, so in reality it’s probably closer to 1.2-1.3M.  Not that I’m counting.

Now there are many people (including the dude who hit 10 Million Miles recently on United) who fly far more than I.  I average between 100,000 and 250,000 miles a year (flying) – and have since 2001.  Of course, not all of that is on United.  Some folks easily average 250-500K a year without blinking.  It all depends on the routes they fly.  Thankfully, I’m not one of those people.

What was cool was that my wife was on the flight with me (though at the time, fiancée).  This certainly wasn’t planned, it just aligned that way in the final week.  We were flying back from the CycleOps product launch in Denver, and at the time I was less than a 1,000 miles from 1,000,000 miles.  Here’s what my account looked like prior to the flight.

Now what’s funny is that some folks really think through their ‘Million Mile flight’.  They do it in style – like in business or first class on a transatlantic or transpacific flight.  They have the whole thing thought out.  I however, was not one of those people.

Nope, I did it in Seat 32E of the painfully short Denver to Dulles Redeye flight (only 3 hours long).  Note that Row 32 is the second to last row on this little Airbus 319.

But The Girl had fun with it.  She got me a little toy United plane and wrote my name on the side.  Back in the day, folks got planes named after them at various multi-million mile landmarks.  Not so much anymore, as it’s too common.

And the Captain was great in that he printed out the flight plan for the flight and even wrote a little note on his business card.

Nice touches.

A few weeks later I received a congratulations e-mail – plus the printed certificate at the top of the this post.  My account then showed (rather anticlimactically) that I had crossed over the million miler marker.

What’s a bit more fun though is that I requested a paper printout of my entire United Mileage Plus activity since the beginning of time.  A week later it showed up in my mailbox.  Note that it took almost $8 in postage for the first envelope which contained the entire printed history of my account, and then included a second smaller envelope as well.

Now, I actually keep most boarding passes – just for fun.  Years ago I used to actually put them in binders, but now they’re just in a giant cardboard box.  Here were the prettier days:

But back to the paper envelope.  Inside was a gigantic old-school printer style printout of every single transaction ever.  Every flight, every car rental tied to United, every 1-800Flowers purchase…everything.

The ream of paper is about an inch high.

So what does this get me at the end of the day?  Well, not much honestly.  A tiny itsty-bitsy bit higher on upgrade lists and a few extra upgrades per year.

But it’s the experiences along the way are far more notable.  While the airline industry always gets a bit of a bad rap in customer service, I find that by and large the United folks are great.  It’s funny in that it’s been 7 years since I lived in Seattle – yet just this past July during a trip there, it was neat to see that the ticket counter and gate agents both recognized me (from years of being on their counters every Monday morning and saying ‘Hi’ every Friday on the way back in).  They were excited to catch up and hear how things were going.  Of course, it’s also well known by frequent United fliers that Seattle has the best United staff (SEA based pilots & flight attendants, airport agents) folks out there. :)

Hope everyone has a great weekend ahead!  Thanks for reading!

Interbike After Dark

Last Thursday night I was working away fast and furious trying to get a bunch of posts put together for publishing.  I had just finished up with the Fox and ANT+ folks showing off the Fox Shocks system, and by that time the show floor was transitioning from being open to then hosting a handful of semi-private events (many exhibitors have happy-hour type events shortly after the show floor officially closes).

At the time, I was simply hanging out in a corner of the Media Center just typing away…one post after another.  But before I knew it, it was mysteriously all quiet around me.  Around this point I realized I should probably be leaving (plus, of larger concern was that I was hungry).  There were security guards walking the show floor – and I suspected they likely didn’t want me there much longer (though the guy guarding the booth didn’t seem to care or tell me I had to go).

On the way out it was interesting comparing how different booths ‘closed up shop’ each night. For example, most booths locked up their bikes with standard bike locks or long security cables, like below:

Others placed covers over their bikes – in hopes that nobody would realize that at a bike convention, there might be bikes below the bike covers.  I certainly wasn’t about to go left up the skirts and find out what’s under them though.

While many booths apparently got a bulk deal on yellow caution tape – the helmet folks below decided to go double-time with the tape and the chairs. If I was building a kids fort, I would hire these guys.

And while the above folks would probably also be great for building a kids corral, the below folks are more ideal if you wanted to practice saran-wrapping someone's cubicle and then filling it with foam peanuts.  They’ve got the first part down. (Note I can neither confirm nor deny having direct knowledge about the cubicle saran wrapping piece, mission confidentiality precludes discussing the finer art of such topics).

I like how the below booth actually spent the time to fold up the chairs against the table. Nice touch.

I’m not sure if there’s a garbage service on the show floor – but these guys were certainly hoping so.  I didn’t see any other booths depositing trash on the sidewalk…but sometimes there’s trade show secrets that you learn year after year.  Or perhaps they were just the only one to actually read the documentation given to them by the Interbike organizers.

Since the Garmin booth happened to be directly behind the Media Center, it was right along my path to food.  I noticed they had removed all the GPS units (which were up against the wall) – but left the bikes with the LeMond trainers and locked them together.  It would look pretty awkward to steal three bikes and three trainers at once, so I can see the logic there.

And then you’ve got the prize for the most cleaned out after dark booth.  These guys took nothing to chance.  Every item in their booth was meticulously removed.

And I can’t blame them. After all, as we left the security guards were checking a few others for big ticket items and requiring that all bikes departing the building have a completed form with them.  The guard noted that apparently the night prior some $30,000 in equipment walked out into the Vegas night.

Apparently what happens in Vegas…doesn’t always stay in Vegas.

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For all my Interbike coverage here on the blog you can use this tag to see all the Interbike 2011 posts. Thanks for reading!

A look at the Fox Racing Shocks Smart Pump concept with a Garmin Edge 800

There was a lot of cool stuff shown at Interbike last week – but perhaps one of the coolest and least expected technology items demonstrated was a partnership between Fox (the bike company, not the TV corporation) and Garmin that allows you to calibrate your Fox Racing Shock system using the Edge 800 via ANT+.  They also demonstrated it using a Bluetooth enabled Android phone using a custom application.  This component is called Smart Pump, and is part of Fox’s Intelligent Ride Dynamics system.

So why introduce a system such as this to a mountain bike?  Well, as the Fox folks explained – they see an incredible amount of bikes with shocks that leave the bike shop (configured correctly or otherwise) and then are never re-calibrated again.  This has in turn lead to customers that are unhappy with their bike setup and ride, not realizing a simple recalibration could fix things.  Many customers simply don’t know where to begin – especially if new to mountain biking.

Fox’s Eric Mellegers explained by saying, “The main motivation of this product is to have an interface to make it easy for the end user or the dealer to setup their suspension correctly without having to understand the concept of setting sag or understanding travel or strokes on rear shocks.  Ultimately this will improve the end users experience with minimal knowledge with an easy interface and an electronic guide to a perfect balanced setup.”

I should point out that the system doesn’t weigh any more than a traditional pump – and they even commented they don’t see this as an expensive item.  For them, having happily calibrated customers is more important than the trivial cost of a few electronic chips (read: It costs far less than unhappy folks returning bikes).

First, I’ll get into how the system works – and then I’ve got some non-fancy video of calibration using both methods.

Installed on the bike is the Smart Pump that has both an ANT+ chip in it, as well as a Bluetooth chip.  This pump is used to control the calibration of the shocks (front and back) as well as give pressure readings within the system.

You can see it connected to the front shock, below:

You’ll note above that there’s actually a QR tag code stuck to the side of the shocks – both front and back – that you can scan via cell phone camera.  In addition to the code, there’s also an ID that you can manually enter in (for the Garmin Edge 800).  The reason for the QR code is that each individual shock serial number can be stored and then quickly referenced.  Think of it like a serial number.  It also allows the system to know exactly what type of shocks you have.

In the case of the Edge 800, you’ll notice a new menu option within the bike profile page for a given bike (as usual on the Edge 800 you can setup multiple bikes):

Once the ‘ANT+ Shocks’ menu is selected, you’re then able to either go through a setup wizard – or review shock settings.

If you choose the setup wizard, it’ll walk you through step by step in shock configuration (you can watch the whole process in the video below).

The system then reads the pressure in the shocks and allows you to adjust the  shocks (simply by turning the blue knob at the top) to get to the correct sag or rebound. Because the data is transmitted in real-time, this means during some steps you’ll actually see the pressure reading on the unit change instantly as you adjust pressure.

Meanwhile other steps such as rebound adjustment will instruct you to bounce the bike – where the system measures the rebound each time.

You can see the information is display on both the Garmin Edge 800 (above) as well as the Android phone (below).

Now that I’ve given you a brief overview, I’m going to let the product designers give you a walk through.  The videos are a touch bit long – and shot on the busy show floor – but for those interested in the subject, it gives you a pretty clear idea of how it works.  I’ve split them into two pieces – one showing calibration with the Edge and then with the Android phone. 

The first is the Garmin Edge 800 paired via ANT+ to the Fox Smart Pump system, with Shannon Boucousis from ANT+ and Matt Hrabko from Fox:

Calibration of the Fox shock system via Garmin Edge 800

Next we’ve got calibration with with the Android phone via Bluetooth, this time with Eric Mellegers of Fox.  The phone’s display is mirrored onto the TV screen you see via cable, simply to make it easier to see (which I admit, can be kinda hard to see with the continually changing focus):

Calibration of the Fox shock system via Android phone

So what do you think?  Is this a system that you’d find useful?  From the folks I talked to on the show floor – primarily bike shop owners and employees – they said this would be incredibly helpful from a customer satisfaction standpoint, especially folks new to mountain biking.

But since this setup is purely concept, there’s no date on if or when it might be released – they’re looking for feedback from folks like you if you’d find this of value.  Like most things I post around these parts, the right people are definitely watching this page – so if it’s of value – drop a note in the comments.

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For all my Interbike coverage here on the blog you can use this tag to see all the Interbike 2011 posts. Thanks for reading!