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Week in Review–April 1st, 2018

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The Week in Review is a collection of both all the goodness I’ve written during the past week around the internet, as well as a small pile of links I found interesting – generally endurance sports related. I’ve often wondered what to do with all of the coolness that people write, and while I share a lot of it on Twitter and Facebook, this is a better forum for sending it on to y’all. Most times these different streams don’t overlap, so be on the lookout at all these places for good stuff!

So with that, let’s get into the action!

DCRAINMAKER.com Posts in the Past Week:

Here’s all the goodness that ended up on the main page of DCRainmaker.com this past week:

Monday: 5 Random Things I Did This Weekend (Final Australia Edition)
Wednesday: JetBlack WhisperDrive Smart Trainer: An Interim Review
Sunday: A Singapore Runaround

YouTube Videos I Made This Week:

Here’s what hit the tubes over on the You of Tube, definitely don’t forget to subscribe there to get notified of videos the second they hit!

Stuff that I found interesting around the interwebs:

Here’s a not-so-small smattering of all the random things that I stumbled on while doing my civic duty to find the end of the Internet.

1) GoPro is licensing its sensors now: Not to other competing action camera makers, but rather various other entities. Will be interesting to see how this plays out, especially since there are numerous entities in the small image sensor market already.

2) Shimano applies for patent on wireless shifters: All I’ve gotta say is: About time.

3) Garmin lists all of their 2018 Pro Cycling Team deals: It’s a pretty interesting lineup – both in terms of the total volume of teams, but also which products specifically they’ll be using.  Of course, it’s early in the year, so realistically these products might change a bit as the season goes on.

4) US Soccer players to use GPS trackers on the field: I’m going to guess fans will be disappointed with the level of accuracy here in larger stadiums, given the amount of things blocking signal.  But, the use of 6,500 devices is impressive. Plus, they’re grabbing a bunch of other biometric data, including HR.  So that has some value too.

5) A story about my police story: As you might remember a week or so ago, I got pulled over riding my bike. Here’s one of the big newspapers in Australia covering it.  I chatted with them briefly about it.

6) Apple Watch heart rate data used in murder trial: As usual, when you murder someone, you should treat it like taking off in an airplane – stow away all electronic devices.  Tray tables optional.

7) UCI’s new X-Ray machines: While this is a good first step, I think there’s still far too much opportunity here, especially with the 30-minute window.  Bikes should be taken immediately, just as they are inspected immediately.  30 minutes is a lifetime for something nefarious to occur.

8) GoPro announces new $199 Hero Action camera: There’s so many things I don’t understand here – starting with the name.  GoPro has gone Apple-like for their base cameras.  This is about the 6th camera called the ‘Hero’, without any identifier, or even a year identifier as Apple does.  What’s funny is that while this new one takes on the form of the existing one, some might forget that GoPro used to offer cameras cheaper than this – $129USD in fact, with basically the same specs sans-screen.  But even the screen was found in the Hero+ LCD edition back a couple years ago.  While I think GoPro generally gets the specs balances right here – I’m not sure it’ll change things for them.  At this price point they’re fighting a lot of knock-off no-name cameras, and this is much higher than them, with lesser specs (especially the limited 60FPS for 1080p).  I think had they been at $129 or even $149, this would sell like hotcakes.  Either way, I’ll grab a unit in the next few weeks in the US and give it a whirl.

9) Cycling Tips Switzerland Series: I continue to love this series, mostly because it gives me riding ideas for this summer on my Eurobike road trip. Last summer, I hit up an epic mountain ride in Switzerland…and this summer I’ve got a few on the docket as part of my RV road trip. I’d point out that this is one of the very rare cases of sponsored posts/series done correctly.

Sports Technology Software/Firmware Updates This Week:

Each week I quickly highlight some of the new firmware, app, software and website service updates that I see go out. If you’re a sports technology company and release an update – shoot me a quick note (just one-liners are perfect, or Tweet it at me is even better) and I’ll make mention of it here. If I don’t know about it, I won’t be able to post about it. Sound good?  Oh – and if you want to get a head start on things, this page is a great resource for watching Garmin firmware updates.

Apple WatchOS Firmware Update: You’ve now got a new nightstand mode, as well as a few other minor tweaks.

Garmin VIRB 360 Action Cam Firmware update: New HDR mode, new night photo timelapse mode, few random bug fixes.

Garmin Vivofit Jr. Firmware Update: Minor tweaks.

Garmin Vivoactive 3/Vivoactive HR/ Firmware Update: Minor bug fixes (the same for both)

Garmin Vivosmart 3: Various algorithm improvements.

Garmin Vivosport: Mostly bug fixes.

Garmin Vivomove HR: Mostly bug fixes, though one tiny feature change.

Hammerhead Karoo: New power fields, pile of bugs fixed.

TomTom Touch Cardio Band: Bug fix for Android pairings.

Wahoo ELEMNT/BOLT Firmware Update: Just bug fixes, mostly data field ones.

With that – thanks for reading!

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21 Comments

  1. There was a Powertap P1 firmware update too. Fixing the “right pedal missing” issue.
    Seems to work for me.

    link to powertap.com

  2. foot

    that one is super annoying. i hope it fixes it for me, too.

  3. Bertram

    I liked your story about the police encounter better….

  4. Laurent

    Bonjour, pour votre information, en Europe, les GPS sont utilisés depuis longtemps sur les terrains. Les rugbymans en sont équipés (rectangle à l’arrière de leur maillot), et les données sont remontés en temps réel à l’entraineur qui peut suivant le nombre d’impact, le nombre d’accélération, le rythme cardiaque ou encore la distance parcourue changer ces joueurs.

  5. Tim

    Have read of the Facebook comments on the article about getting pulled over…. not great.

    link to facebook.com

    • Funny, hadn’t seen that link before.

      A few random observations:

      A) I never both to enter car vs bike debates online, it’s futile, even when 100% correct per the law
      B) I do find that UK/Australian bike haters are far more angry/aggressive then American ones. Sure, American drivers will simply run you over and shrug their shoulders, but the level of online chatter/hate (or even radio commentary as I heard) doesn’t rise anywhere near what I see from UK/Australia folks
      C) I don’t see as much bike-hate in continental Europe anywhere near the level in UK/Australia. Probably lots of reasons for this, but more than would fit in a book or two.

      I don’t know why this is the case, and sure, it’s generalizations, but the reality is that I feel like I read enough text on the topic from numerous countries to say that generalization is roughly correct.

    • The Real Bob

      I think a lot of the bike hate is sometimes valid and perpetuated by a few bad actors.

      Example. Ray, you remember Rockville pike in MD/DC. Super busy fairly high speed 3 lane major road. On too many occasions to count, I have seen a road biker taking up a lane during rush hour.

      I acknowledge as bikers we have the right to do that, but it is just not smart. I bike commute daily, and my quickest route would be to take 2 major roads from my house. But I don’t, because there are lower traffic slightly longer ways I can take.

    • Yup, totally agree. People see a cyclist doing something stupid once, and they forever label all other cyclists the same.

    • Corey W.

      …availability heuristic at work

    • Eli

      Why would you ever want to bike on 355 even when not rush hour? Crazy….

  6. marklemcd

    So looks like the wahoo update doesn’t fix the calculating average power incorrectly bug with the Assiomas.

    Why wahoo? Why?

  7. Susan

    Any ideas what is going on with the GoPro Hero Sesson line? I was about to order one from Clever Training and when I looked today the Hero5 Session is out of stock and listed as discontinued by the manufacturer. I am disappointed I have lots of points I was going to use to drop the price down into my price range.

    • GoPro announced they will cease the Session lineup, effective immediately. Which basically means they stopped fulfilling the channel over the last little while.

      One thing that GoPro is really darn good at is having older unit/model inventory near-instantly disappear. So if you were looking for a Hero Session form factor camera, I’d snatch it up now before they go away. The Hero5 Session is still available on Amazon: link to amzn.to ($199), as is the Hero Session for $149, but honestly I’d spend the extra $50 for the Hero5 Session over the not-5 variant. Mostly because the image quality is drastically better in the Hero5 variant.

    • Ken

      It was smaller & more compact than the full-sized models. While the image quality wasn’t as great as the higher end models, especially in low light, the tiny size meant I could put it places that it was almost invisible. IMO this is a bad decision to discontinue the Session line.

  8. Eli

    For a kickstarter project:
    link to kickstarter.com
    Speaker for a bike that uses the garmin mount to attach. Still trying to figure out the best way to add background music for a bike ride

  9. Doug

    Re: Murder by Apple HRM. Interesting that article says “Apple has been keen to have the Watch treated as a medical-grade device”

    That would seem like a high hurdle but also proving that the data recorded on the device was accurate, ie the ability for the user to screw it up is infinite…. “so you’re saying I should be wearing it on my wrist?!” 🙂

  10. Paul Frylink

    A parody by ABC (Australia) TV show “The checkout” on how much ‘we’ spend on bike gadgets.
    At 2:17, that could be your bike Ray 🙂
    link to youtube.com

  11. Asís

    Hi Ray!,

    I know that this is a completely off-topic question, nevertheless, here it goes: I am pretty sure that for (at least) one of your reviews you used a device that could record data from many wireless devices (sensors), so that you obtain simultaneously tracks from several GPS receivers, power meters, heart rate monitors, etc…Am I right? If so, could you point me to somewhere I can read about it?

    Thanks in advance!