Heads up!!! Here’s your massive holiday sports tech deals list! This includes the Garmin Epix for just $419, the Apple Watch Ultra 2 for just $699, the GoPro Hero 12 Black for $249, (or the brand new Hero 13 or $299!) and plenty more! Go check out the full list of 100+ deals here!
I’m DC RAINMAKER…
Here’s how to save!
Wanna save some cash and support the site? These companies help support the site! With Backcountry.com or Competitive Cyclist with either the coupon code DCRAINMAKER for first time users saving 15% on applicable products.
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You can use the above link for any Amazon country and it (should) automatically redirect to your local Amazon site.
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Check out my weekly podcast - with DesFit, which is packed with both gadget and non-gadget goodness!
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5 Easy Steps To The Site
1
In Depth Product Reviews
You probably stumbled upon here looking for a review of a sports gadget. If you’re trying to decide which unit to buy – check out my in-depth reviews section. Some reviews are over 60 pages long when printed out, with hundreds of photos! I aim to leave no stone unturned.
2
Read My Sports Gadget Recommendations.
Here’s my most recent GPS watch guide here, and cycling GPS computers here. Plus there are smart trainers here, all in these guides cover almost every category of sports gadgets out there. Looking for the equipment I use day-to-day? I also just put together my complete ‘Gear I Use’ equipment list, from swim to bike to run and everything in between (plus a few extra things). And to compliment that, here’s The Girl’s (my wife’s) list. Enjoy, and thanks for stopping by!
3
Have some fun in the travel section.
I travel a fair bit, both for work and for fun. Here’s a bunch of random trip reports and daily trip-logs that I’ve put together and posted. I’ve sorted it all by world geography, in an attempt to make it easy to figure out where I’ve been.
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My Photography Gear: The Cameras/Drones/Action Cams I Use Daily
The most common question I receive outside of the “what’s the best GPS watch for me” variant, are photography-esq based. So in efforts to combat the amount of emails I need to sort through on a daily basis, I’ve complied this “My Photography Gear” post for your curious minds (including drones & action cams!)! It’s a nice break from the day-to-day sports-tech talk, and I hope you get something out of it!
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The Swim/Bike/Run Gear I Use List
Many readers stumble into my website in search of information on the latest and greatest sports tech products. But at the end of the day, you might just be wondering “What does Ray use when not testing new products?”. So here is the most up to date list of products I like and fit the bill for me and my training needs best! DC Rainmaker 2023 swim, bike, run, and general gear list. But wait, are you a female and feel like these things might not apply to you? If that’s the case (but certainly not saying my choices aren’t good for women), and you just want to see a different gear junkies “picks”, check out The Girl’s Gear Guide too.
Strapping an 800 euro watch to an 700 euro drone and it is so cool. Not so sure! there are so many more ways to do this better and cheaper using a GPS-flight controller for a self build drone. But I think the boss needed an excuse to have the company pay for his new watch.
One of the things to keep in mind though, is that while a self-build drone is far cheaper for the hardware, it’s the software automation that these companies are after. With the DJI SDK, they can trivially automate the flights of drones (including this one). And they can do it with already existing 3rd party apps.
So in the case of a scenario like this, I suspect the the idea would be to have drones on automated flight paths/locations, which something like Litchi would be an exceptionally good app for (costing basically nothing in this scenario).
Whereas doing a homebrew of the flight controller app side would be a ginormous time suck that likely would never reach the same reliability levels.
Which is probably why they didn’t use the Mini 3 – a far better drone for this scenario. That drone still isn’t supported by the DJI SDK (DJI drags their heals on this). The Mini 3 with a Plus battery is getting about 45 mins of flight time, whereaeas the Mavic Air variants are half that at best (and the Mini 3 can easily lift any Apple Watch, I’ve stuck full GoPro Hero 11’s on it).
100% this. I have to demo IoT at work, and while a lot of my colleagues wasted months messing with Raspberry Pi (ultimately to fail, given the time suck), I used a Garmin watch and wrote an app in an afternoon that sends every bit of sensor data out to the cloud for analytics and real time shenanigans. Job done, and most of the support is from Garmin, not from me. This has been especially helpful with the handful of people who have since reached out to use the code, I hand it over and I’m done, no ongoing support
Apple’s thing is a bit more than just patent infringement. They also poached Masimo’s employees, apparently.
Boring week ! 😕
I saw Strava gave statements to several sites. They ever give you anything more? Or did they put you on their “Do not call” list? :-)
They actually gave everyone the same silent treatment up till that point. It wasn’t till my prodding that I finally got them to even admit they were hiking prices (the statement I included in my post, which they then waited 30 mins and published externally on their press site).
Then, about 6 hours later when it all exploded after I posted, their new VP of Comms (just hired two weeks ago), stepped in and started providing a new set of PR responses (which the Verge got).
I haven’t heard from them since. My guess is we’ll see Strava start to do something today. As is always the case over the years with Strava (or any other company), I’m hard on them when they do purposefully stupid anti-consumer stuff, and I’m fair on them and cover it when they do cool stuff. They’ve had largely a good two-year run of good coverage. I’ll continue to cover cool new things as cool, whether or not they call me back. However, as with really any other news site, if I’m now on the do-not-call list for embargoed news, and everyone else covers it, then my likelihood of covering ‘old news’ is pretty low.
In other words, balls in their camp.
Thanks for the reply. The whole episode is so surprising and disappointing. When Gainey and Horvath came back, it really seemed like Strava was back to the “old Strava”. As you noted, they made a lot of great improvements over the last couple years and seemed much more focused on delivering the features people wanted.
A week ago they sent out the year-end email about all that happened in 2022 and “looking forward to a bright 2023”. They even said, “Nearly all of our revenue that supports our operations and building the future of Strava comes from you. We appreciate you!”. They could have easily used this opportunity to explain the price increases, why they were needed, and what they would go for. Instead they play these games and it just makes them look so bad. :-(
I will probably keep subscribing. I don’t necessarily use all the features. The heat maps for route planning are probably the most useful. And I do want them to succeed. Hopefully they learn something from this.
Re the first story about Garmin and sat comms in phones, I think it pretty clear that the upcoming S23 range have that chip in it – the advertising for the launch shows the graphic design for the UFO/Space ship.
Interesting picked up in a few places, but hadn’t seen it loop back here.
Totally agree, though, the only catch though is that the S23 range is set to be released in a week or so, yet, Qualcomm’s noted “starting in the second half of 2023”.
However, it’s possible that Qualcomm was specifically referring to the functionality being lit up, rather than the chipset itself.
I suppose we’ll all soon find out…
More info on the Masimo patent dispute with Apple…
link to ocbj.com