http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn22478-smartphone-gives-bikes-an-automatic-gearbox.html
Smartphone gives bikes an automatic gearbox.
CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Stuff
Automatic gearbox anyone?
(16 posts)-
Posted 12 years ago #
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Dammmitttt! Thats my retirement idea smoked and they've implemented it exactly the same way I was going to. The things one dreams up on long lonely rides with lots of little hills....
Posted 12 years ago # -
The system uses bluetooth to wirelessly connect between the gear shifters and the phone and then onto the gear changer. Bluetooth can be thought of very simply as wireless usb. The comments attributed to the member of Evans cycles can be ignored as the user has to 'mate' the devices together before using them. Bluetooth has many many channels and is secure peer to perr communication. Also the range of Low Energy bluetooth does not transmit very far, a couple of metres, so unless you happen to cycle past the end of an RAF or civil airports radar, you wouldn't have any interference.
Posted 12 years ago # -
There must be scope to enhance this using GPS and having the system learn your usual routes. You could have exactly the same gear changes every day, tweaked for wind direction and speed.
Or at least the system could know the gradient of the road you are on and use that to help with the gear change decisions.Posted 12 years ago # -
Hmm, cycling becomes Forumla 1??
Posted 12 years ago # -
You saying F1 drivers just steer??
Posted 12 years ago # -
Hmm, cycling becomes Forumla 1??
That happened at the last Olympics didn't it? The British team won because it was able to spend millions on more advanced engineering? (Or so I read, I didn't follow it myself)
Posted 12 years ago # -
No no no... they also press those switches on the steering wheel... ;-)
I was making the comparison that if things progress too far, we'll see limitations on bikes technology to increase competition.
Posted 12 years ago # -
"if things progress too far, we'll see limitations on bikes technology to increase competition"
That was written with an ironic Obree voice(?)
Posted 12 years ago # -
I was making the comparison that if things progress too far, we'll see limitations on bikes technology to increase competition.
Already at that stage; the UCI adds all kinds of arbitrary limits to the bikes so the race is all about the rider... So the "technology" race moved to the wet bit on top of the bike and how it could be enhanced.Posted 12 years ago # -
"So the "technology" race moved to the wet bit on top of the bike and how it could be enhanced."
And look where that ended up!!
Posted 12 years ago # -
Does this clever piece of technology know how tired or fresh your legs are feeling? It's like trying to design a gearbox for a car where the power output could be 250hp one day and 40hp the next.
Forgive me if I'm a bit cynical.
As an aside, I think a steam locomotive is a much better analogy for cycling than an internal-combustion powered vehicle. Fast on the flats, high tractive starting effort, struggle up hills, limited in range by amount of fuel and water they can carry, limited on long climbs by the human endurance (of the fireman to shovel coal in the firebox and keep steam pressure up), can well and truly run out of steam, but have a rest and can be off again.
I have this romantic vision of bikes as being purely a bio-mechanical thing, with no interference from electronics or other wizardry.
Posted 12 years ago # -
I can't help thinking this yet another solution to a problem that doesn't actually exist in the first place.
Posted 12 years ago # -
"I have this romantic vision of bikes as being purely a bio-mechanical thing"
“The gross and net result of it is that people who spent most of their natural lives riding iron bicycles over the rocky roadsteads of this parish get their personalities mixed up with the personalities of their bicycle as a result of the interchanging of the atoms of each of them and you would be surprised at the number of people in these parts who are nearly half people and half bicycles...when a man lets things go so far that he is more than half a bicycle, you will not see him so much because he spends a lot of his time leaning with one elbow on walls or standing propped by one foot at kerbstones.”
Posted 12 years ago # -
Does this clever piece of technology know how tired or fresh your legs are feeling? It's like trying to design a gearbox for a car where the power output could be 250hp one day and 40hp the next.
My design would be able to tell how tired you were based on the average cadence compared to an long term average plus with a "going to shops" type override. Although I don't suppose it matters, if your cadence drops it just swaps down to an easier gear.And look where that ended up!!
exactementPosted 12 years ago # -
@steveo If people with stupid amounts of money to spend are keen enough on keeping their cadence in a narrow range then there are still things like superlight infinitely-variable-gearing ideas to be explored.
Never feeling like you're in the wrong gear on a rolling road is all very well but it's just as well that electrical gears will remain out of the reach of normal people as normal people presumably occasionally like to extend their cadences' minima and maxima according to the conditions, both environmental and physiological. The direction I've approached a particular speed from often determines which gear I stay in. I might be in a higher gear to go at a particular speed uphill (where the occasional big push might be fruitfully employed) compared to heading into a high wind (where being in a lower gear gives greater being-inexorably-slowed-down leeway).
Posted 12 years ago #
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