Equipment Used
Equipment used by the scribe...............
Orbea Orca Road Race Frame
PowerTap SL 2.4 Wireless Hub System
Mavic Ksyrium Wheels
Quintana Roo Lucero Time Trial Frame
Spiuk Race Helmet
Sidi Ergo Carbon Shoes
Look Keo Carbon Pedals
Science in Sport - Clothing and Drinks
Skins BioAcceleration Tecnology
Powertap SL 2.4 Wireless System.
Technology has moved on, wires have been removed and a single rear Hub installed to read... Power - Heartrate - Cadience - Energy Expenditure - Odometer and Speed. So how does it compare with other units? Does this move forward in technolgy actually work for the ordinary person?
So lets begin at the purchasing stage (me being the ordinary person of course). After a lot of testing (at the factory end) the units were finally made available to the general public. Pedal Power received 2 units, so after finding the correct size wheels (HED jet 60mm) to run the system, Russ @ Pedal Power built the Hub.
Setting it up?
Now as with all computerised gear, little 'problems' always appear, so the main tip here is to remain calm, something I did do but did unfortunately lose the plot a couple of times. Working with Power will take time to get used to and in fact working out where you want to be with it, and how you get there. Sounds a little double dutch, but if you are new to Power (like me) then the setting up of this unit will take time and patience. Once all the 'hitchs' are ironed out I'm sure the SL 2.4 will prove beneficial.
So where are we?
Unit attached to the bike (so different to other units, just one small display screen) wheel built and ready for testing. The unit comes with a default setting and a pretty easy to read users manual. Running through the book is fairly easy, with the usual rules of sticking to start at the begining and finish at the end.....and don't jump pages.
The display levels (3 lines) Top = Power / Middle = Speed / Bottom = Multi Function are easy to read and use. 2 buttons at the bottom of the display unit, Mode and Select are used to navigate through the computer. The Mode button switch's you from Top/Middle/Bottom, from where you use the select button to view the available activities within the selected line (not recommended whislt riding!!). The 'default setting' (personal choice) is to have Power/Speed/Heart Rate as the displays. Without going to deep into the Unit (I'm not in the same class or in fact league as Mr Williams @ FR when it comes to writing reviews (me the simple type!) the computer setup is simple and takes just a few minutes. Although on saying that, going into the last Setup 'No5 - Identifying the Hub' and letting the Hub find the ID, I've still got to find out how to get back to 'square 1' (?)
On testing the Unit (twice now) I've come across a couple of 'problems' which I suppose in reality I should have -
1 Being no Heartrate** showing, going to reset the system via setup No5 before test No3 and,
2 The middle line showing indifferent readings.
The latter problem has now been solved, again setup confusion, the middle line should only show Speed (Mi or K) I apparently set it up with cadience showing, so therefore 2 'programs' arguing with each other as to who should be displaying what!
On the downloading front, things get a bit tricky, again a learning curve. Once the USB port*** is identified by the unit the transfer of activities is painless. One thing that I did find is that for some reason (yet to solve) you can end up with multiple activities. Now you can merge these activities at intial download or by exporting the data and importing it again - a box pops up when downloading with 3 options - Save/Delete/Merge.
On downloading and reading the information (which is a bit double dutch to me at the moment, power side that is!) it is apparent to me that the cadience side of the unit is, shall we say 'slighty out' . Now I've downloaded twice and both times the Max cadience has been a little high - 222 and 174 - do you agree? Looking at the cadience whilst using the unit, it seemed to be reading fine. I have emailed PowerTap and they are a little lost and feel its a 'clitch in the system'. So we'll give it another couple of goes and see what happens.
This is just a brief write up, might go into it a little deeper at a later date (further testing) and I'll re read this during the week to see if I can make it more user friendly, if I can't...tough!...later.....
Update:
**Heartrate problem - Go into Setup 5 scroll through and you'll find an ID HR section, just select till 'learn' flashing and let it pickup your coded strap (FYI just tried the same procedure with the Cadience, shall see next ride - sat hopefully)
***Downloading port - depending on your system you might get a window which opens and tells you that something is trying to comunicate with a usb port on your computer (see below)....
Cancel that operation and you should then get this..
Now press OK and your device will now download.
On the cadience front, still not reading correctly, by that I mean the downloaded reading is not right. If you look at the graph the cadience line is OK, but the overall totals (average/max) are wrong. Next time before merging I think I'll look at the totals, it may be that merging all activies plays a 'little part' in the incorrect final readings.
Update on the cadience front (6-02-2007) still no joy, but hey thats not why we bought the Powertap for (the clues in the name!).