Since the speed sensor for my iBike power meter died late in the summer I’ve been keeping one eye on eBay for second hand power meters and the other on the upcoming slew of next generation PMs. Garmin announced their pedal based Vector power meter, but at a price much higher than expected. Powertap announced new wheel sets at much reduced prices, and information about Polar and Look’s upcoming pedal based power metering system has been slowly trickling out. Cycleops have the only proven hardware in this range of stuff vaguely in reach of my budget, but I have no doubt that the new pedal systems will work well, although it may take a bit of customer feedback and some firmware iterations.
Unfortunately my budget isn’t going to stretch to a new power meter system and new Ant+ computer. It’s daft to consider spending several hundred pounds (yes, even on second hand bits) on something like this in the current financial climate, so I’m going back to the iBike. I’ll get a new wireless stem mount shipped over from the US, which will not only solve the fault but will also give me Ant+ connectivity, so I can measure power on the turbo, I can collect and view HR data live on the iBike, and I can use my existing Garmin speed and cadence sensor. It should also fix the airflow problem when I ride with my hands on the tops – with the handlebar mount and gloves on the airflow to the wind speed sensor is affected, and the measured wind speed would drop. It would typically show an erroneous tailwind when I climbed hills. I doubt I’m going to fit it to my race bike, partly as I like to keep racing stripped down and simple, but mostly because I don’t think the damned thing will fit anywhere. It’s too big to twist onto the stem.
Most of my training for the first three blocks will be aerobic stuff at zone 2, which the iBike is great at. At this time of year when the wind sensor has chilled down to air temperatures it’s not going to be warming up again and giving screwy data. I notice that the recently announced generation IV iBike will have a brand new wind sensor – one that isn’t as susceptible to temperature. That’s great, and would part solve one of my mayor gripes.
That’s another reason for going back to the iBike: Velocomp are still pushing forward hard with software and hardware development. I thought that with their release of software and hardware for the iPhone platform they would drop the old style, single power meter unit, but they’ve just released version 6 of the iBike software and announced the new gen IV hardware. That shows that they still have a lot of faith in their product, despite the battering it takes from direct force power metering zealots (they do make some good points though).
The iBike software has to be good to repair problems caused during some rides by the number of very sensitive sensors used to collect data. The new version of the software looks like it makes another step forward in this, and in calibrating the iBike to the rider as confidently as possible in the first place. By fixing more variables, it should give more confidence in comparing test data between sessions, periods and seasons.
I doubt I’ll be able to upgrade to the fourth version of the hardware, but I think I’ll give the iBike a go for at least another season. And that’s because of its main advantage: its cost. Without Velocomp and iBike I wouldn’t be able to afford to train with power data at all.
