garmin

This post is going to be unapologetically weird. No one is forcing you to read this.

I don’t think there’s enough proper dummy spits¹ in cycling. After a lot of thinking about this I think I know why. Cyclists love data.

Many cyclist have a cycling computer giving them data like:

• Speed
• Lap time
• Gradient
• Temperature
• FTP

Then there are the additional sensors:

• Heart rate
• Cadence
• Wheel speed
• Power
• Left/right balance
• HRV

What does this have to do with a dummy? Well up until recently there wasn’t any way to record smart pacifier data for sports activities. In fact there wasn’t even a smart pacifier. Who’s going to ride a bike while sucking on a pacifier if it can’t give you any juicy data and stats.

I was extremely excited and very privileged to receive a prototype Smart Paci from Curious Inventions. The device can monitor bite strength along with 4 capacitative touch sensors on the sides and reports over Bluetooth low energy.

You have a crank power meter, I have a smart paci. We are not the same.

The Smart Paci provides us with an opportunity to bring genuine dummy spits into the world of sports, but alas cycling computers and sports trackers have no native support to this new sensor.

Luckily Garmin Connect provides support for 3rd party apps and integrations through it’s IQ SDK. IQ apps are coded in “Monkey C”, which is weird….(I did warn you).

For example:

ByteArray objects are fixed size, numerically indexed, single dimensional, and take Numbers with a value >= -128 and <= 255 as members.

One of my frustrations with Monkey C / IQ SDK is that you have to do a lot of the heavy lifting. For example sending BLE messages, you need to implement your own queuing system. This is especially annoying when it comes to layout. You’d think that if I have a sensor value there would be something generic I could extend to make my data field look identical to every other - but it seems not. If you want to make a chart that looks like the Garmin ones? I think you’re on your own. Then you have to test the layouts on all the devices…

All this is to say, I’ve made (well hacked together - it’s not my proudest code) a Garmin Connect IQ data field for the Smart Paci. The field itself is very basic, it connects to the device and displays the bite sensor. It’ll flash if a touch sensor is pressed (maybe later I might make one of these trigger a new lap or something?).

But importantly the data is recorded into the .fit file and when it’s automatically synchronised to Garmin Connect the data is viewable like any other critical stat you find in an activity.

I took the Smart Paci out for a ride and used it for a kilometre long segment. It was surprisingly comfortable while riding. As expected the data field recorded how hard I bit, which I believe is an important metric when your biting down on that steep hill or Strava segment.

It’s certainly not just limited to cycling though and works just as well running.

The Connect IQ app/datafield is published on the Garmin App store (and currently features on the homepage…) - however you will need a Smart Paci from Curious Inventions.

• SmartPaci Connect IQ app
• Source code : GitHub

Limitations

• Currently it pairs to the first seen Smart Paci, so if you have multiple this might be a headache
• My prototype Smart Paci generates a new mac address on boot so the datafield won’t reconnect. For long rides where you might have a coffee break remember to keep the Smart Paci on so the Garmin can reconnect to it
• Datafield recording in Garmin doesn’t provide feedback as to when/which value was recorded. This proves a little tricky in deciding what to write to the field and when. At the moment I select the max value roughly once a second. The current Smart Paci firmware seems to only send data when it changes so it’s possible that the resulting “0” value might not get recorded. In practice I don’t think this is a problem as there’s usually a changing value and you can determine on the chart if there’s an actual data point, but it does have the potential to be misleading (you’ll notice a long section of the same value)

Garmin fēnix® 6S smart watch

I purchased this on a whim to try and replace the pebble I was using for heart rate monitoring. It’s probably one of the best purchases I’ve ever made.

Features:

• Long battery life (about a week if you don’t record activities)
• Always on screen
• Can pair headphones to it
• Garmin Pay (NFC payment)
• Offline maps
• All your normal running/riding activity recording stuff
• Can use standard watch straps

Now here’s where things get interesting. The watch is usually synchronised with an app called Garmin Connect - a cloud based service. But before you write it off because cloud, let me explain a few things.

Garmin Connect basically has all the features you see in Strava, is more privacy focused, has a privacy policy that says it won’t sell your data, doesn’t push ads (there’s some promotion Disney watch achievements but its extremely minor), is free. Garmin Connect exists as a service to sell watches, not to sell a subscription.

Ok, so if there’s no subscription - the watches get no updates right? Well no. My fēnix received an update today, and there’s even been features released a year after its launch. The watches themselves are also fairly durable (except for the charging port / charging cables - that has room for improvement).

Remember how I said about the cloud? Well you don’t actually need to use their app. You can plug in the watch over USB and copy the FIT files directly from it. I guess the disadvantage here is that it can’t be done over Bluetooth.

Garmin watches seem like a breath of fresh air when it comes to devices with cloud integration. Sure there are some niggles, but gosh its so much different from everything else I own.

Shokz OpenSwim Pro bone conducting headphones

I weirdly put off bone conducting headphones for so long as I had a bad experience with trialling radio headsets that used bone conduction. Running Warehouse ran a Shokz try out day and within minutes of my run I entirely forgot I was wearing them. Towards the end of the run I brushed the back of my hair and nearly freaked out because I forgot I had the headset on. I purchased a set within a week.

The advantages of bone conducting headphones is that they don’t block out sound. So you can hear other people and the environment around you. Hugely important for safety. The other part is since they don’t go into your ear like earbuds but rather sit on top, you don’t get moisture build up in your ear. That had become a bit of a problem for me and I was constantly getting blocked ears.

I bought the swim model in the off chance I got swimming again. Swimming can be a bit tedious so having some tunes to boop to is good.

A bit of a warning though - these devices are very personal preference. The audio quality isn’t like what you’d get from normal headphones. Its probably a good idea to try one out first.

VR-N76 handheld radio with packet TNC

As soon as I saw the VR-N76 firmware update provided a KISS TNC interface I had to have one. Unlike the HG UV98 the the TNC actually works as proper TNC, not just APRS.

I was skeptical of using the app, however its been great. The APRS features seem to work well enough. What I’ve been enjoying is that you can listen and TX from your phone - which might initially seem like a silly feature, however what it lets me do is listen to music on the Shokz while also listening to the radio. The radio stays in a pocket in my bag, and if I want to TX I just key up using the app which uses the Bluetooth. The app also keeps a history of transmissions, so if you miss and important detail you can replay it to get the info you need.

So my next blog post was meant to be on how the brake install went. The good news is the brakes work great - I’ll get into more details on that later. HOWEVER while riding out to somewhere nice where I intended to take some nice picture I had a bit of an incident - so lets talk about that first.

I split off the Bay trail to grab some coffee, eat some food and slap on some sun screen. While attempting to rejoin the bay trail I found myself a little bit confused as to the route and ended up on a footpath rather than a shared path. I spotted where my turn was meant to be and while focused on that it hit me. Well more specifically I hit it. A low hanging branch.

I’m not sure if I didn’t see it, correctly identify it’s height, or if I stood up to ride, but I hit it - likely at around 12km/hr. Lucky I wasn’t going faster. Next thing I know I was on the ground wondering wtf just happened. I remember seeing my Garmin count down from 6 seconds (I believe it starts at 30 seconds so there’s 24 seconds somewhat unaccounted for). Since I was on the ground, still processing everything and unsure if I was ok I let the timer count down.

This triggered an SMS with location details and starts live location sharing with my partner. After I had worked out that I was somewhat ok I stopped the incident on Garmin, and sent a message to say I was fine.

Since I’ve had my Garmin Fenix 6S Pro I’ve recorded 585 activities and only 2 other times have I had incident detection trigger when I was fine. One time was when my watch band broke, and the other was mounting a curb and coming to a hard stop. Both of these are some what reasonable that incident detection triggered.

I am very glad for this system, as had I passed out it would have been over half an hour before someone would otherwise notice (this is the time I sat next to my bike recovering)

Given I was riding as an alternative to running for recovery purposes I’m not happy about the incident.

So with that out of the way, let’s talk brakes.

Inline brakes

These were a breeze to install. I’m missing some end caps here and the grip tape ends is a temporary thing while I work everything out. The hardest part was working out how to mount my light given all the space is taken now by the brakes. I have end caps in storage but I wanted to test everything out first.

First off, the myth that inline brakes make the system spongy is clearly false. If you go back to part 1 of this series you’ll see that the brake cable is uninterrupted for inline brakes. There is no reason why adding inline brakes would make the system worse. My suspicion is that people think that inline brakes are spongy is that they are often installed on brake systems that are already spongy. The inline brakes themselves have a lot of pull - keep this in mind.

While I still haven’t gotten used to their presence, I have already adjusted my riding style. I’m sitting in a much more comfortable position while casually riding and not having to get into the drops to slow down. This is great in the city. I still find myself sometimes moving my right hand down to the original lever out of habit, but a lot less now. Tight corners are now much easier to manage.

And the back brake is getting a lot more use now - since I don’t have to get into the drops I now apply a lot more even braking. Where this is extremely useful is red lights and other stops. Previously I would brake to slow down, stop braking, move my hand to the gear lever to move into the lowest gear, then move my hand back to brakes to come to a complete stop. Now I can use my rear inline brake while changing gears with my other hand and perform the action all at once.

Dual pivot brakes

I ended up with the Tektro R559 dual pivot long reach brakes. The frame / wheel combination I have means that I’m on the higher limit of typically short reach brakes and the lower limit of typical long reach brakes. If I ever buy a new set of callipers again I might try to gamble on short reach brakes. Currently though the long reach brakes do give me the option to switch in a 700c wheel….

So while you can sometimes pick up traditional nut style brakes, it’s more common to find recessed style. These have a shorter shaft and a long recessed nut that is used to hold the brakes in place. I purchased these brakes knowing that the recessed style wouldn’t fit my bike out of the box.

There’s some solutions to mounting these brakes though. The most common is to drill out the back hole (usually using a right angle drill for the rear brake) to allow the recessed nut to fit.

The other option that’s also sometimes available is to use the front brake (has a longer shaft) on the rear brake. How do you install the front brake then? For me I was lucky enough to be able to fit the nut through the bottom of the forks. This only gives half the mounting distance than typical however I believe it’s plenty.

For both the rear and front shafts I found I could only use one of the wedge locking washers, but once again - I feel like this is plenty. If this doesn’t provide enough friction the outcome is that the brakes could become unaligned and start rubbing while riding. It’s not catastrophic failure.

I’m happy with having the brakes mounted this way as it means I don’t have to make permanent changes to the bike frame and if I want to I can reinstall the original brakes.

Other changes

I’ve installed some new toe cage peddles. I was a bit nervous installing these again as they can add a certain amount of risk in casual riding, but I’ve been pretty happy so far with them. They certainly look the part. Unfortunately the NOS I purchased, the grease had gone bad. I’ve tried my best to get some oil in there, but I’m going to either flush out all the grease somehow or do a rebuild. Neither of which I can do easily right now.

Lastly I’ve updated my Kmart bike lock to ABUS. Hopefully no one steals my lock. This lock feels very over engineered but I like it. It’s spring loaded and pops out when you unclip it.

That’s all the upgrades I want to do for now. Sometime next year I plan to strip all the parts off, de-rust, de-paint and give it a brand new paint job.