bike – As Seen Through PeriVision https://www.perivision.net/wordpress An Mobile centric blog ... Full of Tech goodness Tue, 25 Aug 2009 22:28:54 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.6.2 4666035 Bicycle fitting computer for the iPhone https://www.perivision.net/wordpress/2009/08/bicycle-fitting-computer-for-the-iphone/ https://www.perivision.net/wordpress/2009/08/bicycle-fitting-computer-for-the-iphone/#comments Tue, 25 Aug 2009 00:31:08 +0000 http://www.perivision.net/wordpress/?p=1924 Read More]]> This is kinda neat.  I did not try ‘TestRides‘ (by Wildlab) myself, but I like the idea.   Basically, you take a picture of yourself, select key body points to provide an overall measurement set, and then calculate and display the best bike size for your body.  Sweet!  For people who do not do a lot of biking, having the wrong size bicycle is the difference between have a pleasant long ride and one wishing it would end. 🙂 The app just came out, and looks a bit early in dev, but if you have never been fitted for a bike before, I think its worth the $5 to find out.  Who knows? If you had the proper bike, you could be riding twice and far with 1/2 the pain.

Also, if you did not already know, but you can use your iphone as a biking computer.

testridesP2_BodytestridesP3_BiketestridesP4_BikeValue

Get it here.  $5 last I checked. TestRides icon

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]]> https://www.perivision.net/wordpress/2009/08/bicycle-fitting-computer-for-the-iphone/feed/ 1 1924 How the iPhone saved me $10 at Walmart using screen capture https://www.perivision.net/wordpress/2008/11/how-the-iphone-saved-me-10-at-walmart-using-screen-capture/ https://www.perivision.net/wordpress/2008/11/how-the-iphone-saved-me-10-at-walmart-using-screen-capture/#comments Mon, 03 Nov 2008 01:37:26 +0000 http://www.perivision.net/wordpress/?p=559 Read More]]> I was not going to blog about this, but recently I saw a post on how Walmart now has an iPhone version of their site.  I have a friend visiting from the UK, and instead of renting a bike for a few days, I did some research and found it cheaper to buy a new one. After a bit of searching, I found a mountain bike for $60 at Walmart on sale. We headed off to the store and it was listed as $69 in the store. Hmm..  So I walked outside where I could get reception and accessed the Walmart site which at that time was iPhone enabled, searched for the bike and took a screen shot.

When we finally got to the point of paying for the bike, they rang it up at $69.  I showed the manager the screenshot on my iPhone and they honered it.  Sweet. 🙂

Still cant believe one can buy a bike for $60.. Amazing.

Here is the actual bike.  Its cheap of course, and I tweaked a few things to make it a bit better, but you get what you pay for. Worth it.

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]]> https://www.perivision.net/wordpress/2008/11/how-the-iphone-saved-me-10-at-walmart-using-screen-capture/feed/ 5 559 iphone as a bicycle computer – the ebike tests https://www.perivision.net/wordpress/2008/09/iphone-as-a-bicycle-computer-the-ebike-tests/ https://www.perivision.net/wordpress/2008/09/iphone-as-a-bicycle-computer-the-ebike-tests/#comments Thu, 11 Sep 2008 08:35:20 +0000 http://www.perivision.net/wordpress/?p=218 Read More]]> The last week has been insanely busy, so I have not even had time for a quick 10 mile ride in the hills.  I did however take my ebike to get lunch and did a recording just for fun.

Now for those of you who do not ride electric bikes, (and I’m guessing that is almost all of you), there are three reason to have an ebike.

1) you want to bike to work but not all sweaty.  (the main reason I got it)

2) You are hawling stuff.

3) You cannot ride (or keep up) on a normal bike but still want to ride.

All good reasons to have one.  Now the ebike I have is 36v with a 500w motor.  Pretty strong. It’s top speed, however, is a joke at around 20mph, so I do not engage the electric motor and let it run… instead I use a pulse and peddle technique (kinda like pulse and glide to you hypermilers out there). Its simple enough. At around 15mph I punch it to 20mph.  Peddle till its back to 15 and then punch again.  You get way more life out of the battery this way.

Anyway, the jist of all this is you can keep a pretty stable speed even with a bit of a climb.  In these two charts from the iphone app TrackThing, we can see basically that.

Now the only problem with this, and an issue I’ve had with other tests, is the occational spike. According to one graph, at one point I was doing 48 mph! And, why are the altitudes different?  Went from home, to the market and back home.  Same path. Clearly erroneous spikes. So what is causing these spikes?

Most likely, its the accuacy of the GPS slipping in and out. A useful app for understanding this is InstaMapper GPS Tracker. When you first turn it on, it uses the cell antenna to locate you, then slowly brings the GPS in as the system finds satilites.  The more satilite it can fine, the more accurate the readings.  So the question is; how can we inprove the GPS during our bike rides?

Well.. we will find out soon enough, because I’m going to do a quick ride friday and try a few things.  Check back then kiddies. 🙂

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