Right after my last post about the s725x I did a bit of looking around the web for ideas of how I could bring all the things I want in a cycling companion together into the one gadget.

Well I quickly found that Garmin (popular GPS makers) have already responded to people like myself and have a range of products out for sports and the like.  Hence, I would like to intorduce you to the Edge 305!  (Garmin should be paying me for this I guess!)

It’s a lovely little (well, sort of) device that pretty much does what I was wanting in my previous post.

Lets look at it’s basic functions for a moment:

1. GPS receiver
2. Barametric altimeter 
3. Optional heart rate monitor
4. Optional wheel speed and cadence sensor
5. Programmable way-points
6. All sort of time measurements - lap times, splits.
7. Virtual training partner etc.

There’s more too, but that will get you across the general idea.  In fact you can go to these good reviews here and here.

But before I get onto my little question about how it works.  I want to quickly mention the website that Garmin has put together for those who have got one of these things.  It’s called MotionBased, and it’s excellent!  Once you’re a member (it’s free) and upload your ride or run data to it, you can then share it with everyone else who is a member.  It shows your track on various types of maps and replays your trip with a little red spot, plus all sorts of more detailed info too.  It can even output the path to a Google Earth file. 

The part I like about MotionBased is it’s an accurate way of learning about nice rides, trips or whatever really that might be in an area you are visiting, or just around the corner from home for that matter.  You can search for rides by location, then download another person’s ride and stick it on your Edge gadget where you can then follow them around guided by GPS.  They have in mind that you use it to compare your fitness level with others and compete against them virtually, but I think it would be a great way to go sightseeing in a new place.  Or even just share a really great ride.  Much better than reading vague directions with lines like “you can’t miss it!”  Yeah, well I’ve missed it many times!  This would be an end to that. 

Now back to my little question; I’m particular about having good distance measurements, so it would be nice to know whether the GPS part measures your trip distance accurately or whether the optional wheel speed sensor does it much better?  I’m thinking here of those tight tree covered trails where you might go around 10 turns in 20meters!  Does the GPS alone track that sort of thing accurately?  Some of the trails around Canberra would be about 10km shorter if you took all the tight twisty turns out of them! 

What it comes down to is about $90 to have the cadence and wheel sensor included.  I suppose, by comparison to the overall cost of the basic unit (about $400, hmmm does that include the HRM?) and extra $90 is probably worth it.  I mean if you don’t mind spending $400 then, you probably don’t mind spending $500!  Still that’s quite a lot of money to spend, but if it motivates you to get out and exercise more, maybe your health is worth it?

In my first post about this, there was something deeper eating me away about the current state-of-affairs with regard to all the little CPU’s and gadgets sitting around here.  The fact is many of them are sitting doing nothing for most of the time.  What I wanted to do is put something to use which I already have sitting in my pocket that has to the power to do all this cycle computing stuff!!  But, instead I’m forced to buy yet another gadget. 

Can someone make a Bluetooth heart-rate monitor and wheel-speed sensor?  I already can get a GPS card for my PDA so don’t worry yourselves with that one, but the other 2 would cap it off nicely.  All this will have to go under a heading of Personal Computing Devices.  Maybe this will need another post to explain what I mean.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 13th, 2006 at 2:19 pm and is filed under My thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.