Earlier in the year I had the unfortunate experience of dealing with a pretty deficient product which I bought from Amazon.com — I wanted to get a bicycle computer to track my speed, distance etc stats while biking. It was a bad experience for two reasons (1) I got the gadget as a gift for my birthday and (2) I spent a bunch of time trying to fiddle with the setup of the magnetic sensor (which I had to place on a spoke of my front wheel) and the rest of the system. Long story short the computer portion of the overall system did not work – EVER! I went out a couple of times and tried all sort of things and never got any readouts. Needless to say after a conversation with Amazon I returned the product, but still had the unpleasant feeling of having lost my time…..
So then 5 months or so later I thought – surely there must be an application for an iPhone that may be able to do the same – my iPhone has GPS, has mapping capabilities so why not ? Next thing I was checking on the iTunes store and within 30minutes of me thinking about while waiting for a friend after biking to a Starbucks, I had downloaded the application and completed the setup. Then on the way home I start using it. Now, let me give you a quick look of the setup:
Cycle Tracker Pro – download from iTunes; I was able to download for free, but it appears it has gone back up to its normal price of $2.99
After downloading you have to setup your profile:
The configuration and usage of the program is really simple. You enter your personal information: Height, Weight, Age, and email address (if you want to share your results) and you are well on your way.
The only tricks and hickups I found are:
- To Start the tracking for a given session (bike ride) you have to make sure you respond to a few questions – make sure you respond positively to "turn on GPS" (needed for the operation of the tool) and ensure the Start button has been pressed properly (you will get an audible prompt of having started the ride)
- I found that the START and STOP buttons may need to be pressed a few times in a given instance to register the action. So, again you will get an audible prompt of for example completing the ride and pressing STOP.
Other than those the program is easy to use and provide good information for most of us amateur biking enthusiasts.
Enjoy your ride!