Shimano Forces Hammerhead to Remove All Di2 Related Functionality From Karoo | Hacker News Reader

Shimano Forces Hammerhead to Remove All Di2 Related Functionality From Karoo

dcrainmaker.com

257 pointskarlding355 comments

I am affected by this. I own 4 bikes, all with electronic shifting and 3 hammerhead computers.

This isn't just losing nice-to-have features, many of these features are for safety.

One example, the thumb toggles on the Di2 shifters allow me to change screens on my computer without removing my hands from the hoods / grips. They is now disabled. If you are descending at 40-50mph you have to remove your hand from your hood in order to see your map.

This might seem minor but the point is that cycling is already super dangerous. The tech is there for safety as much as anything else. I find this incredibly anti-cyclist and anti-consumer.

I take your point, but there is no way on God's green earth that I am going to look at a map for even an instant while descending that fast. My eyes are locked on the ground scanning for the tiniest crack or piece of junk that would send me to my doom.

I can't imagine going any direction except straight at that speed.

Good habits is orthoganal to good equipment.

Sure you should maybe not try to look at a map except at certain times and not certain other times.

Yeah, and, shit happens. Life is messy. Cycling is inherently chaotic and your own input merely helps.

I don't see "you shouldn't do that" as a good excuse for "your equipment doesn't have to, but by choice, it helps kill you if you don't always do everything perfectly" not to mention, the danger from removing a hand from bars is not even remotely limited to 50mph hills.

You shouldn't put your hand into the table saw, AND table saws have guards.

Can I echo this sentiment?

I also understand the frustration of losing key features... But yeah, I don't wanna be near anyone peepin down on their map while blasting down a descent at 40-50 mph lol. You better be laser focused on everything in your peripheral and immediate field of view, and look at all the data/ metrics/ navigation after the fact.

It's not for everyone, it's dangerous and it should be done carefully and skillfully, but...

I cycle 300+ miles per week. 1 or 2 100mi rides a week. Descending at 40mph and checking the map, assuming it's already on the computer, is not a problem. If the road in front of you is empty, it's not hugely different than being in a car. Actually, in a car, you might be going 60 in the same place. Are you telling me you never check where to go going 60?

I'd say that doing 25mph in a peloton (or your friendly neighborhood group ride) when riding 8in from the person in front and checking your map is more dangerous than going 40 on an open road with plenty of room, but I can tell you, everyone checks their bike computers on group rides.

I'm curious to know if the people saying "oh laser focus on the road never look at your Garmin" are road cyclists having frequently ridden in fast group rides.

I'm not sure I fully understand your use case? Why would you be looking at the map in the middle of a fast descent like that. Were you already not aware that you'd have to slam your brakes on halfway down the hill for a right-turn before you even started the descend?

And I think the argument holds even less water in a fast group ride. Does no one in the group, especially the people at the front know where the group ride is going? If everyone is half lost, surely it'd be going pretty slow while someone calibrated where the group should be going....

Just wanna say, I believe you. You def sound like a high level rider who isn't fazed by those speeds in those conditions, and it feels very controllable for you. And like you assumed, I don't do group rides often (and when I do, I'm not gonna be checking any bike computers).

> it's dangerous and it should be done carefully and skillfully, but..

the OP's original complaint was that the feature removal created the danger, so I'm glad you state that the act is already dangerous.

> If the road in front of you is empty, it's not hugely different than being in a car.

What do you mean? It seems hugely different to me for the obvious reasons.

In popular road cycling areas, things like 10+ mile descents aren't unusual. Momentarily glances at the map is how you know you need to slow down.

As an example, search YouTube for a video of someone descending a road in the Santa Monica mountains.

There are a bunch of features on Karoo that will show or indicate turns regardless of which screen you're on. As jfengel said, if you're going 50mph you should know where you're going and not looking at your computer. The other things being removed (battery level, gear indicator, shift mode) represent no realistic safety concerns.

I'm annoyed that I'm losing these features, too, but they are all firmly in the nice-to-have category. Just like bike computers in their entirety.

The reason to have a map on screen when descending is to anticipate upcoming bends. This helps you to take the best line through the apex of the corners. Also mountain descents will regularly throw you very tight, and sometimes blind corners at random, and the best practice to handle these without going off the road is to brake hard enough to scrub off some speed before you begin your turn, then let go so you're not braking while turning. Navigation prompts will not show this because they are not turns.

I am literally dressed and ready to head out for a 3000' training ride with tight twisty descents and IMHO it is quite suicidal to look down at a map when anything like you describe might happen. If I was a riding with you and I noticed you doing what you claim you need to do I would stop, let you go on, and if I didn't hear any crunching noises, resume, never to ride with you again.

Apex "civilization": people trust a fucking tiny map off in some other direction than they are traveling in lieu of the data streaming realtime right into their goddam eyes.

So you're looking at that fucking map, and what do you do when the squirrel/deer/javalina/pile of lumber discard appears in front of you?

I should delete this but no I am going to descend Thumb Butte road in a fury now.

Information is always useful. Your objection to it doesn't matter.

I hope you don't drive a motor vehicle without looking in the mirrors because gasp you are moving forwards at 80mph and need to be looking that way!

> Apex "civilization": people trust a fucking tiny map off in some other direction than they are traveling in lieu of the data streaming realtime right into their goddam eyes.

Well, I haven't heard about people driving into a cliff because their GPS told them to in a while, but it used to be somewhat common.

There is no reason to expect people to not the equivalent thing in a bike. There is something about easy information summaries that compels people to get them and act on them.

I hear you but... I myself, would not be trying to ride the best line, and hit every apex on a descent that I'm not intimately familiar with. I'd take it slow, and exercise caution until I am intimately familiar with the entire route.

Following up to add some context to this since it struck a lot of debate. I feel very matter of factly that the assistance of a bike computer when used responsibly increases rider safety. All of the debate seems very semantic but look at a video such as this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AUTiwocccE

This is a 10-mile descent that thousands of cyclists do a weekly that would put you at 30-50mph for most of it. You can very obviously safely glance at your bike computer from time to time to see things like your speed, sharpness of upcoming curves, angles, upcoming obstacles, intersections, merges, and other important metrics that help inform your braking, turning and mental route preparation.

I've been road cycling and racing for many years. Taken many safety and skills courses. The most dangerous experiences I've ever had have been from incidents where glancing at a map would have prevented. Where I was riding moderately paced and unanticipated obstacles were around corners such as blind intersections.

Having laser focus on the road AND knowing what's ahead where you can't visually see are both equally important.

I can probably guess the answer to this question, but it's an important question to ask.

Why don't you simply not update the firmware?

They release bug fixes and new features every two weeks. You'd have to weigh never getting those again to keep your Shimano Di2 integrations.

God forbid they release a product that works right the first time, with the features it’s supposed to have, and thus not have to ship an update every two weeks for a piece of bicycle kit, with customers losing an advertised product feature from their $400 cycle computer because of a license being revoked after their purchase.

The downvotes without comment have me curious. My assumption is that these are coming from people who do the same thing with their own product, and don’t appreciate the cost their customers pay for this development methodology.

Meanwhile, my Sonos system’s audio has been dropping out repeatedly for the past month because they keep shipping buggy updates I don’t need, but am forced to install.

It's kind of funny that you think removing features from a cycling computer is the dangerous part, when we know from pretty much every other situation involving potentially dangerous tasks and computers it's the introduction of the device in the first place that creates most of the danger. Why would you even glance at a map while going 50 miles per hour on a bicycle?

To see if you might die in the next corner.

In what seems like a lucky break, I also have a Karoo, used these same features, and moved from di2 to campagnolo electric last summer.

> If you are descending at 40-50mph you have to remove your hand from your hood in order to see your map.

Well you don't have to, you can switch to the map screen before starting the descent. If you are willing to change screens while descending, the blame on safety is not on technology, but rather on your own decision to do so.

I really hope you meant 40-50kph, because this feels incredibly fast on a bicycle. I try to avoid that if I can help it

No, 40-50 mph happens often on a long decent. It's extremely exhilarating, dangerous and always takes a lot of focus.

I've hit 45mph going down Tioga Pass towing a BOB trailer while touring[0]. Doing it on an unladen road bike would not be a big deal for a high level road cyclist on a good road surface.

[0] BOB's recommended top speed is 25 mph, for the record.

Damn, this is hardcore.

It's also probably not the smartest thing I've ever done, but I survived.

S/he does not. 50MPH is entirely plausible on even a relatively short alpine descent.

Check out this video, 100 kph descent in a competition:

https://youtu.be/I4aMTp6-WKU?t=23

It's difficult to believe this was going to continue on wards as SRAM bought Hammerhead, it was only a matter of time before Shimano decided not to support a competitor product.

The thing is that Shimano doesn't have to do anything to support the competing product. They're just broadcasting signals on Ant+. It's Hammerhead doing the integration, and now shimano actively blocking that.

So are people going to keep everything on older versions to try to keep this functionality?

Hammerhead has only made two models of computer, right? Why do you have three?

The correct number of bikes or bike thingies is always n+1

Bikes, yeah, but the computers are portable between bikes. You only need one per rider. I have three bikes, but one computer.

Where "n" is the amount that you currently own, I assume?

I thought it was n - 1, where "n" is the number at which your spouse would no longer be able to tolerate your obsession.

It's a bit like the math on Rubik's cubes, where there were two different proofs: there exists a configuration of the cube that takes n moves to solve, and for all configurations it takes at most m moves to solve the cube. Those numbers finally reached the same value at 20. Hopefully I won't have to go through that much to figure out the right number of bikes with my partner. After I get my frame fixed I'm still probably getting another, and that's how it starts.

http://www.cube20.org

Both are correct so it’s important to maximize for n

marriages have been ended when those don't produce the same value for n

For bikes, sure; for computers when you can move them between bikes I don't see it. Maybe they mean in their household one per person?

Cycling is not super dangerous, statistically speaking.

However, your situation sucks and I hope a work-around is found.

Apart from sharing the opinion here that this is a customer hostile move...

I'm pretty happy that my bikes (MTB and Road) have zero electric components (not even light if I don't strap it on) and I want to keep it that way. I have yet so see an electric part that I need or that even just provides me with enough benefit that it's worth the hassle of freakin' firware updates. Much less having a CAN bus on my bike? is this only for electric bikes or also for gears? I'm confused...

Anyhow, I always thought that running a bike repair shop might be my plan B for when I finally get fed up with computers, but I recently realized bikes are now computers with wheels, just like cars and fridges and toasters and door bells... So I'm looking for a new plan B.

FWIW, just as with fridges and toasters, I think this is a move in the wrong direction. It increases CO2/pollution footprint and reduces lifetime. And as we see here, it opens you up to a whole new class of customer abuse.

I was pretty anti-electronic shifting on my bikes...but once you have it, it's hard to go back. The automatic derailleur tuning to always have snappy, responsive shifts it pretty amazing. And then not having to change cables out is a nice bonus, though not a deal breaker. And even the aesthetics of a cable free bike begins to grow on you. luckily, battery charging is pretty simple, and I've been always having to charge a bike computer for the past 15 years anyway, so not a big deal to plug it in every couple of month. (This is coming from someone who used to single-speed mountain bike a lot, for the "simplicity" and because I was lazy to have to maintain much on my MTB). I'm kind of looking forward to a day when they get the internal hub thing dialed in and lightweight and can handle a lot of torq and not have the drag penalty, etc....

That said, I don't use any integrated shifting->head unit functionality. Not really sure what someone would use it for other than checking battery levels? Which is super simple to see on the hardware itself. And which is easier to just get off my phone.

Also, firmware updates are typically pretty simple these days due to the pretty decent phone app support. I've done firmware updates on both a Wahoo computer and SRAM shifting, and it was really straightforward, and never for a critical item, yet, only to get more features (though I'm not an early adapter in any of this). I guess I'll find out mre about Di2 specific integrations when my next bike arrives...

Electronic shifting, while nice, is inferior to continuously variable transmission.

It's that nobody has managed to get that done cheap and reliably - and it'd have to be inside a gear hub too.

It's been done reliably, just not cheap. Mitsubishi with its v-belt has probably the cheapest somewhat reliable version, others less reliable based on expanding chain. Enviolo also makes one of these groupsets.

Very new tech in bikes though, if used at all. Ancient tech everywhere else, and can be done even better than these attempts.

One thing I noticed after cycling across North America on a $500 hybrid and then Colombia on a $200 utility bike was that there is a wildly different class of cyclist that rides with computers and carbon fiber and shiny jerseys... They were as baffled by my setup as I was by theirs. It's almost an entirely different category of transportation. Or perhaps it isn't so much a form of transportation for them, it's a hobby - they often drive their bikes to the place they want to ride instead of just riding the in-between.

I imagine there is room to cater to both types of cyclist. Perhaps it was a self-selecting group for me, but I found every mechanic I visited on the road to be most busy with repairs of low-tech gear. It seems to me that low-tech bikes will continue to make up the long tail for many years to come, even if catering to those customers is less lucrative.

Yeah, there's a difference between utility riders and hobby riders. You wouldn't be able to keep up on my Saturday rides on a hybrid unless you've got world-tour legs. The riding position and gearing are just not intended for go-fast go-far riding.

You don't really even see many hybrids on large-scale charity rides, at least in the US. And yeah, quite often people do load up bikes to drive to a ride. I guess for transportation riders this sounds weird, but if you live in location A and the you want to do a group ride at location B that's 20 miles away (not unusual in a big urban area), then I'm not sure what else you'd do.

I'm likely going to a ride out in the southwestern suburbs here in Houston on Saturday, for example. The start is 23 miles from my house, and there's not a great cycling-friendly way to get there, so I'll load up and drive.

I do share your concern about long-term use. We're far enough into the electronic shifting era that early systems are falling out of the support window. Shimano's earliest Di2 systems were only 10-speed, for example; I imagine finding replacement rear derailleurs for that system is nearly impossible now, but OTOH lifespan of a rear derailleur is pretty long.

The version of SRAM's eTap on my bike is 11-speed; it's been updated since, so new bikes come with a 12-speed version called AXS. I don't know if I could easily get a replacement derailleur for mine, but TBH I also wonder that about the mechanical Ultegra derailleur on my other road bike.

Heh, I got an all road bike mostly because of the annoying headwind and the fixed hand positions on the hybrid.

You can usually find older mechanical parts on ebay or even NOS or just use a newer Ultegra or 105 if it's still 11 speed.

I'm still on mechanical parts, the all road bike is on 10 speed GRX.

Mostly never drive to ride, only if I have to ride more than 50 km away and the route is bike hostile. People drive their mountain bikes to the trailhead in my area though.

I also never race. What I sometimes do is randomly pick some roadies and try to keep up with them. What actually happens is ending up keeping up with some girl on a nondescript hybrid who has dropped the roadies.

Yeah, me either. But the city I live in is geographically huge (Houston), so if I want to ride with Group X in a given suburb, it's gonna involve a long drive first.

OTOH, most of the time I can't be arsed to do that. My "home" groups are all inner-loop rides that I can ride to (< 5 miles from my house).

That said, if I'm looking for gravel, the best sets of gravel roads are all at least an hour from the city center. Same goes for the best MTB trails. It is what it is.

I don't think my city is quite as hostile as houston but is in the same class. I'll ride 20 miles to the start of a ride pretty often, or sometimes take the bus if the route lines up.

This is very common in urban fixed gear culture, but our rides tend to be small and ad-hoc compared to the big organized road bike ones. I've done those a few times and was actively made unwelcome so it's not particularly surprising it's not extremely on your radar. Nonetheless my city has an active community a couple thousand strong that would consider it unusual to drive to a ride.

>I'll ride 20 miles to the start of a ride pretty often

Given that weekend road rides here often start at 0700, I'm absolutely not gonna do that. ;)

And don't get me wrong; Houston isn't nearly as hostile to cycling as it was 20 years ago. We just made the top 50 cities for bike-ability (#29!), which is recognition of the improvements we've been slowly making -- protected surface lanes are part of that, but the BIGGEST part is the large-and-growing system of trails along the bayous, some of which mesh in with rails-to-trails initiatives.

You can ride for hours on these trails with only minimal interaction with conventional streets, and they're laid in ways that make commutes viable for lots of people.

https://abc13.com/houston-biking-bike-friendly-city-bikeabil...

> You wouldn't be able to keep up on my Saturday rides on a hybrid unless you've got world-tour legs.

I would easily, using my grandfathers bike and <$1K aliexpress electric bike conversion kit.

I don't think it's as binary as You make it out to be.

Just look into the ultra distance / bikepacking community. It's pretty varied when it comes to both frames and groupsets. Specially once You get into some more extreme events (e.g. Tour Divide for MTB or TransContinental for more of a road stuff, but the scene is growing pretty fast these past few years).

Personally, I'm on a 2018 steel Kona Rove (~1200Eur bike back in 2018) that I'm currently upgrading to an electronic groupset with hydro brakes. Reason for that is simple hand fatique / "cyclist's palsy" over long distances.

I also have a head unit, simply because of the GPS track that I usually try to follow. Gearing info is a bonus, but knowing the state of battery is pretty useful.

I think the kinds of people who are in a "community" is exactly the kinds of people who I would classify more as hobbyist riders. I encountered a lot of them along my travels, because I would follow random rail trails and relatively easy singletrack, then I'd meet these guys who were using a GPS and ultralight camping equipment and tires twice as fat as mine. They were amazed I could even get on the same trail they were on without any special gear in particular. No doubt, they probably traveled twice as far as I would in a day, they perhaps never got off to push up the very steep sections, and I'm sure they never had to backtrack like I did, but eh. For me I was happier to have spent around $1000 on my entire setup (including tent and sleep system) because it left enough money over that I could keep traveling for months. It's just a different way of looking at your bicycle.

With regard to the "cyclist's palsy", that was the injury that surprised me most - I was expecting to get sore legs, not hands! I found a pair of gel gloves helped a lot for cycling on terrain where I needed to keep my hands on the handlebars, but whenever I was on a flatter surface I just changed my position to lean on the bars with my elbows. Same thing when I got a bad neck crick, I just rested up for a day or two and then changed my riding position. I'm sure a better or more personally-adjusted bike would've been way more comfortable, but it wasn't impossible to ride long distances without it.

I think a lot of the specialized equipment is more about optimizing away inconveniences, which is great, but it's not really necessary outside of a race or "keeping up with the group" situation. If you want to tour solo, it's perfectly possible to just make do with whatever junk bike you have access to and adapt your route and behavior to the tools you have. I think when you start spending significant amounts of cash money on optimizing away the inconveniences, that's when you have entered a different class of cyclist. When you go to bike stores it often seems like all the cyclists are of that class, because all of the equipment for sale seems to be geared to them. But in the mechanic shops, I personally found it to be more balanced in the other direction. I guess there is a really large group of people who never go to a bike store and just buy department store bikes or reliable and easily-maintainable second-hand gear that the hobbyists have moved on from.

I get Your point with the equipment quite well. I started cycling in a post-Soviet country in the 90s. Equipment prices were a major concern, so we reused what we could. My first trips were with paper maps in plastic folios...

These days, having a reasonable job / salary, it's a trade-off in which I have much more of a choice.

GPS / head unit is a mean to have the overall route visualized. Can You substitute by a printout of major cities / crossroad names as an itinerary? Sure. Been there, done that too. Is the GPS worth 200Eur for me? Yeah, it is, just by the time I save not having to fiddle with maps on every stop.

When it comes to palsy, there isn't one silver bullet to solve it all. It's much like any RSI in that respect. Body position, muscle conditioning, stretching, general ergonomics. The electric shifting is just one of them (definitely not the first on my list). But since the cost of getting it wrong is maybe a month of limited fine motor control of my hand(s)... I really don't regret spending an extra few hundred bucks.

Does that mean I have bulk discount at Rapha? Hell no.

That's what I mean by things being less binary than "cheap mechanical bikes" vs "expensive carbon / electrical / Rapha jerseys". I know that there are plenty of people who fit one or the other case, but there's also quite a few of us who are somewhere in between.

If You'd like, maybe try checking out "Path Less Pedaled" (a youtube channel). Clickbait : "What You will see may surprise You!" ;-)

I found that OSMAnd~ and BRouter was a good middle point for accessing detailed offline maps and getting route suggestions. At first I thought I might want to mount my phone on my handlebars, but I couldn't find a cheap holder so I just left it in a bag and pulled over every now and then to consult the map. Convenient, since that was usually a good time to have a drink of water too. Plus it saved battery, which was useful in remote areas where there was no electricity to recharge at the end of the day.

To be fair, I also work in the tech industry and could afford snazzier equipment, but I leaned toward keeping everything cheap and cheerful so I didn't worry too much about it getting stolen in town, or busted up when taking some questionable cross-country "shortcut". At the end I donated all my gear to a local co-op, then bought a new bike in the next country, so it also helped me feel more free and not bound to a pricey piece of hardware. I feel like spending money makes you need to spend more money - now you need a better lock, now you need a storage unit, now you need to take your bike on the plane etc. For me that's just more stress that would get in the way of my goal, which was to travel carefree.

I get your point about the utility of electronics, though. I'm not anti-tech, I guess I just tend toward cheaper and simpler solutions unless there is a very strong motivation. I don't think I'm especially unique in that sense - I think a lot of people (even those who own bicycles) would be surprised to hear that some cyclists nowadays are using electric shifters! I'm sure at some point the tech will trickle down to the mainstream, but in the context of this thread which was about someone thinking of retiring to become a bike mechanic but worried it'll just be like retiring to do the same tech job they just left... I think that future is still far enough off in the distance that it's not something people who are thinking about retirement at the moment need to worry about.

Perhaps I misunderstood, but how can cycling across North America be just transportation and not a hobby? Would you have used, say, a car instead if you had one?

There are many shades of bike nerd, but in my eyes those demonstratively rejecting the tech side don't qualify any less. Take Sheldon Brown for example, he sure would have nerded with the best of them, and tech-rejected with the best of those as well.

I wanted to go on holiday to places I had never visited before, and places where public transport does not go, so I just got on my bike and went there. I don't own a car, but even if I did I don't think it would have been able to take me to all of the places a bike did. Still, at the core my hobby is traveling, not cycling.

Best possible reply, no doubt about that.

Not Just Bikes touches on this in a video of his - how he's not a "cyclist", despite riding his bike a lot, and how the majority of his fellows in the Netherslands aren't cyclists either. He explained that they use two different words for the two groups, "fietser" for the everyday cyclers, and "wielrenner" for those who do it for sport or enthusiasm.

Yeah reading some of your sibling replies also made me think of Not Just Bikes. But rather the "Why Dutch Bikes are Better (and why you should want one)" video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aESqrP3hfi8&t=488s

Note the timestamp. :P This was literally the only time I had heard the word "hybrid" when discussing bikes. And it's not like I'm a stranger to bikes; I've done virtually all possible repairs one can do on a fully mechanical one at some point.

As a fellow <$500 cyclist I love these spandex cyclists, they move to the next shiny thing and unload their hardly outdated gear for way under retail just to get rid of it. Before the pandemic and all the inflated prices I was able to snag a beauty dura ace roadie from a guy who was moving in on the gravel bike craze for a few hundred dollars. If I parted out the components alone on that bike I'd be in the money, not including the frame.

I'm pretty sure the top five finishers in last year's Trans Am Bike Race were all running Di2. The elites in the ultra-endurance self-support races are probably the hybrid rider type of the two groups of cyclists you are talking about here.

Going to have to disagree. Electronic shifting is definitely not a move in the wrong direction.

I used to be in in the camp where I thought electronic shifting was a gimmick. I got a bike that happened to come with di2 and its simply amazing. The shifts are responsive and clean. Adjustments are hardly ever needed and if you do, the process is beyond quick and amazingly accurate. I don't need to test shifting it through all the steps. Do you need it on a commuter bike? Definitely not but for a hobby bike (road cycling, gravel, mtb) its a really nice to have feature. Since you are already confused I would put you in the commuting territory (maybe unfair) which makes sense, its not really a useful feature in those cases. These have been around for a while and in the past few years cheap enough that it becomes a nice upgrade for hobby users.

Unless we hit mass extinction there is no way to stop progress. Humanity is going to continue to innovate and create. Sometimes those things are totally unnecessary. We should be looking to the future as a beacon of hope. Not trying to argue that we should not be mindful of our level of consumerism BUT humanity is going to keep innovating and lets look to the future that we will solve problems. Not that we are going to move back to an agrarian lifestyle. These devices most likely have an increase footprint, you now have a small motor and battery compared to a cable but the lifetime of the product I think is on-par or increased. Better shifting means longer chain/chain ring life.

I feel similarly about computers on bikes, even though I've had them for years before ditching them.

There's another facet to the problem of bike computers and I don't know if others feel this way but for me at least quantifying the time on the bike distracts from the joy of riding. Every time I turned on the bike computer it felt like I was "time-trialing" against myself, my previous rides, and randos whose stats I saw on Strava. It started to really make me miserable especially because as the years passed my "performance" more or less continuously degraded.

I feel differently about electronic shifting, though I probably will never experience it as my bike still has 2000's "vintage" Campy 9-speed and I see no need to ever change that unless I wreck it. The Shimano alfine internal hub has some models that use electronic shifting. It might be good on a utility bike-- if it's easy enough to deal with.

For some reason this feeling you have about GPS ride data reminds me of people who leave their phones home because they don't want to be bothered (or who otherwise hate their phones).

I've never hated my phone, or deliberately left it behind, because I've also always been 100% willing to ignore it if I felt like it. The phone works for ME. It's not a tether, and I don't really allow other people to treat it that way.

I always use a GPS (these days, a Karoo) because I freakin' LOVE the data. I know when I'm stronger and when I'm not, but I'm also a 52 year old dude with delusions of athleticism; fast for me is not fast for everybody. Mostly, I just love to see the miles pile up, I love to see my heat maps ("where'd I ride last year?"), and I love to be able to see my route so I can go back and look at a map and figure out where that neat house was, or that restaurant I wanted to try, or whatever.

I realize it's not always a choice, but so FAR at least I've been able to avoid letting the data part take over in a toxic way.

Re: your bike, there's a lot to be said for "if it ain't broke..."

You can use an old style computer: speed, time, distance. No internet, nothing else. The ones with 7 segment LCD digits. They are cheap, battery lasts years and you still get the information that matters most.

For me the information that matters most is subjective: how do I feel? What is my output? Do I feel that my pedal rotation is too fast or too slow? Do I feel fast? The one exception is when there's a strong headwind, for some reason I find a velocity display to be very motivational. Distance is useful sometimes. But everything else is distraction.

Its bewildering all the consumer products that go on to track things like watts, etc. I played competitive sports in school and we never bothered with anything like that even if it was available. You run until you are exhausted then you run some more. Same thing with a bike ride if you are trying to put work in imo. Want to train for hills? forget the Peloton, just go and ride up some hills until your legs are cooked, and next week you will be able to ride longer.

Yeah for me power & heart rate are far more important than any of those metrics. Once I started paying attention to those two metrics my biking ability increased significantly.

The ability to do structured intervals on my bike with a computer has completely changed the way I train. I cannot ride to an RPE, I can only ride to a power target for an interval. I'd probably be better at sports if I could do the former, but it'd take me forever to get that ability.

FWIW, the electronic drivetrains are superior in just about every performance metric, aside from needing to be charged every few weeks. You might not want an tablet computer in your refrigerator door but electronic bike shifting is more akin to going from carbureted to fuel injected engines, it is the more reliable and tunable of the two options.

Long time cat3 here.

This simply isn’t true, across the board they are heavier. Satellite shifter are wonderful, but that’s not a performance metric. Also, fwiw, races have been lost due to shifting power being out and being stuck in a gear. Rigo Uran stands out, a few years back at the Tour.

I’m not a hater, I have some electronic shifting in my stable.

Editing, I was misremembering my gruppo weights, they are on parity.

> Also, fwiw, races have been lost due to shifting power being out

In addition to a mechanical now one might have an electronical. I hate tuning my mech shifters, but Di2 cable routing inside the frame, seatpost batteries? No thanx. I hope it has improved since the seatpost battery days.

Also that problem a few years back in the Tour was when the tech was new, wasn't it? Don't hear as much about that as much anymore. Flat tires are still far more common.

Has no one snapped a mech shifter cable in a race? (I don’t follow the professional racing.)

Granted, maybe I'm better at keeping up w/ my cables than most people, but it's not like my mechanically shifted bikes are ever bad at shifting....and "charged every few weeks" is a big "aside"...unless they make a battery that can be charged in about the same time it takes to pump up my tires, it's an extra cognitive load to keep track of the charge vs. just hopping on the bike and riding.

What's not reliable and tunable when using classic, cable operated gear shifting? I'm all ears, since my offroad bikes are usually getting thrown around a lot, are usually dirty and covered in mud... and gear shifting just works, no need to charge anything and require some adjustments once per year...

I understand that some people get excited about just any $shinynewtoy but unless you're in a position to take measurable performance gain out of it... it's really just a $shinynewtoy. There's a lot more performance to be gained with improving the rider, losing weight, etc.

Or maybe just stop being obsessed by specs, performance, results, comparing oneself to others and just start to enjoy riding.

If you're only adjusting your cable-pull drivetrains annually, you're getting off easy!

Once you ride electronic shifting, it's hard to go back. It's really nice, really stable, and on the whole I've had much fewer issues with eTap than I had with mechanical Ultegra.

> on the whole I've had much fewer issues with eTap than I had with mechanical Ultegra.

Which might say more about Ultegra than the overall question of cable-driven vs. electronic shifting.

It absolutely does.

It says that cable-pull systems require more (and more intense) maintenance than electronic systems do.

Electronic shifting never has to be tuned, that’s the point. It tunes itself so you always have clean shifting, no grinding chains.

Have you ever ridden a properly built bike with a campagnolo group set? I've gone 15+ years on both my carbon tri bike and custom Ti road bike (both with Campagnolo Record) without ever tuning it (past the first 50-70 miles, thanks cable stretch).

Yes I have.

I have a couple of Campag equipped bikes and that’s not my experience.

Mechanical Campag is not as reliable as Di2 or Campag EPS IMHO.

There’s not a huge amount of tuning required but it is definitely still needed and you still need to replace the cable outers as they ware.

They don’t stretch by the way, that’s a myth. The force required to stretch a woven cable is massive. It’s just ferrels shifting on the cut ends of the outers.

Sure, but now you're talking about a group set that's more expensive than most electronic shifting sets. I had 15 year old bikes that were great, but I don't have the irrational hatred for electronic groupsets that most of the commenters here seem to have.

I'd love to understanding how this auto-tuning works. Could you ELI5 or share some resources? Thanks.

There are different versions out there so I don't know if my statement is globally accurate but I would not call it auto-tuning. But for me the tuning process is magical compared to mech gearing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBIXq82M_oU

TLDR: You shift to the 5th ring, put it in adjustment mode, now each click is a microadjustment something like 1/10 or 1/12. You adjust until the chain begins to rub, then back it out I think 5 clicks and you are done. That single adjustment means you can shift across all gears.

Electronic shifting is actually pretty great. I get that it's not something everyone wants, but you owe it to yourself to give it a test ride before you dismiss it entirely.

It's fast, it's always precise (never drifts; no cables to stretch), insanely stable, requires virtually no effort to shift, and (at least for me) has provided a more reliable platform than cable-pull Ultegra was. The mech system was prone to alignment issues, cable issues, etc. With eTap, I just charge it every few weeks and I'm done.

Also, re: consumer abuse, read the linked article. Shimano are only able to do this because their connectivity is proprietary, apparently. More modern systems rely on open standards, apparently.

IMO the bicycle was perfected 20+ years ago

There is nothing left to be improved, only gimmicks with aggressive marketing

Just be happy with the bike you have, and ride

There have been a number of transformational things in the last 5-10 years that are far from gimmicks. Wider tires on road bikes. Disc brakes for cx and mtb. Dropper posts and 1x drive trains on mtb. Cycling is rife with orthodoxy that begs to be challenged.

I'd throw tubeless tires for MTB and gravel into that group.

Disc brakes were available in 1975, wide tires before that. Dropper posts I consider to be a gimmick. 1x drivetrains do have some drawbacks, but I consider them overall to be a good improvement to the simplicity of a bike so I will grant you that.

Dropper posts are one of the most helpful pieces of equipment you can put on a mountain bike. It completely changes how you ride.

If I gave you a hardtail with a traditional post, then the same bike with a dropper, your opinion would change in minutes.

The real utility of the dropper post for me is in climbing.

On XC courses I would set my post height at some compromise height, like I would on a CX bike. I’d always feel it in my knees on the climbs though when it was just a bit too low.

Now it’s perfect for decents and for climbs. Such a useful addition to an MTB.

Even being able to adjust the height without the bloody thing twisting from the centre line is a win for me. :)

Back in the early-mid 80s, we used to race on MTBs with quick release on the seatpost clamp, and precisely the right lube to make sure the seat would drop on demand. That didn't deal with the "how do get it back up to the regular height", but before the 90s rolled around there were already several spring-based solutions to that. Dropper posts work better, but they are not a new idea.

Yeah absolutely. Dropper posts are a total game changer, don’t know how you could think they’re gimmicky

> Dropper posts I consider to be a gimmick.

I can't possibly see how you make this case. I just got a new bike and the dropper was definitely the part I was the least sure I'd care for, but the benefit was immediately obvious on the first ride. Being able to pop the seat up with the press of a button when I started a long climb was amazing.

Yeah, definitely for wider tires.

1.25in (32 mm) and 1.5 in (38 mm) tires were pretty common on the "sport touring" category of 10-speeds from the mid-70s bike boom to the early 90s or something like that.

Then marketing decided that everyone, even casual cyclists, should aspire to ride on "racing" road bikes with 23 mm (or even 21 mm) tires, even if the aero and acceleration benefits really didn't make any sense for them.

Really happy that wider tires are making a comeback and that the "gravel" category is in many ways a comeback of sport touring.

"Dropper posts I consider to be a gimmick." that's a pretty bold opinion. Might say more about the types of trails you ride than anything. Sure, you don't need a dropper post for a lot of simple beginner trail riding, start adding fast, technical descents with drops and such....that you also need to climb to, it'd farfrom a gimick. It allows you to have a fun enduro bike that you can climb comfortably in, and then descend like a wild-person on for maximum fun.

Not just any disc brakes, hydraulic ones, at a competitive price and weight. They are so much better than the old caliper brakes it’s silly even comparing them.

Suspension have received lots of improvements, both features such as lock-out, and also generally in terms of better properties, geometries and availability. Especially when looking at the rear frame. Forks are still mostly just forks :)

Finally you also have overall build quality. A mtb from the last decade just feels more rigid and lightweight, you get a sense of confidence the moment you grab the handlebar, whereas 20y ago shifters and handles have that flimsy feeling to it. Warped wheels and flat tires is also much less common problem today.

I just bought a bike with a 1x12 drivetrain and I’m quite enjoying it.

If I may inquire, as someone curious about 1x's, what do you like about them over 2x or 3x?

Did you put the 1x on a road bike, or something or other?

I'm not into racing, but I like going hard and fast (relative to my fitness), and find that I don't really care about cadence, but I do like range and minimalism. Makes me think a 1x, even on road, would be great for me, even if I'd keep my 2x's, since they work perfectly fine. Only if/ when the components wear out, maybe I'd do the 1x switcheroo.

Dropper seat posts are even coming to road bikes now. As large, heavy person with a high center of gravity I welcome this trend. Descending Mt. Umunhum on my road bike is a hair-raising experience.

https://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-gear/bikes-and-biking/...

You're not wrong. I built up a frame from '89 with random leftovers from more recent bikes and it works. No oddball standards or 'well, you'll have to get an adapter' silliness. It was kindof refreshing to build AND it functions just fine.

Somewhere in the 90's - early 00's was peak bike and I think most (but not all) progress after that came from marketing departments.

Exceptions: MTB geometry changes (debatable), dropper posts, aero wheels.

Not exceptions: internal cable routing, proprietary integrated brakes/handlebars/stems/bottle cages/forks, 1x don't @ me.

At least your username is on point. Should all these new riders also get off your lawn with electronic shifting, GPS computers, and carbon frames?

I wouldn't be too discouraged, it's still pretty rare to see on most bikes. I don't feel like it will become the norm outside of very-high-end, just because it can never be cheaper than cable shifted. People buying very-high-end stuff are usually acquainted with the warranty/return to manufacturer process so at least it won't be your hassle.

I have had the same though by the way. I reckon a small bike shop would be a great little business to run into retirement.

Electronic shifting is already the norm on bikes $5,000+. Shimano is about to introduce an electronic version of their 105 groupset, which will probably normalize electronic shifting on bikes in the $2,000+ price range. Electronic Tiagra and Sora are probably less than a decade away, which will drive that number even lower.

I feel like electronic shifting can be made cheap enough that I expect it to show up on 200$ Chinese groupsets soon

I wouldn't mind it if ultegra/dura ace also came w/ a mechanical option. But to completely d/c mechanical w/ the latest flagship groups and not provide an option? that's harsh...

Built my last road bike from the ground up and I would say electronic shifting is my favorite part. Its more precise and easier to maintain than cable shifting.

All this compatibility warring sucks of course. But there's tons of merit to going digital on certain bike parts.

I was just going to say this except on my mountain bike. Just put AXS wireless shifter on there and was surprised at how nice it made the shifting. I barely ever charge it and have an extra battery that travels with my mountain bike “box o crap” just in case.

Ultegra? I sadly bought a bike just before Ultegra switched to electronic shifting, so mine is just barely the model before. It looks very interesting though, maybe one day...

I'm the same way with my bikes, but after renting a bike in Santa Cruz, I definitely noticed a positive difference in shifting promptness with electronic vs cable. Not enough for me to retrofit an existing bike, but enough to use as a criteria point when comparing models. In some ways, its like going to linear brakes after using modulated for so long. Different experience, and I definitely prefer Shimano 4pot calipers over Srams.

Re: lights on bikes. Dynamos and dynamo hubs thankfully remain constrained by physics, so they will remain interoperable with a number of brands for a long time.

I highly recommend anyone that uses a bicycle for any meaningful amount as part of their day-to-day routine to get a dynamo hub and a light. You will save your sanity with battery replacements.

But be prepared for constantly having to deal with well-meaning people saying “Excuse me, you left your light on!”.

I always have my battery powered lights on when I'm riding on the road, even in the middle of the day. I run a bright red rear light (not flashing 100-200 lumens depending on time of day) and a bright amber or white front light (120 lumen amber during daylight, 200-800 lumen white near sunrise/sunset or when dark). Car drivers are very unaware of their surroundings, any additional indication I can give them to pay attention to me and not hit me is worth it for me. I want my lights to look like drivers expect car lights to look, as that's what they're trained to look for.

Mmmm I'm not sure about that universally in cities at least. I have dynamo lights on one bike and I love them. BUT the wheels on a decent bike are already the single most expensive part and easiest to steal if you're sloppy about your locking. Dynamo hub + custom wheel build just doubled the value of what was already the most stealable component.

It definitely changes when and where I ride that bike in ways that don't always mesh well with the advantages of the dynamo. I still prefer it but if I didn't have a cheaper less desirable bike for some lockup situations I'm not sure I'd do it.

Not sure I agree. A basic dyno hub is not really that more expensive than a mid-level regular hub (the Shimano on my bike cost about $60 if memory serves), and you really have to have a trained eye to even spot it. They're also pretty rare, which makes recovery more likely in the event of theft. I guess mine never really stuck out at me as a theft target. And if you're in an area where that's really a risk, you probably want to be using something like PitLock anyways. The benefits of always having lights massively outweigh the downsides IMO.

Yeah most of the cost is in the wheel build. It's a couple hours of skilled work. I learned to do it myself but the last wheel I had built cost $150 for just spokes and labor.

A bike thief has a trained eye! Someone snagged a vintage campagnolo brake caliper off my bike a couple years back. People know what they're looking for.

I should check my privilege of living in a place with trivial bike thefts. I’ve gotten used to sticking my u-lock through the frame, bike rack and front wheel, but haven’t had it realistically challenged to know if it’s effective.

This is why I ride a brakeless track bike, everything else is just putting another level of annoying indirection between you and the thing you want to be doing.

Is that legal to ride on the road?

Have a read of https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/sep/18/cyclist...

In the US, yeah, they are as far as I know.

Fixie riders are generally not welcome on roadie group rides. It's not IMPOSSIBLE to learn to ride predictably and safely on one, but most fixie riders seem completely disinterested in the discipline required.

(See also: tri bikes.)

Road riders are also not really welcome on fixed gear rides because they're unwilling to hop curbs and scare drivers to keep the flow. It's different cultures and skill sets for sure but framing it as "discipline" is kinda shitty imo.

It takes discipline and skill to ride in a double paceline at speed. I don't know what else to call it.

People are allowed to ride motorcycles and drive cars, let's not pretend that banning brakeless track bikes on the road makes sense.

There's minimum standards for both motorcycles and cars. Here in the UK, two brakes are required on bikes over a certain size (e.g. small kids bikes are exempt) if used on the public roads. Fixies are considered to have a rear brake as you can slow down using the pedals, but they need a front brake as well to be legal.

Dynamo powered components are an exception. Great interoperability, repairability and product life.

The high level issue here is around data ownership, and device ownership.

I think the nearest car analogy is ODBII ports and data access - ANT+ is a wireless communication protocol, mostly for reading statistics (I think it can also be used for issuing commands).

Hammerhead had a license to access the privately configured Shimano data - and then they were purchased by SRAM (who are Shimano Bike division's main competitor).

As a result, Shimano is (for now) limiting a competitors ability to see the data produced by Shimano components.

This feels very petty to me - most of the data is essentially going to be "which gear is the front/rear in", and "what shifting pattern do you want to use" - though it might also extend to preventing future interoperability (like preventing competing wireless shifting levers triggering the other manufacturers components) - which would be a loss for consumers.

Well, if it feels petty, it's because it is.

The "data" You're talking about is basically just battery level and which gear are You in.

Just for context, SRAM (the second biggest component producer and the new owner of Hammerhead) publishes the same data in plain ANT+ format. It's basically an open standard over which sensors broadcast their data. Anyone who is interested can read it, no license agreements necessary.

AFAIK Shimano has decided to encrypt their packages and the license is for the encryption keys / algorithms.

Technically you do have to agree to the ANT+ adopter license agreement in order to access the specifications. But it's free and available to everyone.

https://www.thisisant.com/business/go-ant/levels-and-benefit...

so one of the future firmware updates will just be to rotate the encryption keys out of spite to make sure it doesn't work anymore.

What a time to be alive /s

That would be difficult given the very limited compute power on the sensor devices involved.

I have a Hammerhead 2 and Di2. The most commonly used functionality for me was using the buttons on the brake shifter hoods to control the screens on the HH. It meant you could control the device without moving your hands and I use it all the time.

Having access to shifter position and Di2 battery levels was also super useful. This move really pisses me off!

Guess I will not be updating the firmware of my HH2 for a while at least.

yeah, exactly what I was thinking when I saw the news. I've been specing a groupset update on my current bike just last week and although the primary factor has been component availability (the only Shimano groupsets I could find were on used market), I'm really glad I went for SRAM AXS (though their wireless protocol does raise some hair as well, need to look into it a bit more when I have a chance).

Lack of interoperability in any system is a bad thing for consumers. However in this case you could argue that Shimano are right. It's fine to allow interoperability without the data. A KMC chain will work with a Shimano derailleur. Shimano should have no problem with that. But Shimano have to assume that SRAM would now get all the aggregate data on the operation of thousands of their Di2 systems. So SRAM could see how much faster or slower the Di2 gear shifts are. How many times the user had to make the same shift twice maybe because of failure. If a user tends not to use the largest sprocket when putting in a lot of effort then maybe it means their gears aren't tuned correctly etc. So it's competitive intelligence that SRAM can use to out compete. When Shimano allowed Di2 interoperability their intention was that it would be for the benefit of the consumer, not their direct competitor.

yeah, that used to be true up to 11 speed groupsets. Things are changing however. Take a look into the 12 speeds now. Good luck finding a non-shimano 12 speed chain that works on Shimano derailleurs / chainrings.

As for the part about speed and quality info, sorry, but that's "not even wrong". There's absolutely no way You could get this kind of info from Di2 ANT messages.

All You have is things like "the gear has changed" and "battery level is now X", not "when" has the user pressed the button or how many microsteps has the derailleur done at which speed. That goes through their own wires (I think it's basically a version of CAN).

I think GP wasn't referring to use a groupset with mixed SRAM/Shimano components, though

I guess that SRAM can afford to buy a dozen of Shimano gear shifts, put them on a bench and measure any parameter they care even without accessing the software. Real world data could be interesting but are they really so useful?

"A KMC chain will work with a Shimano derailleur. Shimano should have no problem with that."

IMO if Shimano could DRM their chains and other consumables they would.

They could. They tried to make a metric chain (2cm spacing rather than 1 inch) but it didn't catch on. Campy has kind of done that with their weird pull ratios right? Or does that only make sense if Campy was second to some drivetrain size (I'm not sure who was first or second to each cassette size).

they already put a gazillion warnings everywhere only to use Shimano chains.

It shouldn’t be up to Shimano at all. You buy a deceive and use it, it’s your device, your data, do whatever you want with it.

If a person attempted this kind of control over another person they would be called a manipulative psychopath honestly.

It's not that they want to control the person. They want to control what is sent to the competitor. There's a phrase "good fences make good neighbours". This is the history of industrial competition and cooperation. So we want to have cooperation and sharing which is what advances prosperity for everyone. But as soon as you share stuff people can abuse it. We see this with social network data. We see this with AWS abuse of open source. The practical way to have cooperation is to have sharing over which you have some control otherwise people will stop cooperating. So Shimano need some way of saying: We want to share this data with the user and with third party software companies. But we do not want to share this data with a competitor. At the moment there is no way to do this so they just do not share at all (or at least not with that "third party" software company). Shimano probably want to cooperate but they also want to be able to compete fairly. Right now it's not fair competition because SRAM are not sharing SRAM aggregate data with Shimano.

> It's not that they want to control the person. They want to control what is sent to the competitor.

Distinction without a difference. Shimano is using technical and legal means to prevent owners of their devices from using their property as they wish. And we have bought into the confusion that just because someone manufactured an item, they have some sort of legitimate claim to how it is used even after they sell it.

> There's a phrase "good fences make good neighbours".

I couldn't agree more. Which is why it angers me that Shimano is moving its fence, expanding into consumer's back yards. I don't want every company that sells me something to then try and control how I use that something.

They are attempting to control their customers.

When someone says you’re free to do whatever you wish so long as they allow it, we’ll then you aren’t free at all.

What’s next? Do you look forward to a future where a Mercedes will actively forbid you to drive to a Tesla shop?

> So Shimano need some way of saying: We want to share this data with the user and with third party software companies. But we do not want to share this data with a competitor.

The bike is mine, the components are mine- I bought them, why does shimano need any way of saying where I can put my data produced by my devices?

What's next, is a fridge company going go turn off the fridge if I pup non-approved food in it, will an oven refuse to heat an unauthorised meal? Is a smart lock going to refuse to open the door if I bring in more people than my rental contract allows?

We are on a high-way to a feudal kindom and tyranny.

The solution to this type of intentionally incompatible product is to return to a legal and cultural environment that respects adversarial interoperability[1]. If a company doesn't want to implement the features people want[2], some other company should be able to provide their own (possibly reverse engineered) implementation.

Trying to restrict competitors from making interoperable products is admitting you don't want to participate in a well-running competitive market and instead deserve monopoly power.

[1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/10/adversarial-interopera...

[2] including features like interoperability with a competitor's product.

There isn't necessarily a limitation on reverse engineering, they just can't use the information they had under contract anymore.

Weak sauce that they didn't attach the licensing to the devices though.

It was kind of a brilliant move by Shimano, in retrospect. Since Shimano did share with them how to do everything, it makes it much harder to now go and implement those features after the contract has been invalidated.

Seems like a good time for SRAM to realize they should open up info on how to let others create apps for the Hammerhead devices to let indy devs figure out how to reverse engineer Shimano's system.

This is kind of what RAND licensing frameworks are for.

there’s a certain irony in proposing this as regards bicycle components, specifically.

not sure i see where the irony is. can you clarify?

shimano, sram, and campagnolo have been engaged in a passive aggressive war of cross-compatibility degradation for about 40 years.

This is to some extent even already the case through GDPR in Europe.

I wonder if GDPR is applicable to realtime Di2 data that is not shared with a third party. See also https://medicaldeviceslegal.com/2016/12/19/privacy-by-design...

It's a super gross, super hostile move.

For those that don't click through, the real f-you aspect here is that until recently Shimano's own site bragged of its compatibility with Hammerhead, so presumably people bought Di2 equipped bikes based on that promise -- and now have had it jerked back.

I'm not affected -- my bikes run SRAM -- but if I were a Shimano user, I'd be pretty damn angry. It's a petty, smallminded move.

Does this go through their cloud or is it local-only? If it uses Shimano online services they have a point, but if it's local between devices that the cyclist had paid for, why should Shimano have any say in it?

Shimano are obviously assholes here, but Hammerhead are also disappointing for not standing their ground.

As far as I understand the bike computer connects to the group set (Di2) on the bike directly using either ANT+ or Bluetooth signal and no internet is needed for their communication. This is how I have used both.

I think you can even DIY a device which connects to the group set. ANT+ is open access.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANT_(network)

This is local only over a pretty simple communication protocol. Hammerhead had previously licensed that protocol, but Shimano cancelled the contract when Hammerhead were acquired by Shimano's largest competitor.

I'm not a lawyer so don't know if they _need_ to have a license for the protocol, but presumably they think they do.

> I'm not a lawyer so don't know if they _need_ to have a license for the protocol, but presumably they think they do.

They don't but they were probably using a licensed library they no longer have access to and would need to develop their own library first.

I wouldn't be surprised if they signed something explicit about not using the protocol without authorisation or something.

I have implemented the binary protocol from scratch many years ago. Amusingly, at the time, the data files downloaded from Garmins was pretty much the same protocol but just in a file. If you got a USB Ant+ receiver you got, as I recall, the same protocol from libusb.

I guess the problem is, once they have been given the protocol in a document covered by an NDA they can't use it outside that contract, even though they could trivially clean-room it.

They could easily outsource development to a company that is not under NDA right?

I wonder if Shimano really cancelled of if there was some clause in the original agreement for preventing automatic handover in case of an acquisition that was invoked by some legal division at Shimano that simply doesn't have strategic decisions or customer happiness anywhere close of their job descriptions. Are they really actively trying to hurt a competitor or is it just some organizational automatism with nobody sufficiently in charge top correct course? I'm not exactly prone to defend Shimano (jumping through hoops to run Campagnolo), but I wouldn't be surprised if it all ended up with a big, genuine "sorry, we don't quite understand why exactly it happened"

Some (all?) parts of Shimano's Di2 system communicates via a proprietary protocol. The industry has standardized on ANT+, Shimano uses their own protocol. Hammerhead had a license agreement to use it. Shimano revoked (or opted to not renew) that license.

Every type of device that communicates over ANT has a profile. Shimano does not use the public shifting profile, but a closed (basically beta) profile.

Usually profiles start closed but eventually an open profile is published and devices move to it. Shimano failed to do so here.

It is local, purely happen between the shimano di2 junction box on the bike and the bike computer.

There's no cloud. Shimano has a say because Shimano has decided to encrypt their ANT+ broadcast messages.

There may be a cloud. There's nothing to stop Hammerhead uploading data from the app to SRAM. That's probably what Shimano are worried about.

Absolutely no cloud. All this stuff happens on-bike; it has to, because people frequently ride in places where there is no data service.

(Also, it's not clear how a cloud would help here. What we're talking about is allowing the groupset and the computer to share data in real time, to show on the head unit what gears are selected & etc. A cloud would just impose delay.)

There is no cloud. This is how a bike computer communicates with the shifters on your bike.

I struggle to think of a good term for companys that insist on high ecosystem control.

The idea of Competitve Compatibility somewhat suggests an alternate path. But just defining these denialist products, that resist their users having any choice- it's a pretty blamket phenomenon & yet lacks a name.

Wait until you see what Bosch and Shimano have been up to in the e-bike market.

Mid-drive systems from both companies require a specific mount in the frame for them, and of course one system will not mount in a hole made for the other. It's so bad that they've even made the mount specific to a particular product line. Buy a bike with the motor designed for relaxed cruising, and later decide you want the performance assist? Too bad! It won't fit your bike. Wom wom.)

You can't diagnose either system without their proprietary software.

Bosch's batteries brick themselves if you open them up and attempt to re-cell/repair the battery (third party solutions allow for de-bricking them now.) So when they stop making battery packs for your e-bike, it's a giant paperweight.

So when they stop making battery packs for your e-bike, it's a giant paperweight.

I would assume, just as Mitch Hedberg noted about escalators can never break they just become stairs, an ebike just becomes a "bike" without the battery. In fact, I thought that's one of the selling points?

An e-bike without electrical assistance is heavy and sluggish, much more than a normal bike. I don't think anyone by them for the aspect of becoming a normal bike when out of power, they buy them because of the assistance.

Are you talking about those with brushless motors? The other kind, geared motors, should not impede anything when offline if I understand correctly. Then you just have a heavy bike, which is a problem in a hilly city but not so much in a flat city.

In particular, heavier by at most 2 kg. If it's a hub motor, all it needs is new spokes and hub. If it's a mid drive, you might have to experiment a bit.

My experience is many e-bike owners run around with almost deflated tires, worn out chain, rubbing brakes etc., since they themselves don't feel the added resistance, hehe.

An ebike is 5 to 10 times as expensive, and much heavier than a normal bike.

By much you mean the weight of the motor, which actually is not the main weight of the bike. Batteries tend to be removable or easy to gut.

The frames may sometimes be a bit more heavy duty, but usually aren't.

The motor is noticeable on a super light carbon bike but not really on aluminum and definitely not on steel frame.

5-10 times more expensive is also a lie, at most I've seen 2x over comparable non-electric. (Though instead it should be a flat price increase.) Thing is, many ebikes are in premium segment. But there are many cheap ones as well.

It's not just the motor. The frame gets beefed up to handle the higher forces. Generally wheels also get stronger, as does the drivetrain.

The main weight penalty is the frame though. As for price, I got a decent normal bike around 600, and would expect to pay 3000 for an equivalent e-bike. For the 10x I did conflate e-bikes with 'speed pedelecs' which are not really bicycles anymore.

Standard bikes in shops around me start at 300 euros, where ebikes start at 1,000.

well, by the same logic, a car without a working engine becomes... a horse drawn / people pushed cart? A wheel barrow?

Yes, on a given ride it is a selling point that you can keep going after the battery dies.

That doesn't translate into it being a selling point overall, "you can still pedal it after we stop supporting the power assist" would be a stupid thing to tell a potential customer.

It becomes a bike if the battery runs out. If the electronics become inoperable, then it will likely never be ridden again. E bikes are getting bigger and heavier by the day, and physical effort is the reason why people don't ride conventional bikes.

There is a split in the market for e-bikes. Some are getting bigger and heavier, almost like motorcycles. Others are getting lighter so that you can hardly tell the difference from a traditional road bike.

https://www.bianchi.com/store/us_EN/yrbn9-aria-e-road-ultegr...

Ah yes, those are the road bikes with thick downtubes that pass me on the MUP. ;-)

From a consumer perspective, good luck selling it after support ends.

an ebike is a big, heavy, unpleasant bike with an electric motor. Now remove the motor.

This future sucks.

Wow sounds great

Until a Chinese competitor comes and eats their lunch.

Shimano overall sounds like DeBeers for men

It's very difficult for new component manufacturers to start up, for the simple reason that most people do not build their bikes from parts, so they need to come with new bikes which means convincing an existing bike company to use the parts.

One other issue is that the bike industry is very insular and protectionist. Many bikes and bike components are only available through distributors such as QBP, who only sell to bike dealers.

You can certainly buy good quality components that aren't Shimano/SRAM/Campy, for example the Sensah groupsets on AliExpress have a good reputation for quality and they're a fantastic deal for a high end groupset. But building a bike from parts is a lot of work, only hardcore cyclists do it.

oh, no need to go this far. Just look at the 12 speed chains specs ;-)

"I struggle to think of a good term for companys that insist on high ecosystem control."

Extortionists.

“Apple”

Tesla chargers.

abusive, isolating, controlling, manipulative, etc?

This is not about pettiness: users should be able to opt out of updates that remove functionality. We are still in the prehistoric age of consumer rights for software and it shows. Would you be okay with your dishwasher dropping high temperature washes because the manufacturer decided so?

Or a more dystopic example: your fridge actively jamming the wifi of your washing machine because they are from two warring brands

Not sure in the case of Hammerhead (I've got a Wahoo and a Garmin), but mostly You can opt out of updating Your head unit. Problem is, it's an all-or-nothing. By not updating You also lose whatever bugfixes will be coming in the future updates.

I tend to update my Karoo pretty quickly, but I have never seen any indication that it would force an update, so I think people could stick with last week's version for as long as they want.

That being said, this week's update that removed Di2 also added some nice location-based auto lap features, which are way more useful than an icon telling me which gear I'm in, which I already know, so I updated.

DCRainMaker was pretty successful with the Strava kerfuffle where Strava had abruptly ended 3rd party data sync to Apple Health

https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2022/03/strava-abruptly-ends-3rd...

and then eventually backed down

https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2022/03/strava-reverses-course-t...

He rightfully has a lot of sway and hopefully Shimano will see his light.

Shimano is a Japanese company. They would be surprised to hear anyone outside the company is expected to have any sway over their policies. It's sad they turned to anti-consumer behaviour, as their hardware is top notch. But luckily, there is good competition and one can vote with their wallet.

Shimano is notoriously anti consumer. I use 2x8 speed brifters. They actually work better than modern ones imo, because you can go into any gear from either front cog with no issue (supposedly this is a no no on larger gearsets). However, the rubber hoods are wearing apart because they are 20 years old, shimano stopped selling the parts, and no one makes a third party replacement. People on forums resort to buying new brifters and casting aside these perfectly good 2x8s that just have some worn rubber on them. I am getting by with some wraps of tape but its certainly not pretty looking.

> They actually work better than modern ones imo, because you can go into any gear from either front cog with no issue

You can do this on the latest modern stuff too, what you are describing is often called "cross-chaining". Cross chaining has generally always worked, it's just not recomended as puts undue wear on the chain and gears, coupled with the fact gear ratios on bikes overlap so much you will get the same or similar pedal effort from the cog with less cross-chain. Cross-chaining usually isn't recommended on a 2x8 speed road groupset either but like everything bike maintenance opinions vary.

> https://wickwerks.com/support/crosschaining

not sure how this is anti consumer? Shimano hasn't pushed these for years (decades?) and they're allowed to stop manufacturing parts eventually.

By making every single brifter they release have a different hood. Look it up, there are like dozens they've made, the part numbers are dizzying. Compare this to older style road bikes before the brifter era, where the rubber hood was pretty much standardized across most bikes, and because of that to this day you can still buy new hoods for that older style of bike. But not mine made just a decade after that era, because mine is from the "new hood design every few years" era of forced obsolescence. It's a hood. How different does it even need to be year to year?

so apparently Hammerhead makes a smartwatch-esque handlebar-mounted computer that integrates with Shimano bicycle hardware, but they're having some kind of contract dispute..?

not a long article, but the relevant parts seem to be:

> At the request of Shimano, [...] software update on June 2nd [...] will remove on-screen battery status and shifter mode data, front and rear derailleur indications, and Karoo screen control via the Di2 hood buttons from Shimano Di2 drivetrains.

> Shimano has withdrawn permissions [...] until we are able to forge a new agreement.

Hammerhead makes what’s known as a bicycle computer. The original purpose of a bicycle computer was quite simple, to track stats measured about performance on the bicycle. That’s expanded quite a bit. Now bicycle drivetrains are operated wirelessly rather through cable tension, and bicycle computers can integrate with them as well, through a protocol called ANT+. ANT+ is an open protocol, and most bicycle components and accessories with digital features (think heart rate monitor, computer, smart watch, smart trainer, etc.) nowadays are interoperable between manufacturers because of it. ANT+ however does allow for custom proprietary implementations. Shimano was supposed to be migrating away from their proprietary implementation for their DI2 (electronic shifting) systems, but they haven’t, and are now starting a trend of ostracizing competitors. The likely cause for this is that Hammerhead was just acquired by SRAM, one of the 2 major competitors in the bicycle component business. That move from open protocols to closed protocols used cynically is a pretty big departure and could be disastrous for bicycle riders, we’ve been lucky to have component compatibility across manufacturers as an option for decades. I could probably say more but I’ll stop here for now.

> we’ve been lucky to have component compatibility across manufacturers as an option for decades.

Can you explain what cross-compatibility we had? When I was cycling, there wasn't any compatibility between Shimano and Campagnolo (SRAM wasn't a player in road yet). Heck, Dura-Ace (Shimano's top of the line road component group) previously wasn't compatible with other, lesser Shimano groups.

Maybe you're referring to mountain or the cheaper 8-speed stuff?

> When I was cycling, there wasn't any compatibility between Shimano and Campagnolo (SRAM wasn't a player in road yet). Heck, Dura-Ace (Shimano's top of the line road component group) previously wasn't compatible with other, lesser Shimano groups.

This isn't remotely true at all. For probably two decades people have been swapping Shimano components around, even stuff like putting dura-ace jockey wheels on lower derailleurs because the DA jockey wheels had better bearings and lasted longer.

Manufactures shipped bikes all the time with higher group shifters than a derailleur or brakes (manufacturers love to cheap out on brakes and front derailleurs in particular.)

BTW, Hammerhead is really important in the market because along with Wahoo they were the first serious challenge to Garmin's effective monopoly on bike computers. Frankly, they used to suck - little to no change between models. Wahoo and Hammerhead forced them to actually innovate. Amusingly enough, the first "new and competition-improved" Garmin head units were terrible - the Edge 500/1000 were buggy and tended to crash a lot. It took at least another product cycle or two for Garmin to get their act together.

A similar thing is happening in the GPS sport watch market. Some new competitors have shown up, and all of the sudden Garmin's lower-end sport watch lines are seeing massive expansion of their features which would normally only be found on much more expensive models.

Before 1997, Dura Ace wasn't compatible with other Shimano groups.

https://sheldonbrown.com/dura-ace.html

I may just be showing my age though.

Somewhere between 2000 to 2010 was a golden age when bicycle components were much more cross compatible than before or after. SRAM was almost all Shimano compatible (cog spacing, freehub splines, etc, IIRC the only difference was cable pull for shifting) and for 10 to 11 speed you could drop a Campagnolo wheel into Shimano/SRAM system or vice versa without any noticeable mismatch. And during that time there was basically one common bottom bracket shell standard.

There are competing bottom bracket standards now? What a race to the bottom. Feeling even better about my 20 year old bicycle now.

While Campagnolo is not compatible with Shimano/SRAM, when SRAM started up they built their own drivetrains as compatible with Shimano up to and including some of the 11 speed road components.

I had no idea this was a thing, though I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. I think I'll be sticking with cables.

You know these companies are looking for a way to monetise the gear shift data somehow.

> Now bicycle drivetrains are operated wirelessly rather through cable tension

...ok, now I'm officially a curmudgeon.

I have Shimano Ultegra Di2 on one of my bikes. It’s an older fully wired version.

It’s wonderful.

Once set up it works faultlessly and doesn’t require the readjustment or cable servicing that’s required with a cable operated drivetrain[1].

On top of that the front derailleur constantly trims itself to never chain rub and semi-automatic[2] shifting is surprisingly useful.

Also Di2 let’s you add multiple shift buttons. So you could have shifting at every hand position if you wanted.

Finally the thing that sold it to me. I did a multi-day ride on my old bike. After the first 4 days I got cramp in my hand everytime I shifted. Told myself I’d try di2. Every gear change is now as soft as a mouse click.

All that and the only real downside side is you have to change it every 6 months.

It’s a very well thought through system. I know lots of people with Di2 in my bike club. I don’t think anyone dislikes it.

1. Bowden cables don’t “stretch” as such, what actually happens in mechanical systems is that the ferrel ends settle over time or the linings of the cable outers wear and flake causing friction.

2. The semi-automatic mode means single buttons for higher or lower shifts. The front derailleur shifts as appropriate to give you the next ratio.

You can repeat that on each hand or on the top hood position. So for example, if you want to change gears as you indicate left or right, now you can.

I just installed the same version on my bike six weeks ago. For me the best thing is 100% reliable and fast front derailleur shifts. I’m pretty good at setting up a rear derailleur, but no matter how much I fiddled I could never get a cable-actuated front mech to shift into the big ring nicely. I would always get that annoying thing where it takes a second extra for the chain to catch on the big ring, or if I had it shifting nicely it would rub. Plus, since it’s just pressing a button with Di2, I can easily change into the big ring from the drops since I don’t need to push the whole lever sideways.

With Di2 I haven’t dropped a chain and it shifts instantly, just whzz and it’s ready, with the automatic down shift at the back too. The auto-trim feature is great too, no rubbing at all.

Honestly I don’t have a bad thing to say about Di2 at all, I’m far from a competent mechanic and between my group set arriving through the door and taking it for a first ride it took me about two hours to install everything. Just to change the cables previously would take me an hour of fiddling around with magnets to try and get them routed through the frame.

>For me the best thing is 100% reliable and fast front derailleur shifts.

I get that with even friction shifting. It's bombproof.

>With Di2 I haven’t dropped a chain

That has to do with your limit screws. I haven't dropped a chain in decades probably, minus some kind of dramatic mountain bike wreck.

For what it's worth, I've found the newer R8000 front mech far easier to adjust.

You have to change what every six months?

He meant "charge".

Yeah, I was too till I tried it. Thousands of miles of instant, perfect shifts at the light touch of a button with no adjusting, no cable clutter, no cleaning, etc. is very nice. It would all be worthless if the electronic shifters were in the least bit unreliable but the two systems I’ve used have both been rock solid.

Electronic shifting systems even add reliability vs. mechanical ones by allowing a knock to temporarily displace the derailleur, which the motor will then fix nearly instantly, rather than breaking/bending while futility trying to resist a high force.

Right. A guy I know had this fail while riding up a mountain (I believe he said the battery died) and he could not change gears at all even though he tried.

He effectively had to limp his bike home because he was stuck in the gear he had riding uphill. Took him half a day or so rather than an hour.

I’m certainly not a Luddite but this doesn’t seem to be a worthwhile trade off for me.

Surely two cables for transmitting the control signal would keep most of these benefits while only needing one set of batteries in the system?

All road miles or are there any dirt road miles?

I have a 2020 Canyon Endurace with Shimanio Di2. I also added Garmin Vector pedals with built in power meters, and a Garmin edge bike computer.

I think all in my bike has around 11 devices on it with updatable firmware… And I might even be missing a few.

Both pedals, front and rear derailers, Di2 battery, Di2 Bluetooth adapter, Di2 Hub, both shift levers, Garmin computer, front wheel speed sensor.

And I often wear a Garmin heart rate strap, so that’s another.

I have Garmin bike lights which also contain updatable firmware and communicate using ANT+.

Haha, myself as well. There are some advantages for racers especially as you can essentially program gear shift triggers as you move up the cassette in your small ring and eliminate the need to trim when the chain line gets funky. But these are really small advantages with a lot of tradeoffs to make.. unfortunately the mechanical group set is actually being eliminated from new product offerings especially at the higher end. Thankfully there is always the second hand market.

Yep and you can also set it to just use one shift lever for up and down shifting. It will shift front and rear as appropriate to get you a higher or lower gear. In practice this means sometimes it shifts the front and then moves the back up or down 2 or so gears.

Well there's not many more advances to be made "at the higher end". You'll see trickle down and the equivalent of current Dura-ace level in the 105s inside of a decade.

Well, it should really read "Now some, expensive bicycle drivetrains are...". But I guess it'll trickle down to more run-of-the mill stuff eventually.

What I don't understand, I thought reverse engineering of protocols for interoperability is explicitly allowed in most of the relevant laws (one of the few good things), so does hammerhead even need a licence to implement the functionality?

Yes, and in fact ANT Private (proprietary protocol) has been reverse engineered before. But this is kind of new territory for these manufacturers, and Shimano tends to be quite litigious. In fact the reverse engineering attempt I remember has all but been scraped from the internet: https://hackaday.com/2019/03/26/reverse-engineering-shimano-....

Looks like internet archive has a copy of the linked github page. Seems like it has everything needed, including the network key, to get things working. If you want to risk a legal fight with Shimano, that is.

My reading of the OP and the video posted elsewhere in the thread is that in building support for the proprietary extensions used by Di2 Hammerhead entered into a licensing agreement and was granted access to non-public Shimano documentation. So while it would probably be legal for them to RE the Di2 extensions, that would be legally different than continuing to distribute software developed with Shimano's permission and support.

Sure legally you can but then shimano can choose to break their contracts with you.

In that case it is legally broken and or there are terms within the contract that would assume penalty if done afterwards.

I assume it would have been easier to reverse engineering than sign a contract as there would be no annoying term.

> we’ve been lucky to have component compatibility across manufacturers as an option for decades.

Aha-ha-haa! Tell me again how many different bottom bracket "standards" do we have, and why? (Just to pick an example)

True! But you can use any bottom bracket that fits the standard regardless of who makes it.

Cycle drive trains are still mostly mechanical, these wireless computer aided shifters are fairly rare.

Yes, but it’s anti-consumer bullshit from Shimano. They are making Hammerhead remove Di2 functionality because Hammerhead was recently bought by SRAM, the other big player in the bicycle component market, who make their own electronic groupsets.

It’s like you’ve been using AirPods with your Android phone for ages with no issue, then Google releases some wireless earbuds and Apple decides AirPods no longer work with Android phones at all.

Is Shimano doing this because SRAM (a competitor) bought Hammerhead? Makes me skeptical we will ever see Shimano STEPS battery % and mode on the Hammerhead. Hammerhead sells an Android powered bike computer with a great set of features and UX compared to the legacy brands that have dominated the market forever (Garmin, Bryton, Wahoo).

The Wahoo bike computer just came out in 2016! They're hardly Oldsmobile.

Yes. This. SRAM is the main competition in the bicycle world for Shimano.

On the high end, the main competitor of Shimano is Campagnolo

Campagnolo is pretty much niche nowadays with a less dense dealer network and few OEM contracts.

Look at Campagnolo like Ferrari, only offering select high end items for the road while Shimano is more like Honda offering anything from the little Aygo to the Acura NSX and also offering SUV/trucks. Sram would be more like Mercedes, tackling the mid range to upper end but skipping on the really lowest end.

Not anymore they aren't. SRAM sell far more high end groupsets than Campy these days.

Yes - and they are not in the Mountainbike market which is dominated by sram and shimano.

So how does this work legally - I bought a product with functionality X, and later the manufacturer can remove that functionality from me?

What if that's the one and only functionality that I need - are they going to compensate me? Aren't they revising contract of sale after the money is paid?

Could the manufacturer start charging me subsribtion for some functionality that was previously 'included'?

What are the limits to how much could be taken back from me after I paid money for the goods? If I bought a car, and the manufacturer updated it to require a separate subscribtion for driving in each state, would that actually be illegal?

So counterproductive to their own interest. Don't they recognize I won't buy another Di2 bike if they maintain this policy?

Yeah, why would anyone buying a high-end bike go Shimano if they're going to be hamstrung trying to use the (arguably) best computer on the market with it.

This behavior reminds me of the "stuck-in-their-ways" description of another Japanese company (Sega of Japan) in the book "Console Wars". They punched their own ticket out of the console sphere and dragged Sega USA (who tried all they could to right the ship but were subservient of course to Sega Japan) with them.

That’s what I’m wondering too. They don’t really gain a lot from the move. But if let’s say 5% of higher end bike owners have a Karoo computer and would avoid Shimano in the future due to incompatibility, then it seems like a loss in market size to me. It’s also not like Shimano could compensate it by selling their own bike computer - because they don’t have one.

I almost bought today a Shimano DriveTrain. Very much thank you to Post this here.

I will switch now to another producer.

No money for customer hating companies.

I have a SRAM eTap groupset on my roadbike and really enjoy it. The batteries are super convenient, I only charge them "defensively" once in a while and have never actually run out on a ride. If I had, I could have swapped the one of the front derailleur, which is significantly less used, with that of the back derailleur, and ride another few hundred (thousand?) kilometers. You could even carry an extra battery just in case. From what I understand, to charge Di2 you need to fully stop and couldn't even charge with a portable battery while moving, but I could be wrong. Seems like SRAM isn't as feature-rich, but is more straightforward and reliable.

I don't know we get there, but we need a functional legislative branch that can implement what will be widely popular legislation to prevent large companies from using their market power in obviously anti-consumer ways.

Right now in the US the bike industry is spending dump trucks of cash to push state-by-state changes to bike laws creating a complex system of "classes" of e-bikes depending on power and features (namely, whether they use expensive "torque sensing" assist, or "throttle" assist.)

Why?

Because there are a lot of cheap conversion kits out there that use generic components, provide more power/range, are more repairable, and can be bolted on to almost any existing bike. And transferred to a new bike. Etc.

These systems would either be made completely illegal or regulated to the highest "class", which, coincidentally, the legislation typically grants agencies, towns, and bike paths the most control over - including outright banning them. Which is a huge change from the status quo, where in many states, cyclist have a specific right to ride on almost any road.

Bosch and Shimano have invested megabucks into "mid drive" systems which they've designed all sorts of planned obsolescence features. The most glaring example would be that each company's assist unit mounts to the frame in a very differently shaped space in the frame, so bikes have to be designed for a particular company's system.

Even worse, a particular company might have several different tiers of systems (Bosch has 3-4 currently) and each uses a different shaped space in the frame.

Regardless of legal e-bike classes, those cheap conversion kits were never going to go beyond a tiny niche market. The kits are only compatible with a limited set of bikes and most casual cyclists don't have the skill or desire to install one. They just want to buy a bike that works and go ride around.

As a practical matter, the laws on e-bike classes are almost never actually enforced in the USA. I see people riding "bikes" which are really more like electric motorcycles on bike paths and no one does anything to stop them. (Park rangers will occasionally ticket e-MTB riders in areas where they're totally banned due to trail damage and safety risks.)

The US bike industry doesn't even have "buckets of cash" to spend on lobbying. Total industry annual revenue is only about $6B (a fraction of any of the big tech companies) and profit margins are low.

https://www.statista.com/topics/1448/bicycle-industry-in-the...

The classes do serve a purpose. Many of these ebikes are essentially electric motorcycles that belong on the road and not on dedicated bicycle infrastructure.

If interoperability was marketed as a feature at the moment you bought the product then in my understanding in Europe one could (try to) annul the agreement. Features are an integral part of the buying agreement. That still wouldn't hurt Shimano directly, since the annulment is with the shop. However, with these being 5k+ bikes, dealers would pretty soon start complaining to Shimano.

That sounds like the anti-trust stuff we supposedly already have.

More than 35 years ago, I started saying "Friends Don't Let Friends Ride Shimano". Although it was somewhat tongue in cheek, it was actually supposed to be true.

Nothing in that time has made that seem like less useful advice, and quite a bit has happened (including this news) that makes it seem even more apropros than before.

I have a 12 year old Shimano Ultegra groupo that has needed very little upkeep and has a lot of miles on it. My newer shimano out performs my newer SRAM on my mountain bikes. Was Shimano new to the cycling industry 35 years ago, maybe they were bad then? I'm sure that was a glory day when Campi was the gold standard or something (I hear this from the old timers). I wish my newer SRAM stuff was as durable as my Shimano, because it was less expensive....

I'm even now waiting longer for a new road bike just so I can get shimano on it, rather than having SRAM on it and be delivered maybe next month....

It's not so much the tech (though I'd argue it has never been as good as Campagnolo) and more the behavior of the corporation over the years.

BTW, at least for road bikes, Campgnolo is still the gold standard, and not just because you need a lot of gold to own it.

Haa...funny, I only ever heard of Campi as more Itaian stuff that breaks a lot. Even my hard-core buddies who were Campi fans, have gone away from it on their bikes. I know there's a sexy appeal to it. I might have to look at it sometime when I have more disposable income.

You have to find a network of campy dealers, but then it's fine. They engineer the entry level groups to have the same feel as the higher end, and the cheaper stuff might be more reliable because they don't use as much exotic lightweight materials. But I think you can get Veloce at around the same price as 105, Chorus is in between ultegra/dura-ace prices.

Overall, my experience is that Campy reliability is really good...just you have to know how to tune cable tension and use the right torque settings. And you can (or were able to) rebuild stuff easier than SRAM/Shimano. There's some give and take, of course - Shimano's cranks are known to have a delamination failure, but Super Record' front derailleurs are known to be a bit finicky, etc etc etc. But things have been so thoroughly bug tested over the past 4 decades it's really splitting hairs.

Full disclosure: I hate the appearance of modern campagnolo group sets. I think they ruined the elegance that was so present in the late aughts. They still work very, very nicely though. I would likely not put them on a new bike though, just because of the aesthetics.

You've now sent me into the Campgnolo worm-hole, BTW.

I had absolutely no idea what this was about for the first 5 paragraphs or so. Thought it might be robot vacuums

This gets my vote for the most ridiculous headline on HN. Complete word salad with very little meaning

Even if you're "in to" bikes, it's almost unintelligible aside from knowing Shimano is a brand.

I back this sentiment.

You only have to know that Di2 is Shimano's electronic shifting to be able to guess what this is about.

Compare with, currently on the front page:

"Comparing Ceph, Linstor, Mayastor and Vitastor Storage Performance in Kubernetes"

If you're into (road) bikes, you probably know Shimano, Hammerhead, and you definitely would know what Di2 is.

I heard once that Shimano are the only gears you can get for your bike, they have a monopoly on gears. Is this true?

No there are many different manufacturers including SRAM which now owns Hammerhead but Shimano does have about 70% of the marketshare.

Many is an overstatement. You only really have SRAM and Campagnolo that are making decent groupsets and of the two, SRAM is the only one that makes MTB groupsets. MicroShift is there at the lower end and is probably best avoided unless it solves a specific problem you have. SunTour isn't doing groupsets anymore. You don't want to bother with the Chinese knockoffs of Shimano.

oic. SRAM was not as common here in Europe when I first started bicycletouring though. But I can see they are present on some Swedish webshops now though.

There are plenty of manufacturers making gears. (Cassettes and chainsets) For example mine are by their main competitor: SRAM

No, SRAM and (to a lesser extent) Campagnolo are two other fierce competitors.

All three are going to see their profits being swallowed up by competitors like MicroShift on the low end side of things. Making 9 or 10 speed groupsets is not really rocket science anymore. People (like me) that don't want electronic shifting will be flocking to them. All this broken interoperability and forced obsolescence from electronic parts is just too much unless you really need to cosplay as your favorite Euro Pro Tour rider on your lunch breaks.

This is a much better article that goes to the usual, high level of detail from a DC Rainmaker post: https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2022/05/shimano-forces-hammerhea...

Ok, we changed to that from https://support.hammerhead.io/hc/en-us/articles/360051706614.... Thanks!

Folks should be aware that Ray regularly receives highly preferential treatment by Garmin (who own the ANT standard), as well as speaking engagements at their ANT conference.

Expect anything that comes out of his mouth to be colored by his desire to not piss off the gods at Garmin. I've been watching him do that dance for years, refusing to acknowledge major bugs people find in various Garmin products that go unaddressed, to not having a peep to say about the absurd levels of market segmentation Garmin goes to.

Oh hey, here's him not pointing out that the whole thing is Garmin's fault for allowing vendors to utilize private, secret ANT functions. Instead:

> In other words, this is entirely a result of SRAM acquiring Hammerhead earlier this year

No. It's the fault of Garmin for creating "private ANT", mainly because they wanted it for their own purposes. See, Wahoo and others were starting to release competing GPS bike computers (and Hammerhead came along as well)...so private ANT let them lock out other bike computer manufacturers from getting advanced power meter stats, controlling their lights, getting alerts from their radar, etc just long enough to force people to buy their overpriced, under-featured, buggy bike computers.

Well, he for sure pissed Garmin off with his review of the Garmin RCT715[0] (the bike camera/radar/light thingy). At least in my case, his review stopped me from upgrading from an RTL515.

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dyr-KJy-xKo

I’ve been reading Ray for over a decade and do not find your comment accurate. He has criticised private ANT, he gives good reviews to Garmin competitors, he has been pretty critical of early Vector pedals. His writing style is focused on specific products and things he can measure. You might not like that he doesn’t go off on rants about the industry or write based on info from his comment section, but that doesn’t make him less trustworthy. I’d go so far to say there isn’t a writer in the sports tech space with more integrity than Ray.

Eh, he receives gadgets from all big players to test, and is very upfront about him returning the stuff after. No one does as thorough reviews about sports gadgets as him. He also publishes all the raw data, so GPS bugs etc. is very visible if they're present, don't feel he hides anything when reviewing Garmin stuff. Sometimes he is even very critical.

If anything, if he were in favor of Garmin he wouldn't push this so hard, since it's in favor of Garmin computers that a competitor can't read this data.

That is a total misrepresentation of the situation. DC Rainmaker (Ray Maker) is not paid for his speaking engagements at ANT+ and Garmin conferences. He does those for free, and doesn't even accept reimbursement for travel expenses. He has publicly complained about Garmin bugs.

https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2019/06/competitor-software-inst...

Garmin and the other manufacturers who control ANT+ created the private channel so that it would be available for experiments when there's no suitable standard profile. There is a standard profile for electronic shifting so you can't blame Garmin if Shimano fails to follow the standard. Garmin does follow the ANT+ profile standards in their power meters, lights, and radars; all of those Garmin sensor devices interoperate correctly with third-party bike computers. The issue described in this post is 100% a Shimano problem and Garmin bears zero blame.

Counterpoint: his recent review of the new Garmin Varia was fairly critical.

I don't know. Maybe if you were concerned about this, the solution isn't to sell your company that depends on access to one company, to their direct and biggest competitor. Hammerhead bears responsibility for not doing things that have their customer's interests at heart.

There is no reason for a bicycle to have a computer. It seems like a simple or innocuous idea but it leads down the path toward "bicycle as a service" and let's be honest - recurring payment models impoverish large segments of the economy.

Maybe you have got downvotes because you mean some proprietary software, not a computer per se. BTW personably I consider your comment reasonable even in that wording. Computer adds to that mechanical device nothing except of annoying.

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