Month: December 2022

Road bike power meter app ride west of Oshkosh, Wisconsin demonstrates the Cykelstrom Bicycle Power Meter App.

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The Road Bike For This Test Ride

I rode a Diamondback Haanjo Comp as a road bike for this ride equipped with a 4iiii Precision Pro dual sided power meter on a Shimano 105 11-speed group set. The speed sensor was a Wahoo Bluetooth speed sensor and cadence information was provide by the power meter. Heart rate information was collected with a Polar H7 chest strap sensor. The smartphone was a MotorolaG6 running Android Oreo and Cykelstrom version 1.36. All of the power meter and sensor data was collected, saved locally and automatically uploaded to Strava with the Cykelstrom Bicycle Power Meter App at the end of the ride.

Road Bike Power Meter App Accuracy

The best accuracy for this ride is emphasized in bold.

Discussion Of This Ride’s Results

I have emphasized in bold the results from “GPS Speed and External Cadence” as the most accurate. When compared to the dual sided power meter, Cykelstrom had a small bias of 3.33 +/- 1.60 Watts which is an average difference of about 2%. Results like these are typical when riding on smooth surfaces like tarmac roads. When calibrated correctly, Cykelstrom provides acceptable power measurements for the the recreational road cyclist.

What If You Did Not Use A Cadence Sensor?

For this particular ride, if you had no sensors and just relied on the internal sensors of the smartphone, you would observe that the bias was 8.36 +/- 1.71 Watts which is an average difference of about 5%. This accuracy would also be acceptable to most recreational road cyclists with the following condition. Since cadence information is not collected in this case, the rider would need to keep their coasting to a minimum. When I ride on the road, I seldom coast and pedal all of the time. This is why the results excluding the cadence sensor are so close to when a cadence sensor was used.

Adding A Cadence Sensor

For best accuracy, I recommend the use of an external Bluetooth cadence sensor. If you would like to learn more about how to add Bluetooth sensors to the Cykelstrom App please visit the article “Adding Bluetooth Sensors to Cykelstrom.”

Strava Activity

Click on the map to visit this activity in Strava.

Elapsed Time	Moving Time	Distance	Average Speed	Max Speed	Elevation Gain	Calories Burned
01:36:36 hours	01:36:06 hours	25.34 mi.	15.82 mph	23.29 mph	437.99 ft.	1,090 kcal

Not sure how many more days I can get away with this kind of ride this year. Hopefully, just one more?

Follow Cykelstrom Road Bike Power Meter App Test Rides On Strava

The Cykelstrom Road Bike Power Meter App Is Exclusively Available On Google Play