At last year’s Eurobike, we along with many others spotted a curious-looking concept bike with a pin protruding out of the front end on Argon 18’s stand.
It was then dubbed ‘Smart Bike’, and was conceived as an add-on to Argon 18’s bikes that can calculate, in real-time, a rider’s drag coefficient in conjunction with a GPS head unit (plus a monumental amount of post-ride data to analyse). Since then Argon 18 have been busy, and as developer Mark Graveline explains in the video, they've created a separate company called Notio Konect and remade the device as a separate unit that can be fitted to any bike.
The device's complex measuring system can be split into six categories - aerodynamics, environment, the bike, rider biomechanics, rider physiology and traditional metrics such as speed, cadence and power. It's too much to get your head around all at once on the bike and even post-ride for most of us, but Argon 18 say they have two platforms for users to analyse their data - one for those who want the basics and another more complex programme for pure data geeks. You can customise your GPS to have metrics on your screen, (for example your CDA) and as Graveline explains, it's as easy to interpret as watts.
Notio Konect has embedded bluetooth so will sync with most bluetooth-enabled devices. It connects directly to a computer via usb, and data can be shared on third party platforms.
We and Argon 18 still don't know how much it will cost, but they say there's huge demand and will aim for a gradual release between the end of the year and early 2018.
After cobbling together a few hundred quid during his student days off the back of a hard winter selling hats (long story), Jack bought his first road bike at the age of 20 and has been hooked ever since. He joined road.cc in 2017, having previously worked for 220 Triathlon magazine. Jack's preferred events are time trials, sportives, triathlons and pogo sticking (the latter being another long story), and on Sunday afternoons he can often be found on an M5 service station indulging in his favourite post-race meal of 20 chicken nuggets, a sausage roll, caramel shortbread and a large strawberry milkshake.