SRAM doing wireless?

[kuoirad]

http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/sram-wireless-group-spotted-at-the-tour-down-under

*watches to see if BK's head explodes...*

 

[Boeing]

can't wait to try it.

 

[Moose McKnuckles]

I still prefer wired keyboards and mice.

Looks like I may not be a candidate for Sram wireless.

 

[42x16ss]

There's a couple of AG2R riders testing it at the TDU. Odds are Pozzovivo will be engulfed in a fireball sprinting up Old Wilunga Hill

 

[winkybiker]

This is the antenna they've settled on for each shift lever. It was the only option that would distract from the hideous hydraulic brake hoods.

 

[King Boonen]

There's a couple of AG2R riders testing it at the TDU. Odds are Pozzovivo will be engulfed in a fireball sprinting up Old Wilunga Hill

It's been in cyclocross for 2 years I think and was on the road at the Tour of Calfornia last year.

Are Sram actually testing something?!?!?!?!!?

 

[richwagmn]

Rumor is that FSA is getting into the drivetrain market too with a wireless 11 speed group.

http://velonews.competitor.com/2014...ronic-drivetrain-sponsor-rumor-roundup_353443

 

[42x16ss]

Rumor is that FSA is getting into the drivetrain market too with a wireless 11 speed group.

http://velonews.competitor.com/2014...ronic-drivetrain-sponsor-rumor-roundup_353443

Yep. The word is that Saxo will be switching over to it once it is ready.

 

[Bustedknuckle]

It's been in cyclocross for 2 years I think and was on the road at the Tour of California last year.

Are Sram actually testing something?!?!?!?!!?

Pretty amazing. I guess they have figured out it's cheaper to actually test rather than sell, recall, replace, recall, replace.

Wonky shifting function tho. Both levers together to move the chain around the chainrings. RH lever for up shifts(lower/easier) gear, left lever for harder gears.

4 batteries, small ones, that probably need charging often(small) and I wonder if one fails, like in a shifter, does the whole gig stop.

 

[King Boonen]

Pretty amazing. I guess they have figured out it's cheaper to actually test rather than sell, recall, replace, recall, replace.

Wonky shifting function tho. Both levers together to move the chain around the chainrings. RH lever for up shifts(lower/easier) gear, left lever for harder gears.

4 batteries, small ones, that probably need charging often(small) and I wonder if one fails, like in a shifter, does the whole gig stop.

It's crazy, maybe it's finally twigged!

The shifting does seem very weird, I was wondering how accurate you have to be with the double push. I'm guessing Shimano or Campag have the patents for most other options, hence the double lever push.

The batteries are another issue yes, wireless signals eat power...

 

[winkybiker]

It's crazy, maybe it's finally twigged!

The shifting does seem very weird, I was wondering how accurate you have to be with the double push. I'm guessing Shimano or Campag have the patents for most other options, hence the double lever push.

The batteries are another issue yes, wireless signals eat power...

The double push is just dumb. Using exactly the same action for up-shifts and downshifts just doesn't make sense. Riding along in your small ring, but thinking that you are in your big ring (if this doesn't happen to you, well, great), you go to shift down for a sharp ramp. You're in for a big surprise when your bike shifts to a higher gear at exactly the wrong time. I predict that people will hate it.

 

[veganrob]

Can you say, "low-normal"?

 

[HIF I A]

The double push is just dumb. Using exactly the same action for up-shifts and downshifts just doesn't make sense. Riding along in your small ring, but thinking that you are in your big ring (if this doesn't happen to you, well, great), you go to shift down for a sharp ramp. You're in for a big surprise when your bike shifts to a higher gear at exactly the wrong time. I predict that people will hate it.

Doesn't happen to me. I mean, you only have two rings, how do you not know which one you're riding? And if you have no idea and a steep ramp is is coming up, it'd take about half a second to have a glance at your crankset...
I bet the shifting will work just fine (ofc one would need some time to get used to it).

The batteries aren't an issue, the ones in the levers will last forever and the other two can be taken off which isn't more complicated than getting your bike close to a plug.

Saxo and Etixx are switching to FSA is already confirmed.

 

[Bustedknuckle]

Doesn't happen to me. I mean, you only have two rings, how do you not know which one you're riding? And if you have no idea and a steep ramp is is coming up, it'd take about half a second to have a glance at your crankset...
I bet the shifting will work just fine (ofc one would need some time to get used to it).

The batteries aren't an issue, the ones in the levers will last forever and the other two can be taken off which isn't more complicated than getting your bike close to a plug.

Saxo and Etixx are switching to FSA is already confirmed.

I'll take that bet, that saxo and etixx won't have the fsa stuff by TdF.

the shifting(spam) will work great, up until the first recall.

 

[King Boonen]

The batteries aren't an issue, the ones in the levers will last forever and the other two can be taken off which isn't more complicated than getting your bike close to a plug.

That is exactly the problem with it. Yet more things to remember to take off the bike and charge and wireless is energy intensive, I wouldn't be surprised if we're talking about charging every couple of weeks or more. then you need to remember to take them with you, it's not like they are in the seat post so are easy to remember. Wireless offers no benefits over wired, just extra hassle.


As for the shifting, it's very silly to have the same movement to do two different things. Very silly.

 

[HIF I A]

I'll take that bet, that saxo and etixx won't have the fsa stuff by TdF.

the shifting(spam) will work great, up until the first recall.

Never said by the Tour, although that's the offical word.

That is exactly the problem with it. Yet more things to remember to take off the bike and charge and wireless is energy intensive, I wouldn't be surprised if we're talking about charging every couple of weeks or more. then you need to remember to take them with you, it's not like they are in the seat post so are easy to remember. Wireless offers no benefits over wired, just extra hassle.


As for the shifting, it's very silly to have the same movement to do two different things. Very silly.

Kinda useless to discuss with Sram-hater-trolls like you. Wireless eats so little energy it'll barely make a notable difference if you use a wireless or wired transmission.
You won't have to "remember" to charge the batteries, you just charge them whenever the control light says so. Can't be too hard.

Benefits of wireless are obvious, less wires, ugly control box gone, less hassle to install. Hard to see them with Japanese or Italian glasses, though.

If you don't like electronic shifting, there are plenty of great mechanical groupsets. But i guess someone who describes charing batteries as a hassle doesn't ride a mechanical groupset either because chainging derailleur cables is way more complicated. My guess: you're riding a fixie.

 

[King Boonen]

Kinda useless to discuss with Sram-hater-trolls like you. Wireless eats so little energy it'll barely make a notable difference if you use a wireless or wired transmission.
You won't have to "remember" to charge the batteries, you just charge them whenever the control light says so. Can't be too hard.

Benefits of wireless are obvious, less wires, ugly control box gone, less hassle to install. Hard to see them with Japanese or Italian glasses, though.

If you don't like electronic shifting, there are plenty of great mechanical groupsets. But i guess someone who describes charing batteries as a hassle doesn't ride a mechanical groupset either because chainging derailleur cables is way more complicated. My guess: you're riding a fixie.

Sram hater troll? Not at all. I have ridden Rockshox forks, Truvativ parts, Sram MTB groupsets and never had a problem with them. The only reason I have Shimano on the MTB is because I prefer the 2-way release lever, otherwise I'd happily have either, the pull lever is more comfortable on the Sram levers. As far as I'm aware Zipp wheels are meant to be very good and apparently they have finally sorted out their MTB brakes with the Guides (although I see no reason for anything more than Deore these days, even on DH bikes for us fun riders). Sram can obviously make a perfectly decent groupset, the MTB stuff proves it, but they have failed to do so on their high-end road groups.

The fact is Sram have produced some junk on the road with numerous, well-documented problems to the point that the majority of the WT teams who used them have dropped their groupsets and sponsored riders and team owners have complained about their products to the media. It doesn't get any worse than that for a company. Wireless requires constant power as it cannot drop the signal, if it did, no switching. This is not the same with wired systems that have a dedicated signal line and so only require the power when switching. I would not be surprised at all if the batteries required charging every couple of weeks and yes, it is a hassle. A seat post battery is unlikely to be forgotten, small non-descript batteries are. If you say you've never been out on a ride and forgotten something you're lying, this just means you now have the possibility to forget something which means you will be totally unable to ride your bike.

I am perfectly happy to admit I'm wrong if it turns out I am, I wouldn't expect it though...

I have no problem with electronic shifting, the bikes I've tried with it have been awesome, but I don't see it as necessary for the riding I do so I don't have it. 10 speed 105 does everything I need so I'll stick with that, I can also pretty much guarantee I can at least get a gear I can ride in whatever happens to it, which is important to those of us who do long rides on our own.


Of course, there's no point discussing it with a Sramcolyte, you're probably sat there in your Rapha t-shirt, desperate to hand over as much money as Sram care to charge for whatever they release. How long was it until you had to return your failed hydraulic disc brakes?

 

[HIF I A]

I admit that i've been a bit harsh, but each and every Sram thread in the internet is spammed with sentences like "just wait for the recall", "wireless is a hassle", "who needs this" etc. As someone who is actually interested in the product it's a pain in the a** to filter out the few posts in which something actually useful is written and pros as well as cons are discussed. My previous post belongs in the category "useless" as well, i won't deny that.

About Sram's history: Yes, they've released a lot of barely tested, rushed products which backfired. All the recalls mean they just can't afford sponsoring as many WT teams as they've used to.
But it's obvious that Sram is putting in a lot more testing miles than they've done with previous new groupsets, so i'd at least wait for a failured before slamming an unreleased product.
I don't spam Shimano threads with posts about broken chains, cable-destroying STIs, melting dics and their poor dealing with those problems either.

You seem to hang on to a battery "problem" that doesn't exist. I've only ridden the Di2 briefly but i think it's close to impossible to overlook a battery that needs charging and there's no way that Sram will make it difficult to check.
Whether charging batteries is required a hassle or not is rather personal, i just doubt that it'd take more time than dealing with derailleur cables does, i'd bet on it being less time consuming. Belonging to the "smartphone-generation", charging devices is part of my daily routine anyways so i wouldn't mind two more batteries each month.
But i also know a lot of people who like to work on their bikes and do not see changing/shortening etc. of cables as a hassle while dealing with electronic devices is just annoying to them.

FYI, i'm just a poor student riding Shimano Ultegra, not planning to switch to an electronic groupset anytime soon. I'm just interested in bike tech.

 

[winkybiker]

Doesn't happen to me. I mean, you only have two rings, how do you not know which one you're riding? And if you have no idea and a steep ramp is is coming up, it'd take about half a second to have a glance at your crankset...
I bet the shifting will work just fine (ofc one would need some time to get used to it).

Here's how it would happen to me. I'll be riding along on terrain that starts steep, but that is now getting easier, and I'll shift up a few times while I'm on the small ring. Eventually it is flat. I'm now pretty cross chained using a fairly small cog at the back. If I thought about it, or could be bothered, I might do a double shift (front and back) to straighten things out. I often do - but not always. This time I don't. After a while, after thinking about many other things, I simply assume that because I am going reasonably fast on flat terrain, I would be in the big ring. I get to a sharp hill, "double tap" and find myself in nearly my highest gear as I hit a steep incline. Nice.

Yes, you could get used to it, but one identical action that can result two different and opposite outcomes depending on a pre-condition, knowledge of which requires either memory or deliberate observation is what we would call an "error enforcing system". There must be a better way to do it.

Stupid SRAM. Yes, I hate them. For a variety of reasons (summarized as hype over substance), but mostly for the unforgivably ugly hydraulic road levers.

 

[King Boonen]

*removed for brevity*

No worries, I don't take offence easily and I know these discussions can be pretty one sided, that's why I outlined why I'm not a Sram hater as such.

In my opinion Sram get what they deserve on the road, purely for what they have done in the past. I think it's right to be very skeptical that a company who can't get their top-end mechanical groupsets and hydraulic brakes (including MTB until recently) to work properly are venturing into something that could have a lot of problems.

The problem I have with the batteries is that they will have to be a) small and b) detachable. A seat post battery is almost impossible to forget because you just leave it in the post. Grab your bike and it's instantly obvious you've forgotten something. With small batteries this isn't always the case. I've been in a rush before and forgotten a camera battery I was charging. It's massively annoying and while it might only be a problem for a very small percentage of the time it basically leaves you with an unrideable bike. I'm only 31, I'm used to charging my phone, helmet cam etc. but more batteries is not something I really want to have to deal with unless there is a drastic increase in performance, and I can't see that being the case. Maybe it's just a problem for people like me, but we'll only know when it's released to the general public, not just guys with mechanics taking care of everything (and this is where the problems with Sram are always found. It works fine if you have someone fettling it every day).

It would be interesting to know if they are using bluetooth or wi-fi as they don't actually say. Typically bluetooth uses less power as it has a smaller broadcast range. They may have tuned the wi-fi to a smaller range but I'd think that's unlikely as I'm guessing they are just buying OEM chips, we'll have to wait and see. And yes, I build all my own bikes and do my own maintenance, and enjoy it!, so taking that away from me is not good I suppose if something is wrong in a race you could just drop back to the car and the mechanic could log in to your groupset and see what's going on. Does that mean no more sticky bottles for Sram users?!

The earlier point about not running wires is also not that relevant. Yes, It'll take slightly less time to set up initially, but you're always going to have to run either a cable or a hose through the frame to the rear brake, so running a couple of cables as well will make very little difference to frame design and results in a much more reliable set-up.


If it works well, brilliant, innovation and competition is always good. I sincerely want Sram to make good groupsets, I really do!


Oh, I also don't believe for a second that Sram can't afford to sponsor several WT/Pro-Conti teams. Several of them teams who have dropped them have publicly complained about their equipment and I think they have just had enough. The worst thing for Sram is to drop out of the WT, component manufacturers need that exposure.

 

[Bustedknuckle]

Never said by the Tour, although that's the offical word.




Kinda useless to discuss with Sram-hater-trolls like you. Wireless eats so little energy it'll barely make a notable difference if you use a wireless or wired transmission.
You won't have to "remember" to charge the batteries, you just charge them whenever the control light says so. Can't be too hard.

Benefits of wireless are obvious, less wires, ugly control box gone, less hassle to install. Hard to see them with Japanese or Italian glasses, though.

If you don't like electronic shifting, there are plenty of great mechanical groupsets. But i guess someone who describes charing batteries as a hassle doesn't ride a mechanical groupset either because chainging derailleur cables is way more complicated. My guess: you're riding a fixie.

Do we hate spam or fsa?..yes to both. Those of us 'in the trenches'(I owned a bike shop for 13 years) got to see what crap this stuff is.

Ugly control box? Ya mean that little wee thing under the stem? That's smaller than the big TV looking thing, also on the stem(garmin)?

My bike.

http://s148.photobucket.com/

Yup, Merckx MXLeader with EPS. AND big, version 1 battery. I built it almost a year ago, ride it nearly every day and have charged the battery twice(just about a week ago).

Is wireless easy to pt on a bike? Yes. Is it worth the extra problems? Not IMHO. I think they would be well served with hard wired ders and wireless shifters but with that, sram wouldn't have anything to recall.

BTW-where are all the spam hydraulic rim brakes? Hmmm..

 

[richwagmn]

I'll take that bet, that saxo and etixx won't have the fsa stuff by TdF.

the shifting(spam) will work great, up until the first recall.

No way in hell Contador would risk his season with a new system. Agree with BK, ain't gonna happen.

Besides, they made the switch to the Shimano from SRAM at the start of this year. I doubt the change was for a half season and I doubt FSA could offer anything that improves upon Shimano's DI2.

 

[winkybiker]

I nearly forgot the other thing that annoys me about SRAM. Way back when...

....MTB shifters went from top-mounted thumb shifters to Shimano's two-lever "Rapid Fire" system, SRAM had GripShift. A disadvantage of Rapid Fire (when compared to the thumbshifters) was that it was now not possible to tell from the position of the levers, what gear you were in (this is also true of STI on the road). They later added the little visual windows with little orange arrows (to this day I have never thought to look at them on my XT equiped 12-year old mountainbike). Even if you used the indicators, it still wasn't possible to tell what gear/chainring you were in without taking your eyes off the trail. SRAM had the perfect opportunity with GripShift to easily provide a tactile indicator and thus provide a real advantage over the Shimano set-up. They simply had to make the rotating bit tear-drop shaped or put some sort of nub/knob on it so that you could tell by feel what gear you were in. BUT THEY DIDN'T. A clear failure to understand what matters in real-world use of their products. Borne from lack of testing and listening to rider feedback? I wouldn't bet against it.

 

[kuoirad]

Oh man...I *hated* GripShift.

 

[King Boonen]

Gripshift was fine as long as you didn't actually want to use your mountain bike for mountain biking.