So, I had saved a route through Southern Black Hawk County which I talked about yesterday in my "Country Views" post. As I stated, that route starts right at my house and ends there.
I got on the ride, fired up the computer, found my route, and with one touch the Karoo 2 started the route. Once I moved it let me know that the route wasn't being recorded, and did I want that? One tap and it was on.
So, audible prompts, a map, and arrows guided me along the entire route. There was another page with more "normal" cycling information, like overall mileage, average speed, maximum speed, and time of day. However; it was largely useless due to the severity of the gravel this time which made reading anything impossible. The unit was just vibrating far too much to safely see it.
That's not the fault of the Karoo 2, but it does bring up the need to be able to increase font size and eliminate all but the two or three things you really need to see. Maybe that's in a deeper editing feature, I don't know at this point.
And that brings up another fault I find with Hammerhead. There is no place to go to look things up at a glance, and I'd like that to be an actual manual you could take out in the field with you. I'm not going to try to see a webpage in bright Sunlight on my iPhone to figure this deal out, especially so since getting into the dashboard has been a frustrating experience so far due to the password having to be entered more than once every time I've had to login up to this point. Just give me a paper manual and make it easy already.
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| Taken on a bike path, because the gravel was too rough! |
The display was easy to see, at least when it wasn't being rattled violently! But I had no issues with the route, the prompts, or any of that. Road names were called out correctly, and I was able to follow the route the entire distance with zero hiccups or fails.
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| Battery life is not very impressive. |
Okay, the very basics have been accomplished and this experience was 1000 times better than with the first unit. Now I will have to create a new route and see how much easier, or not, it is to do with the new unit.
Since I got what I wanted- so far- I am willing to invest in the time it will take to tweak out the unit to my liking. I will explore the other options for cycling, and I may start doing a deeper dive with this if all that goes smoothly.
I was not impressed with the battery life. I started out the ride on the half-charge the unit came with. At the time I started, it was at 43%. That was after all the rig-a-ma-roll with the set-up procedure which sucked some of the battery down.
You can see in the image above that I had 24% battery life left, but about four blocks from the house, which was shortly after the image was taken, the unit alerted me to a "low battery status". I'm not sure when that comes on. At 20% maybe? Dunno..... Again- it'd be great if I had an owner's manual to check on that at a glance.
I plugged in the Karoo 2 into my home computer to recharge it, and four hours later, it was at 81%. Sheesh! How long can it take? I guess longer than four hours, eh? But anyway, this thing eats through its battery pretty fast, seemingly, and it takes forever to charge it back up. I'll have to test this out on an all-day ride sometime to see if it will even make it that far. I imagine not using the turn-by-turn feature uses less battery life. We'll see...
So far, okay. No Bluetooth to my iPhone. Set-up was a bit frustrating. Battery life is so-so. GPS works. I'll see about other features later on. I may become more fond of it later on once I become more acquainted with how this thing works. One thing I do know- there had to be something amiss with the first one. It was defective for sure. This unit has- so far- been much better to interface with.
More soon.
9 comments:
I have the same complaint with Wahoo. Would it kill'em to offer a printed owner's manual? Come on Wahoo, kill a few trees and print one for us old fogeys who don't want to waste an hour trying to find the answer to a question on the internet.
It’s unlikely that your computer provides the amperage to quickly charge the unit. Did it not come with a usb charger?
@Unknown - Interesting point you bring up. First, Hammerhead set up, native to the device, does not tell you anything about charging. They don't even indicate that you should charge the device upon receipt of it, nor do they indicate by what manner that you should do this.
Upon further investigation, (looking at the Hammerhead site under "Charging Karoo 2"), the information seems to indicate that the device may or may not have a charging cord and that the following should be observed when it comes to charging: (Quoted from the site)
"Karoo 2 does not support charging over 5V. The maximum current flow is 2.5 Amps but only during 0-30% charging. Regular charging is around 1.25A so high amp or high voltage chargers could be dangerous or damage the product."
So, it would seem that 'quick charging' is not advisable. They go on to say that this may void the warranty. However, they do not have, nor advise what type of charging device is advisable, beyond the above named specification on amperage.
Again- something I feel should be addressed in an actual owner's manual. Quite disappointing when you stop to consider this facet, and others, of owning this device.
In both the present day and in the future, I think it's very unlikely that you will receive an extensive user manual for any electronic device that is capable of receiving "over-the-air" updates. The likelihood of such a manual remaining accurate for an extended period of time is very low. Charging limitations, however, are unlikely to change.
I use a Karoo 2 purely for navigation - I have no sensors, nor do I connect my phone to it. I see about 10% battery usage per hour, or a ten hour lifetime. Battery Save mode increases that, but I don't have a good feel for what the limit is when using it.
@Fear rothar - On manuals: Lezyne has downloadable PDF owner's manuals for different aspects of their GPS units, so I would beg to differ here that it is not feasible to provide that sort of support. Lezyne also does periodic updates as well, which are done when you are plugged into your computer, which you have to do with a Karoo 2 to recharge it anyway, (most likely place for folks to recharge devices without specific charging accessory plug-ins, which Hammerhead does not provide or support). Former Lezyne Super GPS user here.
Furthermore, battery life for Hammerhead is routinely criticized in reviews, and I think my experience shows why. I'll have one more post on this device where I address battery life in more detail and give an alternative that is far better.
@G-Ted,
Fair play to Lezeyne in that regard. On the other hand, name a smart-phone these days that comes with an extensive manual. The Karoo is an Android device - so essentially a phone without the phone, for what little that may be worth. :-)
I have no idea why you're having to enter a password multiple times to access the Hammerhead dashboard. I haven't experienced that. Using the Hammerhead Chrome plug-in, I just click on a button to import a route (when on a RideWithGPS page, for example) and I'm done, without going near the dashboard - you do have to enter your Hammerhead dashboard password into the plug-in the first time you use it, however. Regarding how-to articles, you don't access them via the dasboard, so you shouldn't have to enter any password to see them.
Regarding battery life, how bright do you have your screen set? From your photo, I'm guessing it's set pretty bright. If I'm correct, lowering that setting will only help.
P.S. I have a charging station set up where I come into the house and that's where outdoor devices get charged, so no device ever comes near my computer. ;-)
@Fear rothar - You might recall that in my first round of posts on the Karoo 2 I made reference to how easily I was able to navigate and figure out a new Motorola Android phone and how that wasn't how I experienced the Karoo 2.
The password thing seems to have rectified itself, but in the first several days of this take on the device it wasn't so. I don't mention this in my final take on the device. (Yes- already written up. Coming out Saturday)
I mentioned how GPS data saved previously was uploaded with no issue to this new Karoo 2.
I am running the brightness at "stock", out-of-the-box settings and in my images I am bringing up shadows to be lighter and treating the images with a bit of contrast so the data is more visible here. The raw images were almost unreadable as they came out of the camera.
In the field, I have to take off my eyewear to see the screen, so I don't think the brightness is the issue. Any dimmer and I would have greater difficulty reading the screen as it is.
@Fear rothar - Fair play. In our home our computers charge devices unless they came with their own charging devices, which many do. (Apple etc)
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