Yet another GPS running watch

opus

Leikr: The new Danish designed GPS sports watch

Krusty_Clown

Looks good. Hopefully they can improve on the 6 hour battery life.

TFBubendorfer

Coloured maps are a very nice feature but not exactly essential.
If that's their main selling point then I wouldn't get too excited.

Krusty_Clown

TFBubendorfer wrote: »

Coloured maps are a very nice feature but not exactly essential.
If that's their main selling point then I wouldn't get too excited.

Thast's only one of the selling points. For me, the main selling point is that it has Wifi, Bluetooth USB and ANT+ support and a large clear display that will feature greater than the more traditional four data fields. It also features support for OSM maps, which would be great heading out on some of the unfamiliar Wicklow trails, or running in foreign cities. It's also a lot less bulky that more traditional equivalent products, though the screen looks substantially larger. I'm interested (but not interested enough to join the kickstart project).

Of course the Motorolla GPS watch supported some of the above features. It just doesn't pull off the job of being an workout watch very well and suffered from a similar battery life.

seamus

Coloured maps are a bit of a gimmick - too much detail to be looking at while running. Simpler maps showing major landmarks and less detail would be more suitable, though the coloured maps would be great for walkers and hikers, and cycling to a lesser extent, so maybe that's the point - to make a device that's good for all disciplines.

Krusty_Clown

seamus wrote: »

Coloured maps are a bit of a gimmick - too much detail to be looking at while running. Simpler maps showing major landmarks and less detail would be more suitable, though the coloured maps would be great for walkers and hikers, and cycling to a lesser extent, so maybe that's the point - to make a device that's good for all disciplines.

They are using OSM maps, so little point in customizing them. I assume that they will have to provide a downloader, so that a person can pull the OSM maps specific to their region or area of travel, so they could potentially allow the user to specify which layers they wanted. So you could potentially download: Colour/Black and white/contour maps/City features/MTB trails etc. The mapping is all seperate from the watch though. The watch will presumably render whatever it is given.

PaulieC

this is like the Motorola (minus the music), but it is so much more stylish. Typical European vs USA styling really. If it had a good six hours battery life, that would do for me and I would love the WiFi connectivity where I wouldn't need to connect either through a USB or and Ant+ to upload. Of course, a huge part of owning and using a Garmin is Garmin Connect. I can't see LeikR having such an infrastructure, at least in the immediate term, so it would have to be compatible with either GC or some other popular service like Runkeeper

spurscormac

cambo_gueno wrote: »

Of course, a huge part of owning and using a Garmin is Garmin Connect. I can't see LeikR having such an infrastructure, at least in the immediate term, so it would have to be compatible with either GC or some other popular service like Runkeeper

Leikr wrote:

Currently we are targeting Endomondo as our first on-line sport community. We are also planning to make the training data available for export in .tcx format.

Not sure if tcx is garmin connect compatible as I don't use it, but assuming it's a standard format.

Krusty_Clown

spurscormac wrote: »

Not sure if tcx is garmin connect compatible as I don't use it, but assuming it's a standard format.

Yep, TCX is an open format (XML) devised by Garmin and is Garmin Connect compatible (as well as Mapmyrun etc.).

PaulieC

I think we should do a boards contribution. These would be much cooler than blue singlets

Krusty_Clown

The one thing that bothered me about the whole project was that there was no mention of creating your own workouts; all mention of workouts was in relation to the user 'stating their level of fitness and goals' and the Leikr team of coaches would recommend specific workouts. Hopefully that's not the case, as it sounds a little like a subscription model. Posted a question to that effect.

Krusty_Clown

They weren't long responding:

yes we have an editor on the web page to build custom workouts. for each step you can choose a duration parameter (time, distance, calories) and a target parameter ( pace, speed, heart rate).
The workouts can then be transferred to the watch through Wi-Fi by pressing two keys simultaneously on the device.
The watch will vibrate every time you complete a step and then show the next step you need to take.

spurscormac

I wonder will their custom workouts deal with interval sessions, I would assume that given they're trying to create the ultimate gps watch that it would have to cope with that.

b.harte

I think this might be a bit of a dark horse.
The wifi / bluetooth etc is great, no user agents or ant+ sticks cables etc is a big selling point for me.
I use Linux on my laptop and have to run winXP in virtual box just to upload my data to garmin.
The open streetmap use is okay, but it really depends on how much user content is put up for routes etc, but the same can be said for any other platform/device.
The coloured maps, I can see some advantages to this for off road stuff, a watercourse would stand out so could be a handy navigational aid, but I agree it is a bit gimmicky.
The battery life is rubbish, this is the biggest disappointment, however if the mirco usb connection is located well it could allow charging from an external source, thereby extending the range.
**EDIT** Just noticed on one of the product images that there is no external micro usb conection, just the usual contact pins. looks like extending the life may not be possible.**
I think the most exciting thing is the use of linux on the device, if it is an open device there is a massive community of developers that will knock out a range of front-ends to make the watch as customisable as you need.
I'm not 100% on the appeal of so much information on a single screen, it's sort of like the other thread on the garmin debate, how much is enough/too much.
So for me I'll be sticking with my 310xt for a while.
It's nice to see a bit of interest from new players into the market, might encourage the existing manufactures to up their game.

average_runner

b.harte wrote: »

I think this might be a bit of a dark horse.
The wifi / bluetooth etc is great, no user agents or ant+ sticks cables etc is a big selling point for me.
I use Linux on my laptop and have to run winXP in virtual box just to upload my data to garmin.
The open streetmap use is okay, but it really depends on how much user content is put up for routes etc, but the same can be said for any other platform/device.
The coloured maps, I can see some advantages to this for off road stuff, a watercourse would stand out so could be a handy navigational aid, but I agree it is a bit gimmicky.
The battery life is rubbish, this is the biggest disappointment, however if the mirco usb connection is located well it could allow charging from an external source, thereby extending the range.
[COLOR="Blue"]**EDIT** Just noticed on one of the product images that there is no external micro usb conection, just the usual contact pins. looks like extending the life may not be possible.**[/COLOR]
I think the most exciting thing is the use of linux on the device, if it is an open device there is a massive community of developers that will knock out a range of front-ends to make the watch as customisable as you need.
I'm not 100% on the appeal of so much information on a single screen, it's sort of like the other thread on the garmin debate, how much is enough/too much.
So for me I'll be sticking with my 310xt for a while.
It's nice to see a bit of interest from new players into the market, might encourage the existing manufactures to up their game.

It looks very bulky .

spurscormac

DC Rainmaker has a blog entry about this from meeting the folks behind it at CES 2013, interesting...

TFBubendorfer

24 hours GPS time? Now we're talking! (as long as it's not one GPS update per minute again ...)

TFBubendorfer

average_runner wrote: »

It looks very bulky .

Similar in size to the 310xt, actually.

Krusty_Clown

TFBubendorfer wrote: »

24 hours GPS time? Now we're talking! (as long as it's not one GPS update per minute again ...)

It is. Similar to the Motoactv, it's based on reduced GPS satellite reads (which is not the same as smart-recording on Garmins, which still performs the same number of reads, it just records less data points).

TFBubendorfer

Krusty_Clown wrote: »

It is. Similar to the Motoactv, it's based on reduced GPS satellite reads (which is not the same as smart-recording on Garmins, which still performs the same number of reads, it just records less data points).

I've read that, but if the interval between GPS satellite reads is 5 or 10 seconds, I'd still be happy with that. Any longer than that and the accuracy completely goes out of the window, though.