Help with timer settings

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• Norman Price Friday 18 Mar 2016 11:42:43

  The timer is great (brilliant actually!!!) - however some help with the settings would be really useful - maybe a table showing typical settings for different rider + bike weights? Or at least some help as to how you can do a trial on a hill to work out your own.

  I'm not sure what the rationale for the defaults is - were these based on actual rides? I calculated the Uphill 1m equivalent for me on a couple of local hills for a couple of rides and got figures of +16m, +18m, +20m and +26m, very different from your default of +8.20m! The scale is too short to allow +26m.

  I haven't checked downhills yet.

  I settled on +19m then tweaked the flat average speed until I got the time I actually took on a few rides - and the average obtained seemed pretty accurately what I would estimate for flat speeds (no wind). So I think the timer is capable of very good predictions - and very useful to work out how to do a hilly ride in a chosen time by looking at the time at various points and working out average speed to that point too.

  I am an average club road rider by the way.

• Nisse Son   Sunday 20 Mar 2016 15:04:01

  This ties in to: https://www.plotaroute.com/posts/1298/D/1 The setting has changed since then (thnx!) but not as much as needed.

  An extension on scales would be needed to reflect road cycling better. Bump the max of 20 meter to at least 30 meter and it will cover most needs for at least recreational weekend warriors. I have a few examples of my own rides, most falling into the 20+ range with the occasional bonk where I averaged 29. This shows the need of more than 20 meters as maximum, happy to share the data if you wish to see them.

  Though: As long as the hight-data is not as exact as needed when doing these calculations the feature is not really dependable anyway. (The ascent/descent-data can easily be 50% here, which of course skews the time-estimations quite heavily. See e.g. https://www.plotaroute.com/posts/104/D/1 ) 

  Please tell me if I can help, I like the service! :-)

   

• Norman Price Sunday 20 Mar 2016 17:38:10

  Thanks Olof - I wondered if I had made some error - nice to have the height adjustment figures confirmed. So we really do need an extension to the scale. I'd also like a (-) and (+) at the ends as in the flat speed - then I can settle on round figures easily.

  I think this system has amazing capabilities - though I wonder if Plotaroute's algorithm for height is accumulating errors somehow?

  Figures for a 60km ride I did yesterday:
  Plotaroute: 846mRidewithgps: 583m
  Garmin 800 as measured on ride (barometric): 628m

  However (using 27kph on flat - medium pace club ride, +19m hills: I pre-tuned these figures using data from previous rides) Plotaroute estimates 2h34min36s

  The actual ride took 2h33min55s

  That's amazingly accurate!!! It will be incredibly useful to plan club rides for the future.

  I'd conclude that even if Plotaroute over-estimates climbs, we can tune this out by using tested timer settings.

  I now have settings suitable for: solo gentle spin, solo standard, solo tough (or club ride medium). All use the +19m, but have different flat average speeds.

• Norman Price Sunday 20 Mar 2016 17:40:01

  A shame we can't edit posts: I tried Shift+Enter to close lines a bit... it should read as follows:

  Plotaroute: 846m

  Ridewithgps: 583m

• plotaroute admin   Sunday 20 Mar 2016 22:31:03

  Thanks for the feedback and suggestions - that's very helpful.  I'll have a look at increasing the timer setting ranges and maybe changing the defaults.

  I've answered the point about the differences in total ascent between plotaroute and other sources on another forum topic on this question. Basically every time we investigate this it turns out the GPS data was flawed (even with barametric altimeters) and other differences can be put down to different sampling intervals.  I'm afraid you can't really compare ascent figures from different sources.

  John

   

• Norman Price Monday 21 Mar 2016 08:46:51

  Thanks John - I take the point about sampling - I think it really isn't a problem as long as the site uses a consistent method. It is obviously really difficult to do this perfectly accurately and is bound to miss features that might make for hard work for a cyclist: imageing cycling over a continuous series of 1m humps every 10m for 1km - this is a 100m climb that can't feature.

  The range extension would be useful (and - & + buttons please too) - thanks.

• plotaroute admin   Monday 21 Mar 2016 14:23:24

  I'll see if we can change the timer ranges and defaults quite soon.  It sounds like the following settings for cycling are being suggested:
  
  

  Avg Flat Speed: Change default from 20 kph to 27 kph (current range 1-40 kph is OK)

  Uphill adjustment: Change default to +19m distance for each 1m of ascent (increase range to 0-30)

  Downhill adjustment: Leave default of -6.15m distance for each 1m of descent (increase range to 0-30)

  Steep downhill adjustment: Leave default of -4.1m distance for each 1m of steep descent (current range -10 to +10 is OK)

   

  If anyone has any views on these settings or can help by testing them out please post back here.

  Thanks,

  John

   

• Norman Price Monday 21 Mar 2016 15:27:00

  Thanks John

  I think 27kph is a bit fast for average flat - 25 kph would maybe suit more riders - tourers and mediocre rodies (like me)

  I like the +19 of course

  Descents don't normally account for a large % of a ride so I siuppose they are less important - I get a wide range of values (eg on a recent ride -2.5 to -5) so the -6.15 could be OK (why not -6.0?)

• plotaroute admin   Tuesday 22 Mar 2016 14:54:32

  The timer setting ranges have been extended now and the bike defaults adjusted.  We've also added the fine tune +/- buttons as well to the hill adjustment settings.

  You'll also probably notice a new link to the Timer feature we've added in the route planner, just under the distance counter.

  John

   

• Norman Price Tuesday 22 Mar 2016 15:50:39

  Thanks very much John - that's brilliant! It even seems pretty much OK for my Etape 2015 if I use +30. All users need to do now is find out what settings work for them for different styles of riding - then apply them accordingly. (hmmm - user presets? - save settings by name, select named preset from dropdown... maybe too complex for users)

  One minor thing - the new timer settings window doesn't appear in the View for this route: https://www.plotaroute.com/route/184952

  (although it is OK in the Edit window for this route)

  It's fine for my other routes.

  Great to have this in the Edit window - much easier to analyse what's happening.

  Norman