new Hammerhead Karoo 2 – Leaks and first thoughts
Today’s leak is from none other than Mr Lance Armstrong. Love him or loathe him, he’s got a Hammerhead Karoo 2 and you haven’t. Neither have I for that matter. I’m not quite sure what he’s done to deserve one (actually I am, but that’s another story entirely).
The leak has also been confirmed by Hammerhead as follows
“Karoo 2 will be the ultimate high-performance head unit, fit for champions. We’re creating a device fully designed to perform at the highest levels of the sport, from both a hardware and software perspective.” – Nick Pelletier, Head of Product
Plus I knew about it a while ago, so. I’ll confirm it as well 😉 (hinted at here earlier) I’ve not got too much I can share with you at this stage but I asked the obvious question and the answer was ‘Yes’. Longstanding Hammerhead critics will probably guess the question.
The next obvious answer comes from the following image which either shows a much smaller device or a man with an infeasibly large hand. If you think Wahoo Elemnt BOLT or Edge 820 sizes then that will likely be right (IDK). The original Hammerhead is a large bikenav.
I’m sure that Hammerhead will be committed to developing and supporting the existing Android-based Hammerhead Karoo firmware
This should link to the store when one is available for pre-order (ie not yet, don’t click it)
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I thought the question we were all guessing is does it have a speaker/buzzer in it? Hard to use a nav computer on a bike ride that has no way to tell you the next turn coming up if you aren’t looking at the screen
(Welcome back Eli)
I have heard that question a few times, yes
there’s also the issues of audio support for Varia usage. My solution with Karoo didn’t need me to do anything as I generally wear a 945 which beeps for the Varia alerts. My current karoo issue (from today) was that the bloomin’ thing popped out of my polar stem mount TWICE …i’ll blame the mount. Luckily I used a tether to the handlebars
but they say the release is this year but when do we talk about weeks or months?????
my understanding is that the karoo is sold out. so they will want to start selling karoo2 asap.
His company has invested in Hammerhead, that’s how.
Yes that’s right. He made a shed load from investing in Uber and has invested in a ring company and a few others and, now, Hammerhead: => https://nextventures.com/investments (page down)
Good to know about the obvious question.
I hope they also have the right answer to the slightly less obvious question, BTLE tethered uplink instead of SIM. Namely building on top on android Wear OS instead of phone Android which is only good as a Bluetooth host, or at least taking a very close look at how BT client is implemented in Wear OS and porting that.
Because that, building on Wear instead of phone, is how I think Wahoo got their superior to Garmin, rock-solid, made-by-Google-and-the-Linux-community phone uplink connection. My guess is Wahoo hardly lifted a finger for that, they are smart people.
that is interesting.
tethered btle (especially android) and (e)SIM both present either commercial, cost and/or tech challenges. I would like to learn more about the details of what you are saying there. please either contact me via in**@th*********.com or continue here and others might chip in.
FWIW: the wahoo elemnt app on my iOS loads and last for a minute before entirely crashing. wahoo are certainly not foolproof.
wearos – my opinion on the links of wearos watches to smartphones is that they simply seem to have a more robust and reliable connection that other ble or bt connections. I just can’t understand my experience.
I don’t remember exactly where I picked that up, chances are that it was in a discussion about why the Sigma Rox12 also doesn’t have BT uplink unlike the older and cheaper Rox11 (12 is an Android Linux device like the Karoo, whereas 11 was a more conventional embedded thing). A very superficial reason stock Android would be incapable keeping a background connection to your phone is that they are set up to cycle MAC addresses (as a tracking countermeasure, spearheaded by Apple), which would require re-pairing on every boot. Of course this cannot be more than a minor configuration that’d be easy enough to change for the device maker, but it illustrates how sick Android is simply not made to be anything other than the central hub node in a Bluetooth network.
Speaking of conventional embedded devices that support being a Bluetooth slave, IPH 03877 has hit the FCC. Still in short term confidentiality, but the E-label info confirms the “plus”. Not sure how the base date for 45 days of short term is exactly defined. No later than June 11th I suppose.
yes i’d seen that one briefly, thank you – I do miss them. it’s almost certainly the 130 plus and/or 1030 plus tho
there is also another recent one which looks like an advanced watch. probably 745 but others say 655 and 955/lte. my normal sources are all messed up this year.
The e-label info contains a manual URL (still 404ing of course) that spells out the product name in all its double-zero glory
https://mobile.twitter.com/FCCIDio/status/1254838507698155520/photo/1
The 130p seems to be IPH-03970 (partially public since about four weeks earlier, but with 60 days short term confidentiality)
Some images leaked!
another
next
thank you Peter
When will they listen to their customers and include one of the most basic of fitness computer fuctions – recording calories. They are one of the only manufatures I know of in this price range that does not include this in their unit.
If you want calories on the Karoo you have to spend another $500+ and buy a separate power meter. But they dont make that clear in there marketing material.
you would have to calculate from either power or hr, right?
whose calorie calculations would you trust. (I looked at a 5-hour ride recently with 3 devices and there was 1000 calories difference from the highest to the lowest). I might look more at calories as normally i don’t, and i appreciate it’s important to a number of people.