BikeOtterWhy I built BikeOtter
The official companion apps always felt like an afterthought to me. I had a list of things I wanted on my own rides, and nobody was building them, so I did.
The app next to the bike computer
A bike computer really is two products: the unit on your bars, and the app on your phone. The unit is usually great. The app is how routes get onto it, how rides come off it, and how your family knows where you are. You use it before and after every ride.
And that app always felt like an afterthought to me. Routes went through a cloud and arrived without the stops I had added. Live tracking showed where I was, but not when I'd be home. Group rides only existed on Garmin, and only if everybody rode a Garmin. Nothing was completely broken, but a lot of it was worse than it needed to be.
I build apps for a living and I ride as much as I can. At some point I stopped waiting.
What I wanted
It started as a short list of things I wanted for my own rides. All of them are in the app now.
Water on the route
This one started it. On a long summer ride the question that decides your day isn't the next turn, it's where you'll get water next. I wanted fountains, cafés and bakeries marked on the route itself, on the head unit's map, before I leave. Not in some app I have to stop and unlock.
BikeOtter finds them along your route, you pick the ones you want, and they go to the unit together with the route over Bluetooth. They show up there as real stops. And if your bottles are empty earlier than planned, you can just say "send me to the nearest water".
Live tracking with an arrival time
Knowing where someone is is nice. But what people at home actually ask is when you'll be back. The BikeOtter live link shows you on a map with an arrival estimate that knows about the climbs still ahead. Whoever follows you can also send a message straight to your head unit's screen.
Group rides, no matter what everybody rides
My friends don't all ride the same bike computer. A group ride in BikeOtter is one link: everybody joins from their phone, and one page shows the whole group on a map, including the gaps between riders along the route. On an ELEMNT you also see the others on the unit's own map. Garmin Edge support is newer and still experimental, but a Garmin's position already shows up on the same live map. Mixed groups are where this is going.
The pause I forgot
Everybody has done this: pause to grab a drink, forget about it, ride on, and an hour of your ride is missing. The unit doesn't say a word. BikeOtter watches your progress along the route while the unit is paused, and after a couple of hundred metres of actual riding it shows a message on the head unit. Because it looks at progress on the route and not at speed, it stays quiet when you paused on purpose and are sitting on a train.
Warnings I can hear
A radar light only helps if you actually look at it. BikeOtter connects to a Garmin Varia or Bryton Gardia radar and plays a rising tone in your headphones when a car comes up behind you. Same for going off route: once you're off the course for a bit, you hear it, instead of having to look down at the right moment.
Weather before I leave
Not the weather at home. The weather where I'll be, at the time I'll be there. BikeOtter puts the forecast along the route at your pace, warns about rain, wind and storms ahead, and turns that into a short "before you ride": what to wear, what to bring, and which tyre pressure fits the surface.
What else it does by now
Once the basics worked, the list kept growing. First from my own rides, then from other riders. Some of what's in the app today:
- Route planning on the phone, with the surface (paved, gravel, rough) on the route before you ride it
- Sending routes to the ELEMNT over Bluetooth, no cloud and no Wi-Fi needed
- Getting rides off the device: download the file, upload to Strava automatically, or turn a ride into a route
- Rules: your own messages on the head unit when something happens, like rain ahead, a steep climb, a heart rate zone or time for sunscreen
- Offline maps for a route and its stops, and a way back to the route when you take a detour without signal
- Voice commands, address search, and six languages
Everything is in the feature book, with screenshots.
It's live, and I'm listening
BikeOtter is a real app on the App Store and Google Play, used on real rides every day, and it changes every week. A lot of the list above started with someone saying "it would be great if…".
So if you're missing something on your rides, put it on the wishlist. You can also vote for what other riders asked for and see what I'm working on right now.
Happy riding!
Finish
builds BikeOtter. Want something on your rides? Put it on the wishlist, or read the other posts.