Currently doing the Everest challenge on Strava so spending many hours on the bike and need Strava running all the time to record my climbing. I have been nearly caught out a couple of time with my phone battery nearly being dead before the end of the ride.

Got me thinking as to whether there are any good ways to charge your phone whilst you ride? Anything that would say neatly fit in the steerer tube so I can run a small cable to my phone.

Plus

Sorted. 😉

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Garmin-Edge-200-Bike-Computer/dp/B005ZUB91E/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1433847335&sr=8-1&keywords=edge+200+garmin
Solve all your problems

cheap battery case. I got one for my iphone6 for about £10. more than doubles the battery life.

also, if you’re on iOS8, the latest version will do GPS logging in airplane mode which dramatically extends the life.

I just rubberband a piggyback battery to mine.
Mine’s an Anker Astro 6000mAh version, but you probably don’t need that much.
That manages to recharge my iPhone 5 fully 3 times.

The longest I’ve tried to run it constantly was 6 hours with the screen on running satnav.
For Strava, I reckon I’d get a 20hr ride on it.

also, if you’re on iOS8, the latest version will do GPS logging in airplane mode which dramatically extends the life.

Interesting, I didn’t know that had been fixed.

Interesting, I didn’t know that had been fixed.

only in the latest release.

they’ll probably remove it again in 9.

I’ve got an Anker one from Amazon, it triples battery life on my iPhone when running GPS, cost less that £20 but there were also cheaper/smaller ones.

Just out of curiosity- why don’t you use a basic Garmin? Cheap enough, waterproof and the battery is much better than any phone.

I have one of the Anker batteries, good quality and work really well.

However I do also have one of these which does the job waaaaaaaaaay better…. 😉

You’ll get the anker lipstick charger in a steerer tube or a pocket easily – would be easier if using a head doctor or bung rather than a SFN as you can remove them to leave it uninterrupted.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Anker-Generation-Lipstick-Sized-Portable-Technology/dp/B005QI1A8C/ref=sr_1_3?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1433848205&sr=1-3&keywords=anker

But yes, as Mike says get a garmin!

I do have a Garmin GPS watch sitting in a drawer somewhere but it needed charging everyday and always seemed to be out of juice when I needed it. Don’t really want to spend another £70 on a Garmin bike computer when my iPhone does everything I need especially with the Strava app.

Looks like a Anker power bank might be the way to go and maybe a session on the lathe to fashion something up to fit it in the steerer tube.

http://supernova-lights.com/en/products/the_plug.html

Well after bit of fettling on the lathe I came up with this as a solution. Power bank fits nicely in the steerer tube and best of all as I had to take out the expander plug there is only a net increase in weight of 18g. It’s all fully waterproof so now just need to keep a short cable in my saddle bag. Pretty pleased with the overall stealth look.

Very cool. And marketable.

+1 for the Anker battery. One thing with Garmins is that if you use a standard USB cable it will put the device in to PC mode so you can’t do it on the move. The solution is to buy or hack an OTG cable, basically it grounds one of the internal wires so that the Garmin can carry on working.

That looks great, well done!

Whitestone – That is interesting. I know you can get some cables that are setup to work just for charging and not data transfer. The aim is for them to charge the device quicker.

I started off with an Anker battery and it fitted well but I then found a waterproof power bank so I really can just fit and forget.

Nice work!

(Wouldn’t fit in a head tube, but EasyAcc ones are durable and tend to have a good mAh/£ ratio if anyone is looking for something similar).