I just bought a new Specialized helmet and read on the package about the ANGi sensor that calls home if you have a crash. Seems like a good idea, in principle, but has anyone got any experience of using it in the real (muddy) world?
I got one as a gift from my old LBS when we made a big family move (as an aside, you know things have gone to far when your LBS owner is a floods of tears when you leave… Oops!).
My experience was that it registered a crash pretty well, and then my phone would start howling at me as it gives a few-second warning before it starts calling your wife, ambulance service, the police, the UN Security Council, MSF etc etc.
Unfortunately it also thought I’d crashed every time i landed a drop like a sack of tattles.
There was also weirdness with it only working (or ‘on’) when you connected it to the Specialized app, which you then had to use to track your ride. Not sure this is still the case, but it felt a lot like nothing to do with my safety, and everything to do with Specilized harvesting data. There was general faff with shoogling helmet to wake it up, connect to phone etc.
Used it a few times, though ‘huh, could be useful’ then got annoyed with the faff and never used it once the battery ran out (which didn’t take very long.
HTH.
Yeah - thanks - I sort of suspected that the faff factor could be significant!
Interested to hear that, I wondered if it was like my edge explore that would have contacted my missus multiple times on a trip to the Surrey Hills, and my Venu that had a fit on every stage of Ard Rock! 🤣
I'd use it if I didn't also need to track the ride. I also ride in areas with no phone reception at times. All of this means it munches through battery.
Great idea but flawed.
I bought a new Specialized helmet last year and the bloke in the shop said they go off all the time.
The most common cause was riders dropping their helmet onto chair in the cafe
I've used one for over 2 years the products works as I've had an off that required me going to a+e so the wife new what was going on and phoned me other smaller offs I can just cancel the alert before it messages. On android the app side of things it has improved over the time I've had it and I rarely get false alerts it generally get a false alert if my lid has hit a tree branch where I haven't ducked enough.
My emergency contacts (partner & daughter) were not interested in getting notifications 😁, so I quit using it
I'm using one on the road bike helmet.
No real crashes yet to confirm it got me out of bother.
As above you DO have to link it and start ride logging on the Specialized 'ride' app.
Not that much faff really.
Just have to make sure the app is set to work in background mode (Android upgrades sometimes revert that to battery saver mode 😡).
Needs a phone signal to alert people. But as its via text and email, the connection only has to be brief, not t
Needing the connection quality needed for speech. Middle if the Sahara, you're ****ed. Middle of Derbyshire, a fighting chance of success.
Helps give Mrs some comfort when I go out on my own. And she can see my last known position as the email to say I've started a ride has a link to a bread crumb track on a map.
So if AWOL and no signal there's still a way of roughly seeing where I've been etc and make an educated guess where I may be in a ditch unconscious 3 hours late.
Garmin live track and Garmin accident alert (can't remember the proper name) may well give the same function