We don’t always feature Kickstarter projects, but when we do, it’s because they’re interesting. Shredmate is unlike other bike computers because it’s designed specifically around measuring jumps and g-forces as you ride, showing you where you’re getting air and how well you’re landing.
They’ve spent the last year working on it, with a team of riders testing it out in a variety of locations, and a part of the reason for making it was to provide some mountain bike specific features that other computers lack. The Shredmate works with a sensor mounted on your fork, along with a smartphone app to display the data later. While it’ll display all the usual distance/time/speed etc. of a normal bike computer, the idea behind the sensor and the g-force data is that you can also train to have better jump technique and work toward making better, gentler landings.
They’re based in the UK, and pricing from their Kickstarter campaign will start at around £50, which if everything is on schedule should be live about now. You can check that over at the Shredmate website.
Here’s their full release:
“ShredMate is the first bike computer speed sensor developed purely for mountain biking. The small ShredMate sensor attaches to your forks and connects directly to your smartphone via Bluetooth low energy to track your ride on the ShredMate app. By combining a motion sensor and algorithms, ShredMate gives you exciting new information about your riding:
TRACKS AND MEASURES YOUR JUMPS- ShredMate locates, tracks and measures your jump air time – and landing g force. By training to reduce your landing g force, ShredMate makes you a smoother rider.
TRACKS G FORCE- ShredMate detects peak g forces – tight corners, g-outs (and even the odd crash!). ShredMate displays these g forces on the map.
DETECTS ROUGH TRAILS- ShredMate automatically detects when you’re riding a rough trail. ShredMate lets you view each trail separately, so that you can easily view detailed telemetry for the sections of your ride that matters the most.
EASILY SEE HOW FAST YOU RIDE, JUST LOOK AT THE MAP- ShredMate shows your route as a trace that changes colour depending on how fast you go. Red for Fast, Green for Slow.
Chris Irlam, ShredMate’s founder and key developer said “Most cycle computers are designed for riding on tarmac and give the same standard speed and distance info. We wanted to make something specifically for mountain bikers and give them some interesting data too. We love going out on trails and leaving the tarmac behind, it would be great if we could map where the jumps are, record what we did on them and measure what g-forces we felt.”
“A couple of years ago I was teaching myself how to jump on a mountain bike, but found no way of tracking my improvement. We decided to fix this problem by developing ShredMate. Once we added the motion sensor to track jumps, it soon became clear we could do so much more. Through careful optimization of our algorithms, ShredMate can track g-forces, detect individual trails and measure your jump landing g-force. By training to reduce your jump landing g-force, ShredMate can help improve your flow.”
Chris is a keen mountain biker and experienced product designer. The other members of the ShredMate team have significant experience developing consumer sports products, such as the PoolMate swim watches.”