edthesped

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Looks like a good way to run mountain triples on a drop bar bike... Though I'm not sure it's for me.

alan s 

What do you do when your battery runs out?

J.Higgins 

I'm dubious.

DropBarFan

Very clever, I'm wondering where best spot to mount Pod would be--Pod R photo shows it on inside of brake hood which looks ~OK but might interfere with holding hood tight on bumpy sections. Great thing would be a good brifter like Campy Ergo converted to Xshifter. Anyway Xshifter is much cheaper & more versatile than Di2 which apparently will have a triple-chainring version in the future.

XShifter

The skepticism is totally understandable. This is a brand new PATENT PENDING technology, never been done before. We'll start shipping the first MTB systems in a couple weeks, and will also be distributing some to magazines for real world ride testing. There's bound to be a few bugs, but we are confident the product is very sound. It does work as advertised. Battery life is quite long. We improved it considerably since the early prototypes. We also improved the speed, weight, pull distance and pull force. Now we are improving the website, because well, it sucks...

fietsbob

Pass, its still in the rattling the can phase, anyhow.


')

alan s 

Here are a few suggestions. Do your own real world testing and post the results. A professionally tuned bike on a stand operates quite differently than an out of adjustment bike on the road or trail. Publish the specs on battery life. Saying "it is quite long" is subjective and doesn't help me determine whether it is a suitable product for my use. Use with a wide variety of setups to show it will work on nearly all bikes. Provide pricing information. Immerse in water and operate to prove it is waterproof. After a few months of real world testing, provide the results. Provide comparisons to other electronic shifting systems. This is all part of R&D and marketing.

saddlesores

here's a suggestion.

i can do your real-world testing. i'm moving to bangkok next month.
send me two units. (gonna need a backup when the first fails)

monsoon season approacheth. i'll be happy to do some trial runs
in the dirt and mush and sludge in laos and cambodia.

skidder

I don't see any benefit of this (or Di2-type electronic systems in general) over existing cabled shifting systems for my bicycling needs. Of course I don't see the point of Facebook either, although a billion people have signed on to it.

edthesped

I'll test it as well and will even return or purchase when done. The reason I'm drawn to it is because it's a potential way of running a trekking group on drop bars that can put the shifters on or near the brake hoods. Is it one more thing to go wrong? Of course. One of my co workers belly ached for weeks because he didn't want a back up camera on the car he bought. He felt it was worthless and just something else the dealer would screw him on repairs later on.

As far as I know or understand and please correct me if I'm wrong but Road Di2 will cannot be mixed with MTB Di2.

Edit: And @XShifter best of luck to you! I always envy people that have the Ba!!$ to follow through on an idea.

XShifter

Well, I've done a little R&D in my career. You are very likely riding some products I've designed, and don't even know it.

I really wish we had the budget of the big guys to spend thousands and thousands of hours testing, but we don't. On the other hand, the big guys would take a minimum of 3 years to get this product to market, not 1, like we are doing. We have tested for more than a year and thousands of kilometers. It's really a pretty simple device so there isn't much that can fail. Duty cycle testing was tough on derailleurs, but we never had any failures with the XShifter.

Battery life: I'm not going to quote a disingenuous number like some will. It's just a fact that the battery life will vary greatly depending on the derailleur and the riding style. We've measured 15,000 shifts on a bench test, and that was before the improvements. To keep that number in perspective, we failed a derailleur at 200,000 shifts, so that is only 12 or so battery charges required for the life of a derailleur. Real world, I've ridden for 2 weeks on a charge, and that is with excessive shifting because I was testing.

Water resistance: It is submersible for a brief time. It can't operate indefinitely under water because it has a cable that would eventually pump water into the drive mechanism. So unless your bike is amphibious, it will be okay.

alan s 

Do appreciate your responses. As a bike tourer, a major concern is the shifter dying in the middle of nowhere. How have you addressed this, if at all? Is there a mechanical override so you can at least get the bike in a gear of your choosing to limp to your destination?

edthesped

I guess I'm foolhardy as I would worry as much about that as I would my shift cable snapping. I don't do this but if you're really worried you could carry a spare shift cable, relatively speaking they're light. I always have pack several zip ties, velcro straps and a few feet of duct tape wrapped around a pen barrel, I figure I could cover 80% of trailside issues with them, my leatherman and my bicycle multitool.

XShifter

About the battery: If the battery dies, there is no mechanical override. You could in theory loosen the cable clamp and adjust to another gear. That option isn't available with eTap so I guess that is one advantage to XShifter. I'm not aware if Di2 has manual override or not.

There is a low battery indicator on the remote. Once that goes on, you still have enough battery life to finish your ride and then some. The front and rear batteries are same so you can exchange them if one dies. You can carry a spare battery. Or, you can charge the battery with a power bank and a standard micro USB cable. So it's a relatively small concern about the battery life. You can even charge while riding and shifting with the power bank. As far as I know, XShifter has this issue covered much better than eTap or Di2. eTap has a low battery indicator, but it's on the derailleur so you will never see it. Even so, in all my experience with etap I also never had a dead battery while riding. Sure it can happen, but I think this issue is overblown on all of the systems.

9volt 

Xshifter sings the song of its people

https://ksr-video.imgix.net/assets/0..._h264_high.mp4

djb

you know, a bunch of years ago we got a new front door, and the other half insisted on getting a keyless entry code thingee--it makes a similar awful noise similar to this in what I describe as a "cheap, going to break at some point, labouring electric motor noise".

I realize that this video was made in a quiet room, with the mic near the system, but honestly, that noise would bug the hell out of me on a quiet ride and would get tiring very quickly.
I realize this is not even touching on the whole issue of the "battery power necessary for it to work angle", which in general I find goes against the whole idea of the beautiful simplicity of a bicycle, but the sound alone is a turnoff, even if in real life it would not be heard to the same extent.

I've played with Di2 in stores and while it is pretty impressive, it comes back to the whole issue of me personally not seeing the need, certainly not for my lifetimes riding experiences, and certainly not for a touring application.

good luck with your endeavor though

DropBarFan

Xshifter would obviate brifters with gear cables that interfere with front luggage & for travel-coupler bikes it would eliminate hassle of disconnecting derailleur cables. One could mount a Pod on the handlebar top, one on the brake hood & one on the drops...shifting is much quicker/easier/safer (esp over bumps) since almost no hand movement is needed.

BTW I mentioned potential problem of brake-hood Pod shifter being susceptible to accidental shifts: today's ride I noted that even on bumpy descents I didn't grip brake hoods tightly on the sides, just vertically. Look at garage door remote controls--compact/light/dependable at much greater distance than Xshifter transmits across.

9volt 

I'm tempted to get one just to have a bike that can make robot servo noises while I ride. It's a feature

Squeezebox

No benefit to Di2?
How about the fact that it shifts much better.
Including shifting a triple with no slop.
Multi position shifters, different places on the bicycle.
Battery charge lasts 3 months or so.

alan s 

I agree totally. That's going to intimidate riders in front. Plus you won't need a bell, freeing up all that handlebar space.

XShifter

The truth is, my marketing team thought it sounded cool. So we put the noise into most of the videos. We could have easily filtered it out. Some like it, some don't. Personally I kind of like it. Sometimes when I'm riding slowly through a crowd I'll shift just for the sake of making the noise. (But I admit I'm showing off...). But it's really not that loud. In normal riding situation you can barely here it. For those that have ridden eTap, you know the FD especially on a carbon frame is audible. XShifter is quieter than eTap.

saddlesores

that happens a lots.

marketing hipsters who rarely ride bikes are allowed to make
too many decisions.

explains a lotta carp currently on the market.

ModeratedUser17082018

I went to your website and was greeted with a pop-up and a greyed out screen and this message:
"Welcome to Xshifter Subscribe now and get 25% discount until June 30"

Despite my signature, I'm saying no thanks on that offer. Closed the website down and still don't know what product you're offering.

edthesped

Kind of like how people like the "bee" sound of rear hubs? I personally can't stand the sound of a loud rear hub and silence was a major factor when I built up my last wheel. Though I have to say I don't shift nearly as much as I coast.


You do realize there's an option to "Enter Site Without Coupon"...

I personally hope to see more attempts at innovation in this area as I certainly don't like the push toward 1X and 2X setups the main players are pushing. What I would really like to see is a brifter that would natively shift a mountain triple.

XShifter

Right now we are putting all our efforts into getting the base product launched. But over the next couple months we'll be showing some options that allow you to do exactly what you just mentioned, and more.