RFLKT+ Obsolete!?
 

Hi guys,

I've been out of daily cycling cold for about 4 years now and am trying to get back into it. I took the bike out yesterday to go for a test ride and found my RFLKT+ not working. Digging into it, I found its support has been dropped by RWGPS. So I'm in need of a new head unit!
My entire bike is BLE sensors to pair to the phone, including my power meter. I'm hoping someone here knows how I can get all this RWGPS data to a display unit?

Thinking about it in reverse(or probably what actually considered "forward"), I'm wondering if I should pair everything to a head unit and then upload to RWGPS somehow? I hate the extra step but maybe it somehow automatically does that now?

Sorry guys, I've been out of the loop for a while and haven't caught up. Hoping for a bit of guidance? Mounting the cell phone to the bars would in fact cover the issue, but glare, security, and battery life come into play, thus the beauty of the RFLKT.

Any major brand head unit will have RWGPS integration and the ability to automatically upload your ride data to it and many other data platforms. This isn't even a recent feature. I started using a Garmin Edge 520 in 2018 that synced my rides to RWGPS. Wahoo works similarly.

My garmin 830 I bought in 2019 is set up to upload to Garmin Connect, which then uploads to RWGPS and other sites. When I stop an activity, it asks if I want to save it and does everything else automatically. I'm not even sure how it's doing it, both wifi and phone are connected.
The integration with RWGPS is very nice.

Wahoo RFLKT was a weird beast, depending as it did on a mobile phone. It was either ahead of its time (some 13 years ago now), or obsolete on release, and in either case an evolutionary dead-end.

In any case, any new head unit, like a Wahoo, Garmin, Bryton, etc., should be a drop-in replacement. A limiting factor may be the number of BT connections you need. If you're just working with power, heart rate, and cadence, you should be fine. I know Wahoo units support 3 BT connections; if you have a speed sensor, too, for example, that would be a no-go, but you can just use the GPS given speed, so no biggie.

Set up on a GPS head unit is straightforward and easy these days; you'll be prompted to connect to RWGPS and a variety of other sites, like Strava.

You should check those other sensors and PM to ensure they don't also do Ant+. If they do, then you'll have more selection of GPS devices you can get. If they don't, then you might have to consider the cost of replacing those sensors with what ever GPS device you decide on.

Garmin has been a leader in GPS devices in the cycling as well as other sports and fitness devices. RWGPS, Strava and other similar websites will maintain compatibility with Garmin devices for a long foreseeable future.

I'm biased, but any gps I would want connects to BLE. If a gps doesn't support it, it means that the software isn't very good or they have made a very strange choice of radio chips.

My friend that had a rflkt hated it from the start. I'm pretty sure it was barely supported after they came out with their first real GPS. And Wahoo is not known for their long attention span anyway.

It was pretty funny that he bought one, because he always hated gps units and still doesn't use one after the RFLKT didn't work out.

Well I went cheap and landed on the COOSPO CS500. ANT+ and BLE, it will upload to strava automatically, then I can use Tapiriik to auto sync with RWGPS (another service from way back that thankfully still works). I ended up crashing out on the first day back on the bike, so I haven't gotten much testing done on it (go completely perpendicular for train tracks!). Once I get my brake cables replaced this weekend (busted through the housing), and arm healed up a bit more, I'll give it a better test.

I liked the RFLKT personally. I had everything BLE paired to the phone and could provide real time data to folks at home during races and display the same data on the screen without draining my phone battery too terribly.

I did find that all of my sensors are both BLE and ANT+, so I decided to use ANT+ this time around to save on battery further.

I'll probably opt for a Garmin eventually. But I'm liking this one so far, just messing with the configurability of the screens and all. I assume Garmin probably allows the same if not more configurability, but coming from a background of RFLKT, the amount this device has is pretty nice.

I looked at the COOSPO computer a while back. I use RWGPS and also tapiriik. The syncing doesn't sync everything. I like how RWGPS lets me label each ride with the particular bike I rode. I think strava doesn't let me do that, but maybe I'm wrong? I pay for RWGPS but not strava.

Please check back in to let us know how this computer works out for you. It's much less expensive than others.

That's good you got the rflkt to work. My friend that had one was always anti-gps, so there is some likelihood he didn't really work with it much before giving up

Just curious, what didnt sync for you?
Below are some initial thoughts on it:

I bought the CS500 for about $67. However, according to their website they're supposed to be releasing a CS600 soon. I think that one is color, which I'm not keen on myself

I checked with customer service and they do not currently sync directly with RWGPS, only Strava and Training Peaks. however they did say they would report it as a user request, so maybe one day if enough people ask for it!

So far, I've done about 15 short rides with it, and I'm pretty impressed. It connects to my sensors immediately. No GPS dropouts so far, I had that issues with using RWGPS on my phone every now and then. My power meter connected and it automatically knew it has it's own cadence detection without needed to pair it separately, which was confusing until I realized it was already there. It has an auto wakeup thing which is nice, still getting used to that. Contrast on a sunny day is good, unlike what i read in the reviews. Came with a screen protector (like people use on cell phones) which was unexpected and nice. I dont trust the rubber band mounting they provided, It'll probably last a couple years, but I opted to buy an aluminum fixed mount.

Now as far getting the rides logged online: From what I can tell, it requires a connection with the phone via their app. Their app does ask to run in in the background nearly every time, which i haven't opted to do yet because I'm not full back into daily riding due to injury. Due to this, in order to get the rides from the device I have to go into the app while the device is active and connected and it'll sync with my phone, at this time it immediately syncs to Strava. Like the moment it shows up on the COOSPO app screen, I get a Stava notification. So If you use Strava, and run this in the background, it's probably just happens as soon as you finish your ride (permitting you have cell/wifi access). To get it to RWGPS, I use Tapiriik to sync from Strava to RWGPS. My initial fear with using Strava as the initial data source was that my HR, Power and Cadence data would be paywalled, because back in the day when I was doing this more frequently, that was the case. Now it seems data uploaded to Strava also exports 1:1. Testing this manually, you can export to a file from Strava and upload to RWGPS and still retain all data. Same goes for Tapiriik syncs. I just got my sync to RWGPS this morning and found all my data there. Strava seems to only paywall the analysis of the data.

As far as naming goes, in RWGPS, it auto-named my 4 rides yesterday as "Morning Ride" "Afternoon Ride", "Afternoon Ride", "Afternoon Ride". It did tag my bike in RWGPS and Strava, but I only have 1, so people with multiple bikes may have to deal with that differently.

One minor annoyance I have found, but just need to learn to adapt to is: Even if you save a ride, you have to back out of that screen otherwise it wont sync it. I've had to go back to the bike a couple times to do that. Not huge issue, but something to learn to do additionally.

Now I need to figure out route planning to see how that works. So far though, I'd say totally worth it for the price.