Recommendations for a wireless cadence computer?
 

Can anyone give me a good recommendation for a low cost wireless cadence computer?

Thanks,
Spud

Not the lowest cost but they have come down quite a bit in price. I loved my Garmin 305 for 6 years, just replaced it with an 800. Also has the option for a HR monitor.

Keep an eye on Nashbar. I got Sigma Sport 1606 DTS Wireless Computer from them for $35, and added a DTS Cadence Wireless Transmitter from Amazon for $25.

I use a Garmin 500, it's never missed a beat and a package also comes with a heart monitor.

I just installed one on my Cruz. Very intuitive operation & easy readout. I like the cadence monitor, acts like a tachometer on a manual shift auto. The only problem with this wireless unit (& all other wireless models, to my understanding) is that it doesn't actually readout your current speed/cadence, but the speed/cadence you had achieved a few seconds prior. Data takes a few seconds to transfer to the screen (& intermittently yet, not continuously). Not the best of circumstances, but hopefully technology will soon catch up.

Where is the additional latency? I have a hard time imagining that the communication latency between wireless and wired over a meter is even perceptible. Do the wireless sensors batch data, and the wireless sensors not do so? I can see the initial handshake taking some extra packets, but after that, I would imaging the communication latency to be very similar.

The radio signal should go at pretty much the speed of light, the same as a wired unit, the only reason it would be delayed is if the radio signal was intermittent and the computer filtered that out. Which may or may not be better then giving you data that may not be accurate.

It doesn't have anything to do with it being wireless or wired. Think about what it's doing and how it works. For cadence it's counting and averaging pedal revolutions over a time period and for speed it is counting and averaging revolutions of a known size wheel over a time period and converting to speed . And depending on what that moving time period is (which will be implementation dependent) it will be delayed by that amount. I don't think that any amount of technology could improve the latency because even if you used instantaneous velocity sensors you would still need to average the reading over a period.

Thanks for all the corrective info. This being my first bicycle computer, I incorrectly surmised that the delay was due to it's wireless nature.

OK. I thought that you had both wireless and wired computers, and the wireless had some additional delay. I couldn't figure out where that additional delay was coming from.