First Look: Quarq Cinqo and Garmin Edge 705
22 February 2008We had an opportunity to check out a Garmin EDGE 705 GPS unit and the Quarq Cinqo power meter at the recent Serotta Science in Cycling symposium held in Denver, Colorado. Jim Meyer, Quarq’s founder, demonstrated the unit and even did a ride around the area. Since then, we’ve traveled out to the Tour of California for more testing and you can see a data file of Jim’s ride on the Solvang Time Trial course that is going on today at the Amgen Tour of California.
Click the image above and you will finally see power data and gps together at last!
The Quarq Cinqo is a new power-meter that has strain gauges inside the crank spider, and one of the first ones that will be fully wireless using the ANT+Sport protocol. GPS + Power + Heart Rate (not shown in this file) + all the other metrics like speed, cadence and distance. WKO+ and TrainingPeaks.com will support the Garmin 705 as soon as it is released.
There has been a lot of excitement in the cycling world with regard to new features that Garmin is making available both through their GPS innovations, but also through their wireless technology obtained when they acquired Dynastream. The wireless technology, known as ANT+Sport enables devices from different manufacturers to communicate with each other, making data collection easier and seamless. In this case the Quarq Cinqo measures power output at the crank of a bicycle and then transmits the data at 2 second intervals to a handlebar mounted Garmin Edge 705, where it is stored along with the GPS data at the same interval.
Other products will soon follow suit. Everything from heart rate monitors to speed and distance units will be coming to market with support for ANT+Sport. ANT+Sport is really a message sending format, which means, devices that are compliant with ANT+Sport, will be able to talk to each other, if the manufacturer permits. However, manufacturers can choose to encrypt their transmissions, which would prohibit devices talking to each other, even though they are ANT+Sport compatible. From what we’ve heard, most folks are not choosing to encrypt, but rather join in on the ability to share data, in real-time, among devices.
The Edge 705 has some great features, one I like most is that when you connect the 705 to your computer via a USB cable, your computer instantly sees the 705 as an external storage device. Just like plugging in a USB thumb drive. To download data, you simply navigate with your file browser to the “history” folder on the 705 and drag the appropriate .tcx file onto WKO+. Your workout data is just there, ready and waiting, as if you plugged in a hard drive. Viola.. drag and drop, couldn’t be simpler! No drivers to load or weird protocols or even waiting.. it’s super slick. WKO+ supports the new .tcx file format now, and so does TrainingPeaks.com.
The real benefit is that your GPS and Power data are now combined in a single, easy to use file format that can be imported into the TrainingPeaks.com Daily Log or into TrainingPeaks WKO+. Distance, speed, time, latitude, longitude, altitude, cadence, heart rate are all part of the data stream, so finally you have it all at your fingertips! Checkout the interactive map with data above, I can’t wait until these products hit the market.
Ah.. fun stuff for sure! We’ll tell you more about these products as they become available. Stay tuned.
One Response to “First Look: Quarq Cinqo and Garmin Edge 705”
December 7th, 2008 at 10:37 pm
Since I don’t have a powermeter on my bike, but I do have three other devices, a Computrainer, a 305 edge and a 705, how would I use your software with a Computrainer, Garmin 305 and Garmin 705?
Thanks,
Damon