Head Unit Mirrored with Apple Watch
 

I am surprised that no one has built a “dumb” head unit yet that you could mount on your stem to show mirrored information from the Apple Watch. I mean, I have a Cateye Padrone Smart, and all I ever use it for is to mirror the Cateye App running on my iPhone under my saddle. At the end of the ride, I upload to Strava.

Seems it wouldn’t be too much trouble for someone to manufacture a device that will mirror the GPS and HR data from the watch, so one doesn’t have to look at their wrist.

Wahoo made something like this.

They stopped making it.

I have a friend that bought a wahoo reflekt. He said it never worked that well. Well, his language was somewhat stronger than that.

It wasn't that cheap. I think it was aimed at people like him: he had never used a gps before.

In addition, cyclists using Apple Watches as head units most be a fairly small market and probably doesn't justify the R&D from a profitability standpoint.

The Cateye Padrone Smart mirrors my iPhone perfectly and I know there are a slew of Apple Watches with GPS. Yes it’s a niche market but still I am surprised Cateye or even Apple have not made a head unit to mirror the watch.

I think you've discovered a market niche waiting for a creative entrepreneur! 🙂

FWIW, I used a Wahoo RFLKT for several years, with a heart rate strap and the Cyclemeter app on my iPhone. It worked fine for me. However, I did not try to use it for navigation. I first used a Garmin Edge Touring for that, with mixed experience; and then I replaced both the RFLKT and the Edge with a Wahoo ELMNT, which has been terrific and I still use.

The concept of using the “brain” of the device you already have, together with a smaller handlebar-mounted display etc, still seems pretty clever to me.

It's too small a market (way too small) for Apple to be interested in.

There have been a few companies offering head up displays that use data collected by your device and display it to you on or through your glasses.

Garmin Varia Vision was one of them that my son uses and I really wish I'd gotten one before they discontinued it. Even looking down at my device on the out front mount is sometimes just as bad as having to take a hand off the bars to look at a watch. Though it looks like it'd obscure a lot of your vision it really doesn't.

https://buy.garmin.com/en-US/US/p/530536

https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2016/01/...ision-hud.html

There are still other forms of HUD's for cyclist's out there too. At least there were a few.

Garmin has a "screen mirror" (not quite) function on the Edges for their watches. It seems the main point is for triathletes (and similar) who use a watch across different activities.


https://support.garmin.com/en-US/?fa...TwAwBffjoJcWT8

Don't use a watch in a (competitive) triathlon, it's too much drag in the water.

I haven't used it much for swimming, but switching my garmin watch between activities is a real pain. I suppose I would get better at it if I did it a lot. But also, maybe this is why triathletes crash so much.

Please, I'm just exploring here the chance to use the Apple Watch as a cycling GPS unit. I know it does HR, speed and distance and I don't need maps or route planning. Also, this is not about heads up displays or other Garmin devices.

It seems pretty clear that there is not a dumb HU that could be mounted on the stem to display Apple Watch data. I guess I am surprised. If I could get my Cateye Padrone Smart pair with the Apple Watch over BLE as it does with the iPhone, that would be the ticket.

You got the answer: "no chance" with a bunch of reasons why.

Given that Wahoo tried it for phones and discontinued the product fairly quickly, it shouldn't seem surprising at all.

You'd also need the Cateye app running on the watch.

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The Cateye Padrone Smart Plus is $190. The battery life is 4 months.

You can get a Garmin 530 that costs $300 and does everything without needing a phone. And you'd avoid any possible BT connection flakiness. The only downside is that you'd have to recharge the 530 more frequently.

Agreed. Cateye would have to write a scaled down app for the Apple Watch. Also, the Plus is not necessary as the Padrone Smart works well enough.

A few companies jumped into writing apps for the Apple watch and ended-up discontinuing them.

Did you send an email to Cateye about it?

The Padrone Smart is $100. The Garmin 130+ is $200.

It doesn't seem Cateye is making the Padrone Smart anymore.

Maybe, the Digital (about the same price) replaced it?

Aside from the problem of the market size probably not justifying the R&D, the Apple Watch just doesn't work that way. It basically acts as an iPhone peripheral; I am pretty sure it doesn't send standard Bluetooth signals that a head unit could use—it does connect to headsets by Bluetooth, but that's a different device profile. Everything else is mediated through the iPhone, which is why you can't use it as a HRM, either, but there is are iPhone apps that will retransmit an Apple Watch's heart-rate data over Bluetooth.

This doesn't seem to be entirely true for the later models. You can make/get calls on the watch without a phone.

Even if it doesn't allow it currently, there's no reason the watch couldn't send HR via BT (it's just a profile). If it can do all the phone stuff, it would be able to transmit HR.

Technically, you're right of course. Practically, well, good luck convincing Apple.

Convincing Apple would be hard.

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https://apps.apple.com/us/app/echo-h...h/id1494679144

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/blueheart-bluetooth-heart-rate/id1485503543

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/heartcast-heart-rate-monitor/id1499771124

This app sends the data to a a $40 receiver that retransmits it to ANT+. (Seems like getting a separate HR monitor would be simpler.)

ttps://apps.apple.com/us/app/heartbe...t/id1485336131

https://theapplewatchtriathlete.com/...or-apple-watch

These are cheap but some of them appear to be discontinued.

(These have existed for years for Garmin watches.)

No, HR, of course, but HR straps aren't that expensive and appear to work better than using your wrist.
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https://breakingmuscle.com/fitness/c...-rate-monitors

I have the Heartcast app myself. These apps all require you to use an iPhone as a gateway, so you're back to the "Apple Watch as an iPhone peripheral" problem, and the OP is looking for a way to link the Apple Watch directly to a head unit. And I'm saying that ain't gonna happen.

That isn't really useful, then.