from Hacker News

Gear Review: Wahoo Elemnt Bolt

by wbraun on 8/5/18, 11:24 PM with 39 comments

• by jwise0 on 8/6/18, 2:27 AM

  Hi, HN! Author, here. Yeah, I was a little disappointed by the GPL and attribution issues, too. But also, I feel a little bad not having given them too much time to respond, or too much heads up that I was gonna write a piece about it. So if anyone has a way to reach out to them, I don't want to trash them too much, and I'd be really happy to update that blog post!

  But also, the other side of this is that the attribution issue is, perhaps, only 50% of my thrust here -- the other 50% being that it's actually a really cool device inside, and it's neat to see how they managed to build a device that's (mostly) competitive with Garmin's rich feature set so quickly. And so that, I think, might be what would be even more interesting to HN, rather than just torching them. If they opened the platform up to tinkerers a little bit -- perhaps if they 1) unlocked the bootloader; 2) provided /system images; and 3) enabled a switch to give you access to adb -- then it would be a really really cool form factor of a toy for a lot of different uses.

• by SteveCoast on 8/6/18, 2:02 AM

  Saw one of these the other day and proved that it used OpenStreetMap data, couldn't find any attribution anywhere but I didn't have the device for long.

  ... so it's violating the ODbL too.

• by gumby on 8/6/18, 2:58 AM

  > t turns out that it wasn't Wahoo's engineers at all that were responsible for the firmware update service, but instead, it belonged to MediaTek.

  Most people don't realize that Mediatek (and allwinner and all of those little Chinese SoC/chip vendors) aren't really in the merchant chip business. Remember getting data sheets, perhaps spec'ing chips with second sources (Intel had to get AMD to second source their early x86 parts or nobody would risk buying them).

  Well when you can't get a data sheet from Mediatek or their ilk it's not because they are holding out on you per se -- they probably don't have one. They would prefer to sell a chip (perhaps a customer-specific one) with a blob of proprietary code and a custom kernel etc and just hand the whole lot over to the customer for a single application. Sadly, a lot of customers go for this.

• by petee on 8/6/18, 12:38 AM

  I enjoyed this quick breakdown -- if it doesn't get traction on HN this time, I'd love to see this reposted if/when the author gets a reply from the Wahoo CEO about sources and attribution.

  Plus, besides GPL, LGPL and Apache2, I'm interested in knowing what other licenses they are violating

• by URSpider94 on 8/6/18, 2:15 AM

  First off, I have to say I’m surprised and disappointed at their response. I’ve met members of the Wahoo team at CES and have been using their gear for years, it’s uniformly well-designed and the connectivity is pretty much bulletproof, which is pretty amazing for the glob of IoT gadgetry that is a modern cycling sensor network. I hope they come back with an update.

  Second, the ELEMNT is a terrific cycling computer, but it’s so optimized for cycling that I expect it would be useless for any other activity. If you want something to use for biking AND hiking, I strongly suggest that you look into a Garmin triathlon watch.

• by endless1234 on 8/6/18, 10:12 AM

  Cool review! But I have to disagree with "As far as I can tell, the ELEMNT BOLT does everything the Garmin does, but about 10% worse" - the Garmin Edges might have a better spec sheet, but IME, the software/firmware just does not work properly far too often. Crashes, freezes, general jank. The Bolt has been a joy to use in comparison. A bit surprised it's just Android under the hood! Maybe it's helped them in adding features and fixes relatively fast?

• by slededit on 8/6/18, 2:40 AM

  The Linux kernel sets the standard here of not really enforcing the license. Complying is additional cost and companies are not going to do it unless forced to. SoC manufacturers are not going to stop supporting android just because they're forced to release their changes.

  We're long past the days where it was questionable if open source would gain traction and everyone had to be deferential. License holders should start setting the standard of enforcing the terms of the license they chose.

• by flyinghamster on 8/6/18, 2:31 AM

  I have one of Wahoo's cadence sensors, which I use with Strava on my phone, and have liked it. I was considering getting one of their heart rate monitors as well. But seeing this casual misuse of GPL and Apache2-licensed software doesn't give me a warm and fuzzy feeling.

  As for GPS weirdness mentioned in the article, I'm wondering if there are some shenanigans going on in Android, or if I ran into some GPS jamming or some sort of selective availability? I took a ride along the Illinois side of Mississippi River north of the Quad Cities, and while I was near the Quad Cities nuke plant, my phone's GPS altitude readings were ridiculous - the altitude profile for my ride showed altitudes over 2,000 ft, when there are no such places in Illinois that high, save at the top of some skyscrapers in Chicago. This was consistent on both the outbound and return trips, with the anomaly occurring just south of Albany. Northward, the altitude readings were what they should be (in the ~600-700 ft range).

• by TallGuyShort on 8/6/18, 1:29 AM

  I wonder if an email from the copyright owners of Mapsforge or Twitter4J to the CEO would be more effective than from a consumer...

• by loeg on 8/6/18, 3:29 AM

  Huh. I have one of these but obviously didn't do this level of analysis on it. It's a great little bike computer, IMO. I wouldn't try to use it for hikes. Shame about the license violations.

• by lostmsu on 8/6/18, 6:21 AM

  HM, what is the advantage of having that as opposed to just using your phone, especially at this price point?

  You could even have it charged from the dynamo.