Your wireless drivetrain might not be as safe or secure as you think - Canadian Cycling Magazine
Your wireless drivetrain might not be as safe or secure as you think - Canadian Cycling Magazine
Is deraileur hacking the new frontier in pro cycling? Your wireless drivetrain might not be as safe or secure as you think.
Another win for older tech?
Maybe I'm missing something, but I have never understood the appeal of electronic shifting.
It sounds awesome to me if it's perfected and batteries can get smaller with longer charge.
No. More. Cables. Less stuff and the moving parts of the shifters, etc. Great idea to me, even if it's still got issues. If I was rich I'd definitely try a build out with these.
but I have never understood the appeal of electronic shifting.
I spoke with a guy who has the Shimano Di2. One of the main benefits is that you don't have to index the derailleur... it automatically does it and always puts you in gear without any BS.
He also mentioned something about automatic shifting, which sounds interesting.
When integrated with a bike computer, it can do some other cool tricks. The shifters can also control a bike computer, which can be convenient.
At the end of the day, all of my manual shifters (grip shift, brake lever, and trigger...) all work perfectly fine and can't be hacked. LOL
When you make cycling too complex, it takes the fun out of it, IMO.
Less maintenance for sure. The biggest thing for me is I get to use all 24 gears without hearing the chain rub on the front mech.
I wouldn't say it's a big enough upgrade to replace a groupset on an existing bike. However when I do buy my next bike I'll aim to get DI2.
I spoke with a guy who has the Shimano Di2. One of the main benefits is that you don’t have to index the derailleur… it automatically does it and always puts you in gear without any BS.
^^^ This.
Cables work fine when you're dealing with nine or ten rear gears, but going up from that to eleven or more gears, indexing becomes a problem, and an electrically-operated derailleur that can hit a gear correctly, quickly, every single time is nice.
For casual riders this probably doesn't matter, since people ride around on badly-tuned derailleurs all day long and just put up with it. Heck, even recreational racers probably don't need it. This is for guys wearing yellow or polka-dot jerseys around France, for whom milliseconds lost to shifting make a real difference.
I'm nowhere near good enough for this to make a difference for me, and I wouldn't want the complexity, which is why my commuter has no gears at all--I was tired of fiddling and wanted something that would never, ever break.
I feel a wired solution would be better, more reliable and more secure, but wireless is the new black.
Are you asking about electronic, or wireless shifting? Because electronic wired shifting is also a thing, and adds some advantages, while wireless adds more advantages on top of that.
I've never used either, but from people who have, I've heard that the shifting is a lot smoother on electronic shifting than mechanical. Whether smoother shifting is actually worth the price seems to be the debate most people have.
As for wireless, the advantages there become a little clearer and easier to explain. You can put the shifters wherever you want for maximum convenience. In the drops if you spend a lot of time sprinting. At the ends of your aero bars if you're a triathlete or time trialist. You can even have multiple shifters at multiple positions. Plus, yeah, the stuff @Yawweee877h444@lemmy.world says about removing cables.
As I said though, this is all by reputation. I've only ever used mechanical.
I read that electronic shifting can automatically downshift when you come to a stop which I find a little tempting. But not tempting enough at the price I've seen. There's a spot on my regular route where my habit is to downshift 6 times as I come to a stop sign at the bottom of a hill. I do wonder what it would be like not to have to think about that so much.
I meant both wired and wireless. I hear that the shifting is faster and smoother than cables, but my cable shifting feels perfectly acceptable as it is. I can't imagine a slight improvement there is worth the hassle of dealing with batteries dying, servos wearing out or getting shorted by liquid ingress, or the security issues of wireless that the article mentions.
But then, maybe I'm just a Luddite.
I do, but it's not for me. Especially not at that price.
Same, but then again, I still don't understand the appeal of automatic transmissions in cars (despite that being all I own these days). I generally prefer simpler machines with less stuff that can break.
Bicycles should be extremely simple. You pedal to go, and if you want to go faster for the same RPM, you push the chain up a gear. If you have gears in the front and back, you shift the front every few times you shift the back. That's it, that's all the complexity I need in a bicycle.
What happens if you're out on a ride and your battery dies? You just can't shift anymore? That's terrible! Or what if a thief steals your fancy electronic shifter? What if the SW goes bad and the pairing breaks? There's just so much that can go wrong, and not a lot of backup options. If my derailleur gets messed up on a ride, I can probably still use a handful of gears, enough to get home. If a shifter breaks and I have tools, I can adjust the indexer to keep it in a decent gear to get home. It's like that manual transmission, if something breaks, I can probably work around it.
I generally prefer simpler machines with less stuff that can break.
have had 3 different manual cars, the only one that didn't have clutch issues was the rx-7, my vw golf and ford fiesta had terrible transmissions. like made out of duct tape and bubble gum bad.
since then, had hondas and they're built like little brick shithouses - excellent life, fuel consumption etc. they make the 80s and 90s cars I owned look like yugos.
I just rode nine weeks across the Alps with my SRAM X0 Transmission and the battery lasted the whole trip. A spare doesn't way too much though. A rock hit my transmission hard and it needed slight adjustment. I took less than a second and I did not have to get of my bike. Also, installing the transmission was super easy. All in all, I think it is way more convenient than mechanical shifting, if you are willing to pay the price. It's probably not worth it for most people.
It's a weight weinnie thing, you can save a couple grams. Electronics will never be as reliable as a cable though, too much vibration, temperature changes and moisture will eventually wreck stuff.
It's not a weight weenie thing. In fact from my search it actually usually weighs slightly more. Most of what I'm reading suggests that it's actually more reliable in adverse conditions than mechanical, or at worst that it's roughly equal but different.
Having ridden DI2 for over 10 years, in the Canadian winter, with salted roads, I have to believe you’ve never used/maintained/serviced an electronic drivetrain.
The mechanical parts will fail as equally quickly - in the same places - if not maintained.
I’ve not yet had an electronics failure on my three electronic drivetrains. Mechanical bits will wear out as per usual.
Until the recent influx of low-cost electronic group sets, the ones on sale from SRAM and Shimano were high-end enough that they were/are incredibly reliable with the exception of the first generation external Di2 Dura Ace battery which had a poorly designed mount that would indeed cause issues over time. The internal battery remedied that issue.
I’ve been running Di2 since 2014 on my gravel grinder. It was a mullet setup with Ultegra DI2 / Wolftooth extender, XT cassette, SRAM 1x chainring and crank. I moved up to a clutched XT Di2 rear as soon as it was available. No dropped chains.
The shifting, now 10 years later, is AS GOOD as the day I got it. The battery, also 10 years old, still only needs charging 1-3 times a year depending on how much I’m riding that bike.
I went SRAM Eagle AXS for my bike packing bike.
It’s not as good as 11-speed XT Di2, even though my Eagle is XX. But the small drop in shifting performance (still sky high) is made up for by the ease-of-use. When I bought the bike, it was lightly used and setup as a single speed. Wireless electronic shifting made the switch easy. The most complicated thing was changing the freehub body to XD. After that it was put on the shifter, the derailleur and I was off to the races. I’ve taken it on days-long bike packing trips and I can do it all on a single battery, but I keep a spare on me because it’s so tiny.
My mountain bike has SRAM Transmission on it and it’s as perfect as shifting could ever be (also bought used because the bikepocalypse is real and I might as well take advantage).
With electronic shifting, I love that I can customize it to a level not possible with cabled shifting. I like that I can choose the speed of the shifts, which button does what, and I have my Shimano and SRAM bikes setup to match each other: same buttons for higher/lower gears and the same hold-for-3 multi-shift behaviour.
Now, bear in mind that when I get on my cabled-bikes, I don’t really think “boy this sucks” - but I maintain them all well.
Electronic shifting is incredible. I would never go back for my main bikes unless it gets all cloud-subscribers-enshittified (which is highly probable LOL).
But, being honest, it is truly a luxury and in no way needed. Any bike being ridden is a great bike.
AMA else. I’m here for it.
Aside: hilariously this is the Shimano semi-wireless Di2 in this article which is part of the sad decay of Shimano in general (I’m looking at you unreliable-shimano-power-meter and crank arms coming unbonded). The most popular wireless electronic kits are SRAM and, if I understand it correctly, they’re not affected by this particular issue. Doesn’t mean hackers won’t find one of course!
It's exactly as (un)secure as I expected. It's a wireless device made by bike part manufactures... can't expect better, realistically.
Still, I wouldn't recommend someone against buying one because of this. The threat model for cyclists is getting maimed by vehicles or psychopaths laying booby traps out there. Hackers messing with my gear shifting is the least of my worries.