Nyon MY21 - Initial Thoughts

[ava1ar]

Just curious ava1ar, which stem mount do you use? I've been looking at garmin but I wasn't sure how I'd mount it with the smartphone hub. Is it pretty stable just with the stem mount?

This is the mount I found in the box with 520+ - it is connected to the stem using two rubber bands and it is rock solid (I believe it sits there so well because I mounted it on top of the my front camera adapter).

Checking out the Edge Explore now - decided what to keep. Honestly, Explore looks much better for my needs (navigation). Also, touch screen navigation is much better than I expected!

P.S. Yes, Edge Explore is definitely nicer than 520+ for the navigation purposes. 520+ goes back to Amazon, Edge Explore - welcome to the family!

 

[fooferdoggie]

I have had most of the gamins and after going touchscreen its like man these buttons suck so many button pushes.

 

[smitty]

I am glad you are enjoying the bike w/ the Nyon display. By far, it is the best E-bike computer on the market.
The amount of insight one can get about one's riding habits, power delivery, assistance, heart rate, etc, is amazRavi, ae yoyriding

 

[ava1ar]

I just upgraded my Smartphone Hub to Nyon 21 and along with some improvements I got, I discovered a serious drawback - Nyon can't charge devices?!? How come? At least now I know what is co.Mon between Purion and Nyon displays - both can't charge external devices. Was it like this all the time or changed recently? They have microUSB type A port on it, which is usually meant to be used on power source side, but can only be used to charge the display itself.
I am start thinking about adding a USB port myself (by getting power from the light cable). This is a bad hack, but absense of charging function is non-sense!

 

[Darlinsk]

I just upgraded my Smartphone Hub to Nyon 21 and along with some improvements I got, I discovered a serious drawback - Nyon can't charge devices?!? How come? At least now I know what is co.Mon between Purion and Nyon displays - both can't charge external devices. Was it like this all the time or changed recently? They have microUSB type A port on it, which is usually meant to be used on power source side, but can only be used to charge the display itself.
I am start thinking about adding a USB port myself (by getting power from the light cable). This is a bad hack, but absense of charging function is non-sense!

I, too, was disappointed at first by the lack of charging capability, although the specifications and manual never identified it as a charging port. I just assumed it was. But given that the Nyon navigates independently, I don't need to charge my phone on a day-ride. I keep it in my frame bag and use it as a phone, not a navigation device.

I don't know about the previous Nyon, but the Nyon 21 has always had this ‘feature’. You could always cart around a portable battery with you if you need charging. It's not elegant, but it works.

 

[Alaskan]

Why focus on such a peripheral issue? There are plenty of ways to recharge a battery on a bike without having to interfere with the bike's drive system.

I have been riding with Nyons for four years, one year with the new version. Our phones have conditioned us to expect every electronic device to be a Swiss army knife, capable of doing everything.

I don't use my phone for much of anything during a ride as the Nyon gives me all the info I need. sometimes I listen to music which doesn't use much phone battery. I have a Terrano communication system in my helmet which connects to the phone via bluetooth giving me speakers and also allowing me to answer phone calls safely during rides. Although I carry a compact 10,000mAh charging bank with me just in case, I have never run the phone battery down to where I had to recharge the phone while riding.

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[ava1ar]

Thanks for confirmation Darlinsk and Alaskan! But actually charging the phone is the last thing I care about here. Let me explain. For last 6 month I am in search for perfect camera setup for my bike (I am riding though the NYC a lot, so I want to have recording just in case something happens) - so I am looking for something like car dash cam. My requirements are:

• descent video quality (so the plates are readable)
• ability to have "infinity storage" (new videos overwrites old when storage is full)
• ability to integrate with my bike, so I don't need to think about charging and turning on/off the camera.

While first two criteria are pretty basic and there are lots of options, it is difficult to do something with 3rd option, but with SmartphoneHub I was able to get it working almost like I want. And how, after upgrade I lost that and need to start my research from scratch
I am using Drift Ghost XL camera mounted under the front light and it has a special waterproof power connector (using 3.5mm audio jack which screws in the came case one one side and regular USB connector on other). Also, this camera has a "dash cam" mode, when it powers on / start recording when powered on via the cable and stop recording / powers off when power is disconnected. Since SmartphoneHub has a power port, I just made a special cable from the one coming with the camera and one coming with the Hub, so camera is always connected to the hub port. And this was giving me a trouble-free camera setup:

• camera is powered on from the bike battery - no need to worry about it is dead since I forget to re-charge it
• camera starts recording after I start the ride (SmartphoneHub powers on the port the app when the phone is connected to the hub and I am in riding mode)
• camera stops recording after I ended the ride (SmartphoneHub powers off the port the app when the app is closed and phone is discconnected from the hub)

I used it few month in this way and it was working fine. And I was hoping to get similar with Nyon since it has a USB port (my fault I never double check it is suitable for charging, but knowing the even Kiox has it I have zero reasons to not expect much more advanced and expensive display can't do this like basic Purion can't), but my hopes are dead now. My plan now to explore the option to use some power from front/rear light power input (it has 12 volts, so I will need to use car/motocycle usb outlet with built-in convertor), but I am still not sure will it work and if is it enough power there to share between usb port and light itself.

 

[Alaskan]

Be cautious as the Bosch system has sensors to detect excess power draw on the system, causing a system shutdown and throwing an error code. I suggest you get the specific max power draw of your cameras and start a new thread asking @William - Bosch Team, head of the Bosch NA tech team, where and how to pull power from their 12 volt system and how many amps you can draw without causing a problem. Their hands may be tied by corporate, but they will help if the can.

 

[SteveBorough]

Some of us hate this look:

and yes, I agree, the search for the holy grail of any tech device will limit you almost always. However, I'm still saddened and frustrated by the advertised feature of navigation being a complete non-starter on Nyon '21! @ava1ar, you mentioned you're in NYC, Nyon navigation has been quite dangerous and an awful experience for me in this city! I am forced to use my phone instead and for long rides I miss the USB charging of my prior Kiox. How has your experience been with navigation?

 

[ava1ar]

you mentioned you're in NYC, Nyon navigation has been quite dangerous and an awful experience for me in this city! I am forced to use my phone instead and for long rides I miss the USB charging of my prior Kiox. How has your experience been with navigation?

Well, I got Nyon just yesterday and didn't have a chance to test it yet. Next week I will try to use it for commute for the route I am well familiar to see how useful/correct it is (Garmin was pretty useless, Wahoo Element Bolt v2 a bit better, but still limited). I still have my SmartphoneHub and I think I can easily retrofit it back - in SmartphoneHub I am usually using Google Maps in the floating window for navigation, so it is displayed over the Bosch app.

 

[smitty]

Here’s a question. I really love my new Nyon on my new Homage. I wonder if anyone has considered buying a backup for the Nyon computer. If it got lost or dropped and broken, one would seem stuck on any more riding until a new Nyon computer showed up/

 

[SteveBorough]

Here’s a question. I really love my new Nyon on my new Homage. I wonder if anyone has considered buying a backup for the Nyon computer. If it got lost or dropped and broken, one would seem stuck on any more riding until a new Nyon computer showed up/

That's quite the hypothetical, for navigation in case you get lost, carry a phone? If your Nyon breaks you wouldn't be able to power on your bike so yeah you can buy 2 Nyons but more importantly, how do you sleep at night then, do you have 2 of everything? (just being cheeky, no offense intended)

 

[SteveBorough]

Well, I got Nyon just yesterday and didn't have a chance to test it yet. Next week I will try to use it for commute for the route I am well familiar to see how useful/correct it is (Garmin was pretty useless, Wahoo Element Bolt v2 a bit better, but still limited). I still have my SmartphoneHub and I think I can easily retrofit it back - in SmartphoneHub I am usually using Google Maps in the floating window for navigation, so it is displayed over the Bosch app.

You can test how it routes (the directions it provides from point A to B) on the phone app, or Nyon itself. GPS is solid and it knows where you are in actual use but the routing back-end is abysmal. I live very close to all 3 bridges connecting Brooklyn to Manhattan and it tries to route me to a ferry to get to Manhattan, crazy! Also its engine needs a lot of work when you import your own routes, unless you are directly near a waypoint and the GPS gets an accurate vector it will confuse itself and try to route you back to the waypoint even though you may be already at the next waypoint. Like if I start a ride and I happen to be halfway to the destination it will route you back to the start (farther away) before it can guide you along.

 

[TomWilcox]

You can test how it routes (the directions it provides from point A to B) on the phone app, or Nyon itself. GPS is solid and it knows where you are in actual use but the routing back-end is abysmal. I live very close to all 3 bridges connecting Brooklyn to Manhattan and it tries to route me to a ferry to get to Manhattan, crazy! Also its engine needs a lot of work when you import your own routes, unless you are directly near a waypoint and the GPS gets an accurate vector it will confuse itself and try to route you back to the waypoint even though you may be already at the next waypoint. Like if I start a ride and I happen to be halfway to the destination it will route you back to the start (farther away) before it can guide you along.

I agree. Personally I find this the most serious flaw. There are many times when you want to join a route half way through, or pause the route guidance because you want to detour for a while. Sometime I only need route guidance on the way back along a route. Nyon has a hard time in these situations. I think this is because the software still tries to compute the navigation between waypoints and often there are too few waypoints. Often just the destination waypoint or the start/stop waypoint on a return journey. So when you start navigation somewhere along the route, the software can only see the beginning A and end point B and tries to take you back home to point A because its closer. The software doesn't seem to see the route. This happens on both routes calculated in real time and saved routes that are downloaded. Unfortunately, even if you manually navigate to the route, the route you have downloaded or want to follow may not be the route the bike now wants you to take if the conditions or settings are different. For example, you may have a scenic route that you want to follow, but when you manually join this route and turn on guidance, a new route is generated that may be quickest or shortest, or some other variation, because the routes are computer generated between way points. The fix would be to have the software put an invisible waypoint at every turn along the route, and then when you turn on the guidance, it would navigate to the nearest turn. Bosch seems to have great ideas, but still needs to iron out the details.

 

[peterh_nz]

Yes, the cycle routing in Nyon 21 and Bosch Ebike Connect Is an ongoing disappointing saga.

An example of the flawed routing engine is attached. The planned route follows an official designated cycle path and, in fact , starts and finishes on the path. The cycle path is shown on the map (other OSM based routing apps use the path). However Nyon/EBC "refuse" to use the path. As you can see, the worst case has the routing diverting onto the motorway. That's so obviously ludicrous it's not dangerous but I can envisage other scenarios being dangerous.

On a positive note, there may have been some recent improvements with importing GPXs and allowing to simply follow the track.

Cheers

Peter

 

[fooferdoggie]

Here’s a question. I really love my new Nyon on my new Homage. I wonder if anyone has considered buying a backup for the Nyon computer. If it got lost or dropped and broken, one would seem stuck on any more riding until a new Nyon computer showed up/

that would be expensive. I use the few mount in back to secure it so I don't have to take it off.

 

[BlackHand]

That's quite the hypothetical, for navigation in case you get lost, carry a phone? If your Nyon breaks you wouldn't be able to power on your bike so yeah you can buy 2 Nyons but more importantly, how do you sleep at night then, do you have 2 of everything? (just being cheeky, no offense intended)

There do seem to be quite a few EBR members here who have spare ebikes...

 

[fooferdoggie]

There do seem to be quite a few EBR members here who have spare ebikes...

I thought about it but thats why I bought bosch because ti s so reliable. though I wish I had a second bike an analog one.

 

[smitty]

There do seem to be quite a few EBR members here who have spare ebikes...

There do seem to be quite a few EBR members here who have spare ebikes...

I sleep pretty well. And I like to remove my computer an bring it inside when the weather gets colder, so I have never put the screw in to keep it in permanently. I only have one R & M bike, so my concern if accidentally dropping it or losing it for some reason, $314 doesn’t sound much against a12K bike, but I’m 84 and can certainly afford it…

 

[Vim Fuego]

A few days use of my upgraded Nyon'21 (from Intuvia) and i'm really pleased. Routing works really well for me, once I worked out it had an obsession with wanting to go to within a few metres of the programmed start point, and if you didn't do that, it would forever try and re-route you back to the beginning, until you changed "From Origin" to "From Next Waypoint".

Good Stuff

1. I found mapping and routing to be really very good on the whole, with rides planned and executed without error.
2. I liked the stats that get uploaded to the app/website, and the sync is seamless. (Google Pixel 5)
3. The widgets and customisation are really very very good, and extremely well designed, the unit is fast to scroll between screens and easy to read.
4. I like the change in these colours for riding modes, doesn't matter what screen you are on, you know what mode you are in.
5. The You/Engine effort stat is particularly good, and I like the website tracking monthly use to encourage me to beat it next month.

Not so good

1. I had initially some GPS lock-on issues, where a ride had missing data, but it's not occurred again.
2. An "End Ride" would be nice, rather than waiting for it to decide things are done (still not sure how it decides this).
3. Charging extra for the lock option is a bit tight, it doesn't appear like it's a deterrent, as there is no visible indicator to a thief.

Things That Would Improve The Product

1. Media Controls Widgets (Play/Pause/Back/Next), so my phone can stay permanently in my pocket.
2. Phone Notifications Widget, so my phone can stay permanently in my pocket.
3. If you buy the Lock IAP, they send you a sticker in the post if you provide the purchase receipt, so a potential thief knows it's not worth it.