iBike Dash Battery Life

[Foothills Rider]

I've read that most Dash useerrs are getting hours per charge with both iPhones and iPods. Not so with me. Usually after a 75-90 minute ride, I am down to minimal charge on the battery. Even with the spare battery, after 3 hours or so, I am just about drained (well, the iPod is....). Today, I powered the iPod (3d gen) to 100%, and put it into the booth and started the Dash program, and just let it sit. Within 1:45 min of just sitting, my battery was down to 25%. I have WiFi turned off, brightness at the highest level.

Suggestions?

B.

[Velocomp]

Try your experiment one more time, this time without plugging your iPod into the phone booth.

Please let us know how long your iPod goes until it gets to 25% life.

[Foothills Rider]

Good evening, John....3 hours exactly to each 25% battery strength with Dash turned on, but NOT in the phone booth...Right after I posted this afternoon, I went for a ride with the Dash...It had a 60% charge (iPod) and a fully charged spare battery, and the Dash shut off due to low battery one hour and 50 minutes into the ride. Again, WiFi off, highest brightness. Thanks, as always, for your time and guidance, John....

[Velocomp]

It sounds like your Phone Booth may using too much energy. Please send it to us and we'll swap-out.

I'm a bit surprised about your iPod, though; since it has no GPS and WiFi is off it should run a long time. I will do some experiments here to see what our iPod does.

[Foothills Rider]

John, Thanks, but I am willing to bet the battery power is a 3d Gen iPod Touch issue, not Dash. There seems to be some buzz on different forums on decreased battery life with at least some 3d gen iPod Touches, especially with one of the software upgrades. My power issues sound very much in line with what I have read with quite a few other 3d gen Touch users. I have a friend at work with an iPhone. I may ask him if he'd download the app, and see how long his battery handles the iBike app in the phone booth...I bet it will do well.
I did do some secondary changes on my Touch today (brighness down a bit, fetch off, location services off, etc...), based upon what some forum folks had suggested for extending battery life. I did a lunch and an after work ride (2 rides, total of 1:44 min, 30.4 miles, with the latter ride being a 19 mile trainer ride), and the battery was at 60% after those (I did not load the spare battery). I feel better about the results today.
I appreciate your offer for a swap out...You run a great company and a great service, but I think the swap might not result in any dramatic changes. The iBike Dash is great...I think some percentage of 3d Gen Touch units may have a battery life issue...For the time being, I am going to see how much battery life I can coax out of this Touch....
As always, thanks.

Bill

[Steve_Davidson]

John, Thanks, but I am willing to bet the battery power is a 3d Gen iPod Touch issue, not Dash. There seems to be some buzz on different forums on decreased battery life with at least some 3d gen iPod Touches, especially with one of the software upgrades. My power issues sound very much in line with what I have read with quite a few other 3d gen Touch users. I have a friend at work with an iPhone. I may ask him if he'd download the app, and see how long his battery handles the iBike app in the phone booth...I bet it will do well.
I did do some secondary changes on my Touch today (brighness down a bit, fetch off, location services off, etc...), based upon what some forum folks had suggested for extending battery life. I did a lunch and an after work ride (2 rides, total of 1:44 min, 30.4 miles, with the latter ride being a 19 mile trainer ride), and the battery was at 60% after those (I did not load the spare battery). I feel better about the results today.
I appreciate your offer for a swap out...You run a great company and a great service, but I think the swap might not result in any dramatic changes. The iBike Dash is great...I think some percentage of 3d Gen Touch units may have a battery life issue...For the time being, I am going to see how much battery life I can coax out of this Touch....
As always, thanks.

Bill

Bill, I've found that the screen brightness makes a huge difference to the length of time you get per charge on the ipod even with all the other features switched off.

cheers

Steve

[Foothills Rider]

Thanks, Steve. You're right. I live in sunny, sunny Texas, so I have to dial in the brightness to the minimal brightness which allows me to read it without strain. After a 75 minutes ride at lunch, I had 75% battery life remaining. If you have the iPod, does that sound close to the battery performance you see?

Bill

[DennyS]

Foothills Rider, I have the opposite experience. On the sunny sunny days, I have to crank up the brightness to the MAX to see anything, and during the evenings and nights is back to minimum, to see the road ahead of me

[Foothills Rider]

Hi Denny, I think we agree. I was saying that if I crank it to max brightness during the day, it's very easy to read, but drains the battery pretty fast. I have to dial down just a bit in order to prolong the battery charge, and the challenge for me is to find, how much can I dim it before reading it is impossible in the sunlight?

[Velocomp]

I am running a test with an iPod touch, latest generation, WiFi on, screen at full brightness, iBike app running, plugged in to Phone Booth. No external battery (iBike rechargeable battery) is being used.

After 90 minutes of continuous operation the iTouch battery indicator shows about 80% battery life remaining. That would put this unit's operating life at nearly 6 hours, without the rechargeable battery.

Update: after 180 minutes, battery indicator is at about 50%.

Battery life will be significantly longer if WiFi is turned off. The rechargeable battery would add about 90 minutes more...

[Foothills Rider]

Steve and Denny, Do you guys have the 3d gen or latest (4th?). Are you numbers like John's, or more like mine? I still get the feeling this may be a 3d gen iPod issue, based upon what some forum Apple forum readers are writing about their 3d gen iTouch units.

Thanks!

Bill

[DennyS]

I am on iPhone 3GS a bit over 1 year old model, and have done various tests with BT on/off, Wifi on/off, 3G on/off, and GPS on/off. I get great life in Airplane mode, but not feel comfortable doing longer rides with any options on, ie listening to music via BT. When I start turning them off, as expected I extend the battery life. I have no numbers for my case, but will try to document the battery usage (for my own reference), and can share it here if anyone cares.

[commodore]

Initially I suffered the same but JH put me straight and I've just done a 3 day jaunt in South africa with the Dash on my mountain bike. I took 3 batteries with me and changed them every 90 minutes. The first day I rode for just under 6 hours and had 81% left on the iPhone at the end. Day 2 was only 3 hours so no prob. Day 3 was 5 hours with 68% left on the iPhone at the end. This day was rough dirt rodas all the way.

[tubesing]

Hello all.
I have a long ride event next Sunday and I think we take about 8-9 hours to finish the goal.
So I need information of how to save long life for iBike Dash+Power.
Today I tried with Flight Mode on iPhone 4 so 2hours with no main battery consumption this means rechargeable iBike battery has 2 hours life at this mode.
But at this setting iBike didn't record the GPS data then. I need my GPS data so the Flight Mode is not for me.
Has anyone a idea for this?
I have iPhone4 and 2 iBike Dash batteries and I need record my power data and GPS logs for 9 hours.

Thank you,
Takashi

[wavestar]

I have an iPhone 4 and ipod touch and the complimentary Dash units for each. Our team does several 100km pace training rides per week. Both units are low on juice between 3 and 3 1/2 hours. We have a 160km charity ride coming up this weekend, and unless there is some solution to the battery life issues, my only option appears to be carrying a spare battery. Is this correct?

[racerfern]

I'm on a Gen 1 iTouch and only have faster battery consumption if the brightness is way up or on automatic. I tend to run the brightness at about 50% during bright mid-day and about 25-30% the rest of the time. I get about 6 hours without switching to a spare battery so I see nine hours as not being a problem with one spare battery switch. I do have an older unit that has less horsepower but I also "assume" it has a smaller and certainly older battery. I would expect new units to give comparable times.

Bottom line, I think screen brightness is the single most important factor.

[tubesing]

Thank you wavestar and Fernando!
I will try my brightness darker and no wifi, no bluetooth.
Also I have now 3 more chargeable batteries

[tubesing]

Hi,
I checked about 10 times of 5 external batteries' consumption while charging iPhone 4, I noticed that about half of energies still left in batteries when the charging process ended.
Almost all of the batteries were consumed about 300~400mAh while those are charged about 800mAh I checked by my measurement tool(Hyperion EOS0720i).

So it seems that the battery is discharged in iBike Dash at 1C(900mA) untill voltage drop to 3.7V.
In my opinion the charge-pump circuit's voltage setting is a bit low at this version and maybe it can be up more 0.1V will work in safe.

How about this idea John?
If it possible to change the threshold value please consider it.

Thanks,