I'm 17, and I got tired of digging my phone out of my jersey mid-ride sooo I built a mount instead
Hello, my name is William. I'm 17 years old, and I've started a new project: creating a mount that turns your smartwatch into a bike computer.
First, I want to explain what led to this project. I've been road biking for around 3 years now, and I've always used a smartwatch to track my workouts and my phone to tell me (with the speaker on max volume) which directions to take. However, most of the time I can't hear what my phone tells me to do, and it forces me to take it out of my jersey to take a quick look. Gotta say, my one-hand-on-the-handlebar skills are getting better every day lol... sooo that was my first problem: seeing where I was going. And I wasn't about to buy a phone mount to put it on my handlebar. That is wayyy too bulky, and it would only last like 1–2 hours with my crappy battery life of my iphone XR ):. That was problem one.
Problem two started showing up once I began training more seriously: how could I make sure I was maintaining a good speed or a good wattage every now and then? I had to check my watch on my wrist, which is a skill on its own, but it started getting a little dangerous. (The cheap cyclometer can't connect to my TrainingPeaks so that's a no and I'm a big stats guy.
The solution was clearly buying a bike computer. But as a triathlete, I had many other things to buy, like a LOT of things and I wasn't able to justify that purchase. So I did what anyone else with CAD knowledge would do: I hopped on Fusion 360.
I managed to model a mount for the Coros Pace 3. After about 6 months of working on the project on and off, I'm glad to say I'm finally able to showcase what I've built.
So here's everything I used:
- 2x M5 35mm screws
- 2x 10mm spacers (for my bike)
- 1 3D-printed mount
That's it!
Installing it...
Jeez, that was the hardest part. Believe it or not, making the mount was easy. It was figuring out the best way to attach it to my handlebar, and in the future, making it able to attach to any handlebar.
After that, finding the average screw size was even harder. For now, there is only one size setting for the distance from the mount to the handlebar stem.
Then came another problem: if the model is in plastic, how do you make sure they aren't crushed by the torque of the screws? For now, I don't have an injection molding machine and can't overmold on top of an aluminum piece.
You can even choose if you want to keep your watch bands or remove them — 2 in 1!
I'm currently designing one for Apple Watch and one for Garmin ;)
If you guys want to know more, I think I could create a thread or a page or something. I'm new to reddit, so ill keep you guys updated!