SRAM Wireless Electronic Road Group Spotted (Again) at Tour Down Under Warmups

You can see the hole drilled for the pivot, it’s quite clearly a latch to hold the battery in place and not a charging port cover. I assume you will get a charging station to keep in your house and you’ll remove the batteries from the derailleurs so you can leave the bike in the shed.

This is really cool, I think Sram has more than answered the frequency issue, the only thing I can think of is the hassle of charging all of those batteries…

Nice group. So if SRAM has the same charging intervals as Shimano Di2 and those are the top ‘latches’ to remove/install batteries, only has to be done 4-6 times a year for pros, 1-3 times for us mere mortals.

Have to agree they look like latches. Also, notice the symmetry between the front and rear derailleurs: They seem to be using the same box on the back, which looks to be a removable battery pack.

I would bet they are batteries you can remove to charge. This would let you pull a dead pack and put a fresh one on without waiting to recharge. Since they’re smaller, I would bet they could pull off that thought with less cash than the bigger Shimano system. They also probably don’t last as long between charges. Sounds like a decent engineering decision: shorter battery life but easier to simply swap and through the dead batteries on the charger while you’re out. Kinda like the rechargable hand tools we’ve got now. One spare battery is probably $40.

The wireless part is appealing, but the cynic in me wonders if SRAM saw how much Shimano is asking for Di2 batteries and decided it was a good idea to require 3+ charged batteries to ensure a bike that can shift through all of its gears.

re wireless hydraulic disc brakes:

While I agree that Sam’s comment may have been in jest, electronically actuated hydraulics would offer a huge advantage over any other system because you could map virtually any fluid pressure curve to the lever travel.

Of course, this could bring new meaning to “battery died.”

Replaceable/removable batteries on both derailleurs. Not sure if they have improved the retention mechanism yet, but you can lose the batteries on a ride if they aren’t properly secured. They do have to be removed to charge, which can be a pain if you take off on your ride and forget to grab them. Makes setting up a bike a breeze, not having so many wires. Shifting is reliable and the levers actually took a little more force to actuate than I was expecting. Wonder if they break in a little over time.

Your competition is already working to hack your wireless shifters.

“ALL YOUR SHIFT ARE BELONG TO US”

***I mean near a plug with a long cord

So cool. Here’s hoping speeds are just set via software and there’s no more BS about derailleur speeds like Shimano did w/ changing 10 to 11.

What was ever wrong with friction down tube levers?

I reckon this whole carbon fibre thing is just a fad…

Interesting stuff. Thanks Jayson…I love your http://www.gravelcyclist.com website. I hope it continues to grow.

Randall –
re wireless hydraulic disc brakes

I’m going to go out on a limb and say that brake feedback will be a very, very difficult thing for e-hydro brakes to get anywhere near a hydro system, or even a cable system.

Feedback is critical to proper braking. It is not critical to shifting an indexed gear system.
E-shifters and wireless shifters solve some issue and increase performance. I don’t see how e-hydro brakes solve anything, especially with internal cable routing. Mapping a pressure curve is likely only a benefit for those with severely limited grip strength and I’d wonder if such a person could ride a bike anyway. Furthermore, such a system is travel based. The best brake systems are pressure based – makes it much less likely you don’t inadvertently “grab” way too much brake in a panic situation.
I guess technically one could put a pressure sensor and make an e-hydro pressure based, but it would seem to be taking a “Rune Goldberg” approach to achieve what standard hydro brakes achieve.

Regarding battery life, yes the signal to shift uses very little battery, but won’t there be some additional drain compared to a wired system as each derailleur must constantly scan for a shift signal? Not that it is insurmountable or even an issue. Just sayin

I don’t see what is the big deal of having two derailleur versus one. Just charge all of the derailleur batteries at the same time. It looks like they’re easy enough to remove.

@PT
Your correct, servo motors could be used.
I’d still question how much feedback could be provided, although improvement are always being made (see something like electric steering)
And I still question what problem sans bleeding maintenance is being solved by going this route. Finally there would be the cost of a servomotor and accompanying feedback controls required to coordinate with desired braking pressure.

this is great. think it’s a big jump. I hope the security protocol is inaccessible to hackers, would be nothing good that someone handle the changes.

This is great, because it will force shimano to improve their game a lot. Campy prices are way too high, so shimano is alone in the electronic groupsets right now.

One thing I can tell you for sure, this new groupset is gonna be uber-expensive. Way beyond dura-ace di2; to start off, sram will have to cover themselves for any typical recall…

The patent describes communications chips that include encryption, which the protocol supports. I design and code encryption systems for a living. A quick read of the docs shows the tools are there to make a system that’s secure against the level of attackers who would care about cyclists or bike races. (i.e. not the NSA, who has many more resources).

The communications protocol is an industrial control one designed to work in an electrically noisy environment. Much of the patent concerns ensuring the commands reach the deraileurs correctly. While that is not proof against inteference (“jamming”) it should be much more resistant than a naive imlementation. It looks like Sram did their research on this.

My only concern is how the levers work- left for up and right for down on the rear, and push both to shift the front. Seems clumsy. But there’s no reason that Sram could not implement a sequential system where front shifts were automatic. If front shifts are reliable there is no need for the user to signal them manually. Hopefully the user could tune the crossover points to personal preference and gearing as is allowed on some of the Di2 systems modded to do sequential shifting.

I really hope this will stir up the competition, resulting in lower prices and faster progress. Can’t wait enought for moment when electronical shifting will achieve similar price level as mechanical. Imagine affordable 105 level wireless group, what a bliss.

Besides, electronic means better cross manufacter component compatibility, since it’s easier to hack. It might be possible to use SRAM derailleurs with Shimano shifters or vice versa. This way shifters became effectively just brake handles.

@eric – SRAM did state this system will have sequential shifting. They said that the right shifter will equate to harder gears and actuating the left shifter will equate to easier gears. They stated that if the rider would like to manually change the position of the front derailleur, the rider can push both levers inward at the same time to make this front der. shift.

Idea: If it goes to electronically controlled braking, pull on one lever (you choose which) and the system intelligently uses both calipers to provide optimal braking. Once the rider pulls on both at once (slightly), it overrides this feature, turning it off for the current braking cycle, but the rider could typically use just one brake lever to actuate both calipers as determined by the speed of the pull on the lever and the distance the rider pulls on the lever…..

but more importantly, SRAM needs to team up with the automatic shifting algorithm folks and incorporate that into their new component package!

I also think that with electronic shifting and hydraulic braking, we no longer need the current brake lever design. A two finger trigger that you pull back into the hood could be more ergonomic, effective and aero….

“the new electronic group is the lightest battery-powered shifting system to be offered”

Lightest in a category of one? Shocka!

You can see a little more of the SRAM drivetrain in the video I shot during the ride:

http://www.gravelcyclist.com/videos/tour-down-under-2015-the-ag2r-team-sky-movistar-training-ride-video/

Before getting carried away, it must be noted that being ‘hack proof’ wirelessly doesn’t infer that its ‘jam proof’.

Somebody can really play punk at a race with some 2.4ghz frequency jammers. Imagine being unable to shift gears for that 10 seconds up the steepest grades of the Alp d’huez or Zoncolan ….

It won’t be a laughing matter when that happens.