Bryton Rider 450: tips and tricks for use on the bike

Tuesday, 23 June, 2020

I’ve written earlier about tips and tricks for route planning with the Rider 450, so in this post I wanted to cover tips for actually using the unit on the bike. So in no particular order:

bryton_rider_450.jpg

  • Fit: out-of-the-box the Rider 450 comes with a standard handlebar mount. It’s cheap and works well enough, but uses up valuable bar space. There are two other options worth considering: a stem mount or out-in-front mount. The former is a bit more efficient on space, but perhaps not quite so good if you are tucked down.

  • Learn the Buttons: it goes without saying, learn how to use the unit.

    • 1. Two Operating Modes: I found it slightly counter intuitive to have two different modes. A “cycling” mode and a “settings” mode which you can switch between. The RightTop is a “start” or “OK” button depending which mode you are in, whilst the RIghtBottom is a “pause/stop” or “Back” button.
    • 2. Zoom/Scroll: the two buttons on the left are for scrolling up and lists, except when you are using the map when they zoom in and out (useful!)
    • 3. Map Modes: the BottomLeft changes between cycling mode screens. There are up to 5 data screens you can set up/switch off (in the app) which support a range of different layouts, followed by a navigating/map screen.
    • 4. Power/Light: the BottomRight is for power and light.
    • 5. Reset: the 450 has frozen twice on me now. To reset you need to hold all four side buttons and then release. It will take the GPS sometime to get satellite lock so be patient.
  • Learn the Icons: there are a number of icons at the top and bottom of the screen. There is an efficient use of space so know that they mean as they are useful. For example, the arrows indicate if you are riding above or below the average speed.

  • Start/Stop a Ride: be careful pausing a ride as my natural inclination is that once you pause a ride, you press the same button to start again. But no! That stops the ride and all the recording that goes along with it. Unless you really have to, just left the auto-pause kick in and then restart. Leave the buttons alone!

  • Laggy Screens: all the screens are very responsive except for the map and data sync screens. If you load one of these, wait a few seconds for them to complete.

  • Notifications: these are a step ahead of the competition as you can set up the app to send notifications from any app (not just texts). This is great, however bear in mind it is a 3-line notification that is limited to 11 characters (ish) of text per line. It shows the app, the sender’s name and the message. Anything longer that 11 characters will be truncated. This is frustrating because how hard would it be to allow the notification to fill the screen and then enable you to scroll through it? That’s any comments aside regarding how safe that might be to do.

  • Sensors: the Rider 450 supports bluetooth and ANT+ sensors. I’ve fitted a cadence sensor which works flawlessly. No problems there.

  • Bugs: so far I’ve found the following two significant bugs:

    • Distance to Go: if you are following a route then the map page which show you distance to go to the finish. Except it overestimates this by 15-20%. Quite why I’m not sure as I know the route length from the route planning application and when I get to the end the distance is the same
    • Auto Lap By Distance: another useful feature so you can see your splits except I can’t get the setting to sync across from the app to the Rider 450, but you can set it on the Rider 450 itself.

SSRS Subreport Reports “Error” for a New Data Column

Tuesday, 23 June, 2020

This “bug” took me a while to track down… I have a report which embeds a subreport and returns the data to it. Along the way I realised the subreport needed an additional column. I edited the SQL in the Dataset and then reran the subreport. It loaded correctly. I then went back to my main report and ran it to find that the new column was returning “Error” for all values.

I tried recreating the subreport Dataset, the embedded object in the main report, and eventually the whole subreport itself. None of these worked. What was actually causing the problem was the Visual Studio cache that was created when it first ran the main report. Because I had subsequently edited the subreport, it was returning an extra column which it wasn’t expecting and so throwing an error. I’m not sure if there is front-end way of rebuilding the cache, however the simplest solution was to delete the .data file in the report folder, and the “bin” subfolder. These are then rebuilt the next time the project is opened.

Bryton Rider 450: route planning tips and tricks

Friday, 19 June, 2020

I recently took delivery of a Bryton Rider 450 which, whilst not as polished as the offerings from Garmin or Wahoo, is significantly cheaper. The 450 sports GNSS support across 5 different satellite systems, on-board OpenStreeMap maps, and ANT+/BT connectivity. The specs are certainly up there, but parts of the product are a little rough at the edges.

bryton_rider_450.jpg

This post provides a number of tips for working with mapping on the 450. In no particular order:

  • Bryton Active App: install the Bryton Active app
  • Install Maps: maps come pre-installed but if your locale isn’t already on there, head over to the Bryton Support area and then click on the “Download” menu item on the left and then click “Map” (on the left menu). From here you can download all of the maps, along with instructions for installing them
  • Route Planning: Bryton provide their own route planning tool both on the Bryton Active website, as well as in the app. They’re both a little clunky and not as good as alternatives such as RideWithGPS or MapMyRide however they do work reasonably well once you’ve got used to their foibles
  • Route Syncing: remember that the app syncs the route to the Bryton Active website. You then need to do a “Data Sync” on the 450 which will download the route
  • Sync a Route: if you are planning a route in the app, then remember to hit the “up arrow” in the top-right corner to upload the app to your Bryton Active account. You will then see the route under “My Routes” (in the app) - tap on it to show the route, then hit the ellipses in the top right corner and select “Download routes to device”. You can now do a “Data Sync” and it will appear on your 450
  • Syncing on the Go: if you are route planning when you are away from house wifi then the 450 won’t be able to do a wifi sync. The workaround is to set your phone up as a wifi hotspot and connect the 450 to it. It will then be able to do a “Data Sync”; it does appear to do this over over bluetooth but it doesn’t seem to be as consistent
  • Undo Button:frustratingly there is no “undo” button on either the app or Bryton Active website for planning a route, however the waypoints are in the list on the left hand side (hidden in a pop out panel in the app) and you just need to delete the last point(s) to edit your route as you go. It works!
  • Importing Routes: if you use RideWithGPS there is account syncing built in to the app (although Ive not used it), whilst you can import a GPX or FIT file from any site that can export them. MapMyRide (which seems to have more reliable road routing) exports GPX. The USB import is the most reliable way to get these files on to your PC: plug the 450 in to a USB port then copy the file to the “ExtraFiles” folder
  • Turn by turn navigation: The easiest way to guarantee this is to create the route on the Bryton Active website. It works well although is reliant on the quality of the underlying maps. It can work with third party maps but depends on the ability of the export so your mileage might vary.

What makes the above mildly frustrating is that none of it is complicated and could be made so much easier with a decent manual and forum. The manual is mediocre and there is no forum to address these, although the Facebook page is pretty active. The 450 is a great device for the money so get the best out of it!

SSRS Subreport that Returns No Data Doesn’t Display

Friday, 19 June, 2020

I’ve been designing a new SSRS report this week which has a number of subreports in it. For clarity, what I actually wanted was the title of the subreport to display even if there is no data, however in these instances nothing was displaying. As is often the case with SSRS, getting to the bottom of why something is happening can be tricky.

When a subreport has no data, SSRS’s default action is show nothing. This is actually the result of the subreport’s dataset returning nothing which then hides the subreport container in the main report. In order to show non-data related items in the subreport the solution is actually quite simple: create another dataset in the subreport that returns some data. And nothing is more simple than

select ' '