In-Ride Heatmaps – Hammerhead & Suunto Partner to Innovate and Expand
There are not many ideal partnerships where two companies have truly complementary and mutually beneficial products. Suunto and Hammerhead are a great example. Suunto is a Finnish sporting device company that was born in the rugged outdoors almost 90 years ago. Their core products are sport watches, dive watches, dive computers, compasses, and key accessories for those pursuits. Hammerhead is a young, innovative bike computer maker with one product: the Karoo 2.
The vision is to offer cyclists and multisport athletes a complete solution for their performance tracking, training efforts, and route finding across all their devices. Athletes can now ride with their Karoo 2 and run, swim, and hike with their Suunto watch. All workouts are visible in the Suunto App for performance analysis and can be shared with 200 other tools that are part of Suunto’s connected network. There are some innovative new features and changes available now:
- Suunto heatmaps on Karoo 2 maps
- Suunto planned routes flow to Karoo 2
- Karoo 2 rides flow to Suunto app
- Suunto.com selling Karoo 2 in select European countries
This is a holistic technology and business relationship. The companies integrated their apps and data so that the two function as one. It immediately creates a virtual device ecosystem to compete with Garmin and Wahoo. And this is the first time a non-Suunto branded product has been sold on Suunto.com.
Suunto Heatmaps for Real-time Mapping
The two companies are leading with something cool! Many platforms already have heatmap data you can use for route building before you ride. The Karoo 2 is the first cycling computer to have heatmap data on the device for dynamic route planning while on a ride. If you have a Karoo 2, you do not need a Suunto watch to get this now – you just need a Suunto account on their app.
The intent of the heatmap data is to let you see what is around you to make routing decisions on the fly to follow popular roads. It works on roads, trails, and gravel. This is not a full-featured heatmap route builder on device yet, but it does let you do quick and simple rerouting on the Karoo 2. There is more to come, but this use case is likely to make most people happy.
The idea is that you are out on a ride, and you want to detour to popular roads or paths. The heatmap data are projected on your map in the red highlighting. You can turn them on and off with a touch of the new little flame icon on the left side of the screen. If you want to route to an interesting looking road, you simply long-touch the screen and zoom and scroll as needed to position the blue pin icon on the road where you want to be. The Karoo 2 will do the routing as shown in the picture.
Heatmap Setup
This magic does not automatically happen; you need to do a few simple steps to turn it on.
- Update Karoo 2 Firmware
- Create a Suunto account
- Connect your Hammerhead Dashboard to your Suunto account
- Download the updated maps
- Go out and ride
The first step is to update your Karoo firmware. This may happen automatically but be sure you have the latest before you continue. You will know, because your Karoo 2 will have a new “Suunto Heatmaps” selection on the Settings menu. (The setting does not do anything, just tells you it is there and how to use it.)
Download the Suunto mobile app and create a Suunto account if you do not already have one. Then, link your Hammerhead Dashboard to your Suunto account. This is nothing special; Suunto is now an option in the Hammerhead Dashboard Accounts section. Do the usual connect and then a few minutes later it will show up on your Karoo 2.
The obvious step, that I initially forgot, is to download the map updates. That is not automatic. There is a second selection next to each map for its companion heatmap data. The additional heatmap maps I downloaded were about 25% of the main map’s file size, so that might impact you if you are downloading a continent. With 32GB of total storage, you probably will not fill up your device with heatmap data.
App & Data Integration
The other two immediate changes are sharing the rider and route planning data between platforms. If you build routes in Suunto, those will automatically flow over to the Hammerhead Dashboard and then into your Karoo 2. This would let you build routes using the heatmap data, or just offer another way to create a route.
On the flip side, when you finish a ride, it will automatically push into Suunto’s app as if you did the ride in Suunto. This is great, because it gives you one platform for all your multisport data, and Suunto’s analysis tools are more mature than Hammerhead’s. And where it gets even more exciting is that Suunto has dozens of third-party services you can connect with to further share your Karoo 2 ride data. This combination vastly expands the power of the Karoo 2 riding data and access.
What’s Next
The two have big plans beyond these initial features and integrations, so stay tuned. Suunto’s strategy is to build the best possible offerings through partnerships. This is a crucial step towards that end. Hammerhead likes to continuously innovate and release major new features, and Suunto wants to bring that into their shared culture as they expand together. This is shaping up to be a banner year for triathlon technology!
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