Recording and telemetry

Recording

Two ways: from the home screen menu, "Record a free ride" (no route), or from the ☰ menu while navigating, with "Record". A bar with a red dot shows time and km. Tap it for pause, stop, live data and "Calibrate the mount".

The recording sheet also has the red "SOS by SMS" button; on a free ride you also find it in the home screen ☰ menu. How it works is in SOS by SMS. If you switched on crash detection (trial), it is active while you record.

Controls: "Pause", resume, "Stop and save". The ride goes into "My tracks"; if it has telemetry, the report opens.

Statistics: distance, total time without pauses, moving time, moving average, top speed, climb and descent. If you record while navigating you also get "Planned and actual": planned km and time against what you rode.

If the app closes

Polly writes the ride to the phone while recording. If the app closes or the phone switches off, on restart you get "Recover recording" with date, km and duration: save, continue or discard. At most you lose the last stretch, 200 m or 60 seconds.

How it cleans GPS

It drops positions with more than 30 m of error and impossible jumps (above 252 km/h). Below about 3 km/h it considers the bike stopped. A pause starts a new piece of track, so the map never shows a fake straight line.

Telemetry from the phone's sensors

While recording, Polly reads the accelerometer and gyroscope about 50 times a second and saves one sample per second with average, minimum and maximum: speed, lean, braking, acceleration, lateral acceleration, pitch and altitude.

• Calibration: at the first 2-second stop, with the bike still and upright, Polly learns how the phone is mounted; then it learns the direction of travel. You can redo it with "Calibrate the mount".
• No sensors (or not working): it still records, with estimates from GPS.
• Below about 7 km/h it does not estimate lean; lean and acceleration count for highlights only above about 11 km/h.

The ride report

In "My tracks", on a ride with telemetry, tap "Ride report".

What is in it

• Summary: average, top speed, lean left and right, braking, acceleration, moving time, elevation gain, dirt.
• "Colour the track" by "Speed" (thresholds 30, 60, 90, 120 km/h), "Lean" (10, 20, 30, 40°), "Brake/throttle" (0.1 g and 0.3 g) or "Surface".
• Highlights: max lean left and right, hardest braking, strongest acceleration, top speed. Tap one and the map takes you there.
• Four charts: speed, altitude, lean, acceleration and braking, against distance or time.
• Cursor: tap or drag on a chart and the same line moves on all four, with a dot on the map. You read km, time, speed, lean, acceleration and altitude at that moment.

Export

• "Export GPX (with telemetry)": the track with speed in Garmin format and Polly's data.
• "Export CSV (1 row per second)": time, position, altitude, distance, speed, lean, acceleration, lateral, pitch. Opens in any spreadsheet.

On tablets and iPad, speed and altitude charts also draw live while you ride: see Tablets.

Planned versus actual, ride diary

Record while navigating a route or a track: the ride keeps the planned line. Then open the ride from "My tracks".

• On the map the planned line is a wide blue band under the track you rode; where you left the route there is a numbered diamond.
• Section by section, from stop to stop (or in km blocks): planned and actual km, moving time and dirt, with the difference, and sections not ridden.
• How much of the plan you followed and, for each time you left the route, at which km, for how many km and how far. Off route means more than 60 m from the line.
• Ride diary: notes with photos, pinned to a point of the ride if you want. In GPX export, notes with a point become waypoints; photos stay on the phone.

My roads

Each recorded ride updates, on the phone, the list of roads you have already ridden. Rides recorded earlier are counted too.

• The "My roads" layer, in the map layers menu, shows them on the map in a colour different from the route. It is off by default.
• In loops and Discover an area, "Prefer new roads" recommends the option with the most km never ridden: see Roads you have never ridden.
• If you delete a ride, its roads leave the count.
• No account and nothing sent: it all stays on the phone.

The numbers

50 Hz

sensor reading, saved as 1 sample per second

2 s

stop with the bike upright to calibrate the mount

4

charts linked by one cursor

200 m

of ride lost at most if the phone switches off

30 m

GPS error above which a position is dropped

What it does not do

• Lean is measured by the phone on the handlebar, not a certified frame measurement: at low speed and in tight bends it can differ by a few degrees.
• Braking and acceleration are filtered from vibration: they are not ECU data.
• No cloud: tracks and telemetry stay on the phone until you export them.