A rival for Garmin - Bryton GPS units

[Phil21]

Bryton Rider 50 And Rider 30 GPS Units – First Look - BikeRadar

and

Just in: Bryton Rider 50 GPS cycle computer | road.cc | The website for pedal powered people: Road cycling, commuting, leisure cycling and racing. Voted the UK's number 1 cycling website at the 2010 BikeBiz awards.


Posted for info only, I do not have one. Nice to see Garmin getting some competition though.

[fuaran]

Interesting.
I notice it says its using OpenStreetMap based maps - from looking at the photos, it just seems to be standard Mapnik images. Seems rather strange, wouldn't it would make more sense to use some sort of vector format maps?

There are a few other rivals for Garmin anyway, eg Globablsat or Holux make a few outdoor/training GPS devices. And think Decathlon have had a few own brand things as well. Though I don't know if any of them are any good, or easily available in the UK.

[GrahamG]

Still not taking aa batteries though!

[andygates]

I notice it says its using OpenStreetMap based maps - from looking at the photos, it just seems to be standard Mapnik images. Seems rather strange, wouldn't it would make more sense to use some sort of vector format maps?

Very odd.  I'll wager it's using vector data (routing's impossible without it) and rendering it on the fly in a style that looks a lot like standard OSM.

(Hackability: If only it could be given the Cloudmade Midnight Commander map style, for Bourne coolness, I'd be tempted! If it is rendering on the fly, it'll just be a stylesheet... no info on the OSM wiki yet, and wikipedia just mentions it in passing.)

From Spoke magazine (a bike site in New Zealand):

Bryton New Zealand has already enlisted the Auckland Mountain Bike Club to help map all of Auckland’s MTB trails and plans are afoot to try to map more and more of our country’s trail network. You’ll be able to then plot a course, much like a car GPS, and head out into the bush and get directions. As you can imagine, the possibilities and applications for this are amazing. Clubs will be able to suggest guided rides on their websites that users will be able to plot on their Bryton GPS units or download as GPX files directly on to their units or SD cards, throw into the mix the use of POIs (points of interest) and links to bike shops and cafes and the possibilities are endless. It’s not all in place yet but with this kind of technology it will most likely only be a matter of months before you’ll be able to download a GPX file for a three hour ride in Whakarewarewa.

As soon as we get our hands on a unit we will let you know how they fare out in the real world and in Wellington’s dense bush

[GrahamG]

"how they fare out in the real world and in Wellington’s dense bush"

That made me LOL. I'm such a child.

[rafletcher]

In C+ this month I think.

[JonBuoy]

Garmin in Patent Litigation with Bryton Cycle Computers

On March 21, 2011, Bryton learned that Garmin Ltd. has filed a lawsuit against Bryton on possible patent infringement regarding the appearance and functionality of Rider 30 through media.

[mike]

Garmin in Patent Litigation with Bryton Cycle Computers

nowt to worry about (probably) - garmin, tomtom et al spend fortunes issuing and defending lawsuits against each other.



bloody great news for IP research firms, like what we are