Thursday, April 26, 2007

Programming my Avenir RC3 Bike Computer

This was really frustrating, and unnecessarily so. I think every company today that sells a device that requires some level of programming has an obligation to put its manuals online, and ensure that they are crawled and hence searchable. That does not seem to be the case with this bike computer, so at this point I'm left to my "best guess" as to how to program it.

So here goes. I visited http://www.sheldonbrown.com/cyclecomputer_calibration.html and found an excellent calibration chart for your computer, based on the size of your tire, which is exactly correct. There are six different groups of computers, and hence six different values I can punch in. My tire size is 700x23, so the choices, from Group A - F, are 81.56, 222, 210, 333, 1302, 2097. After futzing around with my bike computer for a long time, I learned that if you hold the right button down while the computer is on the screen showing the time, you can program the time. If you hold it down while it is on the odometer, you can program the wheel size. Since it had four digits, and the first was a 2 (did this mean it was suggested?) Entered the 2097 number. I won't know for sure if this is accurate until I either find my manual (which is unlikely since the computer is many years old), or ride along side somebody with a properly calibrated computer...

OK, enough for now. It would have been less stress to buy a new bike computer, with directions in the box and on-line.

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