Review: Motionize Paddle Edge, updated

I reviewed the Motionize a couple of weeks ago, and my summary was “If I were you, I’d hold off buying it until they can work out some of the problems.”. Well, I’m pleased to say the worst of the problems appear to have been fixed, so I’m giving it a tentative “This might be for you”.

So here’s basically what I said, and what has improved:

  • I complained about app freeze-ups. I’ve paddled it four times since then without a freeze-up, so they’ve possibly fixed that problem. Update: it froze up again a few days after I wrote this.
  • The battery life. I did a 95 minute paddle today and the battery went from 100% to 55%. That’s acceptable battery life versus before when a 90 minute paddle took it from 85% to 5% to a complete shut-down.
  • The paddle display is still pretty sensitive to boat tilt. I doubt there is much they can do about that. I only use it on flat water, which helps. Also, when I wrote that review I’d been doing intervals on the canal and when I was going upstream the display was fine but when I turned downstream it was displaying very wonky data. Now it appears that after a 180 degree turn the wonky data corrects itself after 3 or 4 strokes. Better, but still room for improvement.
  • My complaint about double tap not starting the workout seems like it might have been my mistake, because it’s worked fine for me since then.
  • They put an option on the website to order new sticky mounts. I’ve ordered another one so I can use this device on my V12 as well.

What hasn’t been improved:

  • One thing I forgot to mention last time is the heart rate monitor. Fully 1/2 to 3/4 of the time, it doesn’t see my bluetooth heart rate monitor, either in the “Pair Devices” screen or actually during the workout. Other apps and the Settings screen can see it, but Motionize can’t. And then another time it will see it fine. Very frustrating, especially when people are saying “this could replace my Forerunner”. That recalcitrance when it comes to displaying heart rate is an instant disqualification.
  • Still no improvement in the information it gives you either during the paddle or in the post-workout summary screen.
  • Still no indication of what is sensor data and what is general advice. Obviously “Remember to hydrate” is just general advice, but is “For a better experience, look forward rather than down” general advice, or can they somehow detect that I’m hunching my back? Obviously if they provide all this interesting feedback from a device down near your feet, it’s a pretty good guess that you’re going to be looking down at it rather than counting herons.
  • It’s still trying to connect to the ConnectIQ Garmin Store. I should probably contact tech support about that.
  • And again, not their fault, but I wish there was some solution to the difficulty seeing the screen in bright sunshine.

I get the same warnings every time I train with it. I try to remember to bring the paddle out before my knees (something I’ve been working on for years). If I were Motionize, I would link this advice to a page with drills you can do to correct the problems as it identifies them. Also it tells me things like meters/stroke and paddle depth, and I don’t know if my numbers are good or bad. Again, it would be useful if Motionize gave some feedback on how I compare to other paddlers in my same general age/fitness/ability levels and gave personalized drills and training.

I was thinking about what would be the best use-case for this device, and I think if I were a kayak coach, what I’d do is buy it, and require everybody I coach to buy a couple of the sticky mounts and a RAM mount, and then I’d just loan it to different people between group works out. I’d use that info to get them doing appropriate drills for whatever deficiencies the Motionize points out. I wonder if there’s an opportunity for something like Sean Rice’s PaddleFit online training to use this to really get to know what you need to work on.

Cheap camera mount option

I thought the “hat mount” for my camera isn’t perfect, because I think it moves around a bit and also it puts the side of my face as a static object in the side of the frame. So I was thinking what I really want is something like what Ryan Paroz had at the Gorge – a suction cup mount and a pole to put the camera up high enough so it’s sort of looking over your shoulder. I’ve been looking high and low for a pole, and couldn’t find anything for regular tripod mounts, just for GoPros. The closest I could find was this selfie stick that has a 1/4″ socket on the handle. It was only $6, so I figured it was worth a try.

The result wasn’t terribly bad, except the camera moved over the course of the paddle. I tried to tighten it up afterwards to see if I could make it less likely to move, and I think I stripped the thread a bit. So back to the drawing board.

Actually though, what I think would be really good would be some sort of reverse pendulum. In case you don’t know what I mean by a “reverse pendulum”, here’s my crude drawing:
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Buffalo Paddle Festival

So they had this race last year, I didn’t go, and it was a bit of a mess. Multiple laps around the inside of the harbor in an area that was weedy. It was so bad that racers were stopping to clean off each other’s weeds. Evidently it was a permit problem or something. But this year, they said they had the permit problem licked and planned multiple courses from a nice beach well outside the harbor. The long course was to be 12 miles, and go along the shore to the harbor, enter the harbor and paddle along the inside of the breakwall, then exit the harbor and paddle back along the outside of the breakwall, and then paddle back to the beach. For some odd reason they put the start and finish areas a few hundred meters apart, but no matter. At one point they were talking about having people run along the beach for that few hundred meters, but changed their minds and just had a short finish chute and some great volunteers to catch your boat while you ran for the finish.

On race day (today), it turned out this course would be too hard. There were whitecaps coming straight into shore. One of the local paddlers said he sails out of the harbor and the entrance we were going to have to use to get into the harbor was damn near impossible in these conditions in a sail boat. Plus we’d be running along the outer breakwall with waves pushing us directly into it with rebound waves bashing us from the other side.

The organizer made the last minute decision to do a completely different course. Instead of heading north towards the harbor, we’d be heading south west towards a very visible house on a beach and jetty and turning on a buoy, then coming back to the start where there would be a buoy (but just in the return, not on the start), then back to the first buoy, then back to the finish chute at the RedBull tent. The medium course would just go out to the buoy at the house and then direct to the finish, and the short course would have an even closer buoy then back to the finish. The organizer said that according to his map, each leg to the buoy would be about four miles. (Foreshadowing alert: it wasn’t.)

The start was a bit of a mess – he’d said to go out beyond the breakers, and as soon as everybody was out there he’d sound the horn. There was no start line or buoy, because the guy who was placing buoys was still placing the buoys for the short course. So people weren’t lined up in any coherent manner. I was still trying to drain my bucket from the complete fill I’d gotten going out, and my foot strap was twisted around so I couldn’t see my GPS. When I heard the horn, I said to somebody near by “I think that’s the go signal” and took off. The seas were about 30 degrees off directly abeam, which was a relief, but they still made me slow. There were sets of fairly large waves, maybe four feet high, interspersed with smaller ones about one to two feet. At first I seemed to be the only one going, although Todd came through pretty quickly. As I saw a gap in the big stuff, I shakily reacted down to start my GPS, but instead I saw the big red square indicating that I’d stopped it. I guess it had started when I was untangling my foot strap. I quickly started it again.

A bunch of racers came through, including Jim and John. Everybody seemed to be following Todd, who was to my eye was way too far upwind. There was one guy not very far ahead of me in a v12, and he was bracing more than he was paddling even on the intermediate waves. I couldn’t understand why he was ahead of me – he must have gone past when I was fiddling with my GPS. I was on the same line as everybody else trying to catch this guy.

Dan rarely races these days and initially said he was going to do the short race, but he loves these waves so much that he upgraded to the medium race, and he came through pretty quickly. He was also on a very direct line to the buoy. I decided to go direct as well, and abandoned my attempt to pass the guy in the v12. But I was a little disappointed in myself to see Dennis coming through. Dennis is a local triathlete who has been paddling with us a bit, but today he’s in a sea kayak today because he’s not comfortable in his ski yet. And here he is going faster than me. Up ahead I saw a v10 double flip over, and the two of them were so slow remounting that I was able to pass them. There was a sea kayak over with them so I guess they had help if they needed it. There was also a large coast guard boat standing by near the course line.

At the buoy, I had caught up to the guy in the v12. But I knew that if a wave threw us into each other we’d both be practicing our remounts in difficult conditions, so I gave him a real wide berth. My GPS was beeping at 1km intervals, so I know the turn was about at 3km mark, depending on when my GPS started itself.

After the turn, the waves were now about 30 degrees off my stern beam, not conducive to surfing. But in spite of that, I very quickly passed the guy in the v12, and not long after, Dennis in his Seda Glider. One nice thing about a 180 degree turn in a race is you get to see if there is anybody else behind you. There’d been a couple of people at the start who I hadn’t seen pass me and I didn’t see behind me at the turn. I guess some of them abandoned. Can’t say I blame them.

The rest of the way back was pretty uneventful. Like I said, I wasn’t getting much of a ride off the big stuff, although there was a set of smaller waves that were going almost directly in my direction and I got a bit of help from them. Everybody ahead of me was well ahead, barely visible, although I could see Todd leading the main pack well offshore rather than directly to the turn buoy. I stayed on a direct line. That coast guard boat was still standing by just offshore from our line.

After the turn back up, things were a repeat of the first time only much more lonely. But it was still looking like 3km per leg, so at least I knew it wouldn’t last too long. The guy in the v12 was still behind me, but Dennis wasn’t. I guess he decided to do the medium course. I could barely see some of the leaders rounding the buoy way, way ahead of me.

After the buoy, the route back to the finish is only a little bit further downwind than the second leg, so still not much surfing from the big stuff, although there was still that small swell heading in a favorable direction. I was trying to turn off course to get a diagonal ride on the big waves and then turn back towards the finish between the big ones. It didn’t work very well because I couldn’t get going fast enough to really catch them. I ended up far enough offshore that I was able to turn directly down the big ones straight at the finish and catch them that way. I got two actual fast rides. Not enough to make the race fun, but enough to bring it up from “man I suck at this” nearly all the way to “glad I came”. 

I didn’t want to ride a big wave right into shore and smash up my boat, so I tried to get behind one as I had been taught in Tarifa. It mostly worked except a small breaker caught me – I turned sideways on it and very nearly stayed upright as it broke over me, but I fell over at the last moment. It was shallow enough to stand up so I just started running and dragging the boat. The helpful volunteers came out and took the boat while I did world’s slowest beach run. I crossed the line and two little girls attempted to outdo each other with passing me a ice cold bottle of water, and a mug with two beer tickets and a lunch ticket. That definitely pushed it up into “glad I came” territory.

I heard an amusing story after the race. After the v10 double flipped, one of the paddlers decided he didn’t want to continue but the other one did. So they pulled into the finish and the one who didn’t want to continue swapped out with one of the ski paddlers I’d mentioned who seemed to have dropped out early, and with the substitution they completed the long course. I wonder how they divvied up their two trophies?

Review: Motionize Paddle Edge

Update: I posted an update to this review here.

Summary: If I were you, I’d hold off buying it until they can work out some of the problems.

So they started talking about the Motionize device last year some time, and I was really excited. The idea was that it would put sensors on your boat and paddle and a phone app that would tell you exactly what your paddle stroke was doing, and give you advice on how to make it better. Sort of like an extra pair of “eyes” on your technique. But the device they announced as the first product was an all-singing, all-dancing do-everything monster device with built in phone charging, bluetooth speakers, all in a massive case that you’d somehow have to lash down to your kayak or surfski. And because it attempted to do everything, it cost way too much. It seemed like something you’d want to buy as a club and pass around from paddler to paddler to get some feedback, go off and work on it, and then borrow it back every few weeks to see how you were improving. A few months ago, they announced a stripped down version called the “Paddle Edge” – it just had the sensors, and a mount that you could put your phone into, but it would be up to you to provide a waterproof case for your phone and keep it charged up. And so not only did it fit better on a surfski, it also fit better in your budget. I jumped at the chance.

I’ve been paddling with it for a few weeks, and while it does offer some good advice and coaching, I have a few complaints that I feel really need to be addressed.

  • Probably the most important complaint is that the app freezes up. Probably 25% of the time, it freezes soon after I get on the water. If I’m lucky, I’m in a position to return to the dock and get out and fiddle with the phone to kill the app and restart it, but sometimes I just end up paddling with a useless frozen display staring at me for the whole session.
  • The thing will chew down your phone battery in no time flat. I find the most interesting screen is the one that shows a “top view” of your paddle travelling through the water in real time, indicating if your catch or withdrawal is outside of the recommended zone. But that screen will completely drain my phone’s battery – today it went from 85% to 5% in 75 minutes. This ranks right up there with the freezing problem as reason not to buy until they do something about it.
  • The display of where your paddle goes in and out of the water is really sensitive to boat tilt and other factors. I was doing intervals today up and down the canal and every time I did a 180 degree turn the display would show my paddle moving at 90 degrees to the boat right through the middle of the cockpit for hundreds of meters beyond the turn. At other times it would show one side going way too long and the other side way too short – I suspect the boat might have tilted a bit and it got confused about where the waterline is. This really cut into the usefulness of the info it gave me.
  • The device is capable of giving you a lot of information, but there isn’t much room on the screen. It would be really useful if, like a Garmin Forerunner, it could be configured to automatically cycle between two or three screens with more information on them (but not the map – I never need to see that). It would also be useful if there were a way to review some of the info afterwards. The summary you get on iOS is pretty minimal. I’ve seen what other people get on the Android version of the app and it’s better, but still not perfect.
  • Some of the coaching information it gives you is obviously not based on any sensor info – like when it tells you to remember to hydrate. The thing is, I don’t know if some of the other advice it gives you is somehow determined from sensors or not, like when it tells you to look forward rather than down or when it tells you to rotate at the hips. It should probably have some sort of indication which is which – even a simple color code would be helpful.
  • The push button on the paddle sensor is supposed to switch screens, and also if you double tap it it’s supposed to start or end a session. Switching screens works most of the time but not all the time, double tapping to pause and end a session works less than half the time, and I’ve never gotten double tapping to start a session to work.
  • When I was setting it up, I clicked the “Connect to Garmin” button, not realizing that was only for the Fenix not for the Forerunner 920XT, and now every time I startup the app it tries to connect to the ConnectIQ store to download something, only to tell me it’s not available for the 920XT. I haven’t figured out how to make it stop doing that.
  • Not really their fault, but I find it hard to see the screen in direct sunlight. I don’t know if it would help, but an option in the app to change it from white text on a dark background to dark text on a light background might help.

Not related to the list of complaints, but I needed to put my water bag under the front bungies on Friday, and when I tried to move the phone mount out of the way I overstressed the mount and broke it. I bought a more robust RAM suction mount and this thing looks bombproof. Highly recommended.

Also not a complaint, but a recommendation to Motionize: you guys should put a link on your page so people can order more of those sticky mounts to they can move the sensors to their other boats and paddles.

The thing is, I really want this thing to work for me, and for everybody else who bought them. So I’m making this offer to anybody from Motionize who wants to fix this issues – I’m willing to do anything you need to help. I could film the screen when it’s doing weird stuff (like it did today when I was doing 180 degree turns). I could install a debug version of the app to help you collect information – I’ve installed beta apps with mobile provisioning files before, so I’m familiar with the process. I could file bug reports or talk with your developers. Let me know what I can do to help.