Re: [Randon] Hammerhead Karoo 2 GPS - SCAM ALERT

[Steve Palincsar]

Beware: this is almost certainly a scam. 

The identical message, from a different email address and user ID but word for word identical, was posted (and removed) yesterday on the iBOB list.  The poster had perpetrated a scam on the 650B list in July regarding a Garmin unit for sale, again with nearly identical wording.  Then, the seller asked for payment via PayPal Friends and Family (where you have no recourse if something goes wrong) and failed to ship, instead spinning a tale and asking for additional money to "facilitate" shipment.

If you're feeling lucky and want to follow up on this post, DO NOT EVEN THINK ABOUT PAYING WITH FRIENDS AND FAMILY. 

When did this user join?  Have they any kind of posting history, or is this their first post?  Is it random chance that this message is word for word identical to one posted from a different address to a different list only yesterday?  What do you think the odds on that are?

On 9/11/23 11:08 PM, mccain douglas wrote:

 Hammerhead Karoo 2 GPS
 For sale is a USED, in excellent condition Karoo 2
a responsive touchscreen
Water and dustproof to IP67 rating for battling the elements
12 hours of ride time and fully charged in under three hours
ANT+, Bluetooth, and WiFi connectivity with high accuracy GPS
ASKING PRICE...$250
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Steve Palincsar
Alexandria, Virginia 
USA

[Mark Wolff]

Steve, All - As we have had a recent unfortunate issue here, the member posting this joined Randon on 06 April of this year.

Agree, interested parties need to take appropriate care in any such transactions.

MW / N4MEW

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[mccain douglas]

Steve palincsar is a scammer.Pls be watchful.

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[Ronald Long]

Besides the fact the the Karoo 2 is a battery hog, and as such isn't really suited for Rando. I sold mine after 2 months.

ronald

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[Andrew Adere]

This guy definitely seems sus. I will say, however, that the Karoo 2 is an absolutely wonderful bike computer and I've done all my grand brevets with mine. You do have to carry a battery pack but it's far better than dealing with a Garmin that can't figure out whether you're on the route or not for 5 minutes after you deviate by 5 feet.

Highly recommend the Karoo 2. But the battery life is utter trash.

Andrew

[Eric Norris]

+1 on the Karoo 2 being a really nice computer. I’m not sure what another poster meant by “battery hog”—mine uses about 9% battery per hour, which is on par with the various Garmins and Wahoos I’ve used in the past. Yes, you need to carry an external battery (or USB connected to a dyne hub), but I don’t know of any bike computer that doesn’t.

Hammerhead regularly updates the software on the device. The last update added the ability to add routes of any length, which would make it possible to put PBP in as a single route. The computer breaks the long route into 200-mile segments for routing, but the ride recording continues as long as the ride goes on.

--Eric Norris
campyo...@me.com
Insta: @CampyOnlyGuy
YouTube: YouTube.com/CampyOnlyGuy 

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[lj mangin]

This is a bit off the topic of whether or not the offer was legitimate, but I am wondering about people's experiences with the Karoo 2.

I had one and liked the features, but I had problems with it charging, especially off my dynamo. It would only charge if I got up to speed and then plugged it in to charge. I tried several chargers but most commonly used a Sinewave Revolution. It should have had enough output combined with a SON, SP,.or Shimano dynamo hub. Ultimately I sent it back.

I am wondering if I possibly got a defective unit, and what other riders have experienced.

Thanks,

John M 

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[Eric Norris]

I know from working with a friend who has one that the Karoo doesn’t play well with USB/dynamo chargers when it’s plugged directly in to the USB. I don’t have USB/dynamo setup, but when I did I had the same issue with a Garmin.

The solution is to use the USB/dynamo to keep an external battery charged, then plug the Karoo into the battery. 

--Eric Norris
campyo...@me.com
Insta: @CampyOnlyGuy
YouTube: YouTube.com/CampyOnlyGuy 

[Susan Otcenas]

"mine uses about 9% battery per hour, which is on par with the various Garmins and Wahoos I’ve used in the past. "

My Garmin 1030+ carried me through a 22 1/2 hour 400K, with the backlight on during the nighttime hours, without being plugged into an external battery or my dyno.   Its been a few months but IIRC I finished with 15-20% battery remaining.  I've been extremely impressed with its battery life.   

Susan

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[Andy G]

It's nice to see some cycling Garmins now up to the battery life that's a bit more useful for randonneuring. I mostly used my eTrex which lacks all the bluetooth/cycling functions but can follow a route. I'd get about 700km or more on a set of AAs, which can of course be swapped out and immediately ready to continue riding. I later swapped for an Inreach Explorer+ for the satellite texting abilities since I hike/paddle/ski also and it works well for sports other than cycling - that got at least 4 days of constant use on a battery! I now have the 66i which is likely going to be discontinued any minute for the newer 67i with a better battery - it has all the bluetooth features I'll never need and the latest one apparently gets more than a week per charge.

That said, if anyone wants to buy my eTrex 20x or Explorer+, I no longer use those and would like to sell them.

Andy in NH

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[Greg]

I used a Karoo 1 for years and now use a Karoo 2.

I've never owned a Garmin, but for years when I've encountered discussion threads of frustrated Garmin users, I kind of find myself wondering "Why would anybody want one of those, if there is so much fuss with their general use? Maybe it's just because everybody else has one?" and then I go ride my bike. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Yeah, about a ten-hour battery life on "full blast" (bright screen, connected sensors, navigation), longer if you use it more conservatively; completely Rando-compatible if you have a charging strategy, typically dynamo and/or in-line extra batteries in some combination. I did PBP 2019 on my Karoo 1, and thoroughly enjoyed what it provided. (The water source & bathrooms on the default, free maps were a big, big help in Brittany on multiple occasions when I needed those simple-but-important resources!)

If you want to geek out, you can install all kinds of other apps (Instagram, OSM apps, Chrome, Google Maps, Zwift helper app, etc. etc.); I've done it. Not officially supported, but not blocked out. It is just an Android device, so can run many Android phone apps...but not those that require Google Play authentication, or whatever that's called. (I'm thinking of you, Pokémon Go...sigh.)

-Greg

[Greg]

Following up on Garmin <-> Karoo comparisons (and I am Garmin-illiterate, I just encounter others' Garmin woes year after year!), I encountered this recent post to a RUSA Facebook group -- basically, a modern Garmin does not seem to reveal full cue sheet entries, as would be useful for navigating RUSA permanents:

For comparison I loaded a permanent route onto my Karoo just now (By a simple single paste of the RWGPS link into my Karoo account on the web, and it "magically" appeared on my Karoo, instantly!), and I confirmed that I can tap to expand any cue entry, and it reveals the full text:

Probably I'm missing lots of positives about the Garmin experience, as I predominantly encounter the "squeaky wheels" of problems/frustrations (as will happen with any device!), but my lack of understanding of the Garmin positives leaves me at a loss when I ponder why people buy them. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

-Greg

[Brian Feinberg]

Law of large numbers, given that Garmin outsells the others by a large factor, will give one a large number of complaints with a vast user base. I don't think there's a tech product made where the user forums are used to share plaudits and excitement

about everything working perfectly. Most people just use their devices without issue. The latest units have battery burn of something like 1.5-2% per hour, so on PBP mine had no trouble

with battery whatsoever. 

However. That cue sheet limitation is ridiculous, yeah. It's like DOS 8.3 filenames or something.

Brian

[Bill Gobie]

The cue display capabilities of the Karoo are very interesting. 

Regarding Garmin truncating cues, Wahoo devices (Bolt, Roam) are similar, except that routes loaded via sync'ing get edited to remove leading boilerplate like "Turn left," "Turn right," and similar, so perhaps the device often displays more useful parts of the cue. TCX files loaded manually are not processed like this and display the entire cue. Long cues  are displayed with a smaller font, sometimes reduced so much they are illegible.

The latest Wahoo f-up is completely failing to display certain cues. I noticed this on SIR's populaire Sept. 30. Controls, u-turns, and a danger cue were not displayed. Another rider noticed this on her Wahoo. I do not know how long this problem has been happening; I confess to only riding a couple of familiar permanent routes recently on autopilot, not really noticing the cues. This seems associated with whatever processing Wahoo does as routes pass through their servers during a sync operation. Routes loaded manually over a usb cable from a computer do not lose cues. Wahoo's response has been extremely disappointing: "We are always looking for ways to improve user experience. I've linked your ticket to a feature request in our system regarding cue importing and syncing."

Bill Gobie

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[Mike Sturgill]

I have a question to any Karoo users out there. It wasn't long ago that a friend of mine had a Karoo 2 and tried vehemently to get them to use the RWGPS custom cues instead of using their own cues plus the RWGPS POIs. They always refused.

What I see below in the photo is an extremely verbose cue for a Control. My questions are the following:
1) Was this cue part of a RWGPS route?
2) Was it a Custom cue designated as a "Control" within RWGPS or was it a POI which contained this info?

If both of these are the case, then it appears as though they have finally adapted to the custom cues created within RWGPS. Can anyone confirm this is true?

Thanks,
-Mike

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[Greg]

Hi Mike,

Thanks for your direct message -- I just do the "digest" mode of the Google Group, so I don't experience / read each & every post.

I can confirm that my photograph of my Karoo screen is from a RUSA-approved permanent's official rwgps route import.

And I think you're onto something here: I now think that it's the case that Karoo is indeed globally using its own turn notifications, rather than the custom turn notifications form rwgps, and that only the special-marker custom text comes through. I don't know what category of special marker it was.

Honestly the map screen is so good on the Karoo that I rely on it much, much more than any text navigation prompts. I.e., if a navigation prompt appears on the screen, I'll notice it, and it will be in my field of vision, but I usually just use the fact that it popped up as the prompt to look at the route & my location marker displayed on the map, rather than as a cue to read whatever description there is. Hm, I believe that I do pay attention to the cue's arrow direction, however, to inform how I visually interpret the map at that junction.

I also review (especially) new-to-me routes at home beforehand to try to sort out any tricky bits well before riding, and may sometimes print out some or all of a route sheet's rwgps cues if I think I'm really going to want them...it's easy and I have "free real estate" in my front bag's map case. These are habits left over from doing brevets when "bike computer" was a cateye that showed time, current speed, and elapsed distance, and ride "phone" was that thing bolted to the pavement or a wall.

-Greg