Cadence Detection, No Sensor Required
Bike IQ now detects your pedaling cadence directly from your iPhone. No cadence sensor on the crank. No magnet on the chainstay. Just your phone, mounted on the handlebars, measuring your RPM in real time.
The original vision, complete
When we started building Bike IQ, the goal was straightforward: replace every sensor on the bike with the phone already in your pocket.
- Speed: GPS. Done from day one.
- Grade: Barometer and accelerometer fusion, refined over months of tuning.
- Power: The virtual power meter, using physics to estimate watts from speed, grade, wind, weight, and aerodynamics.
- Gears: Automatic gear detection from drivetrain vibration patterns, no electronic groupset needed.
- Cadence: Now. The last one.
Every core cycling metric, from the phone. No extra hardware, no batteries to charge, no sensors to pair. That was the promise. Today it's real.
How it works
Your iPhone's motion sensors pick up the subtle, repeating vibrations that your pedaling transmits through the frame. Bike IQ isolates that signal from road noise, bumps, and wind, then extracts your cadence in real time.
The signal is subtle, buried in the noise of road vibrations, bumps, and wind. But it's there. Bike IQ finds it across bike types, riding styles, and road surfaces.
What this means for you
If you ride without a cadence sensor today, you now get live RPM on your ride screen and cadence data in your ride report. Color-coded maps, cadence charts, pedaling dynamics. All of it, automatically.
Cadence also unlocks gear detection. Bike IQ already knows your speed and your drivetrain configuration. Add cadence, and it can calculate exactly which gear you're in. That means automatic gear tracking, shift timelines in your ride report, and gear usage breakdowns, all without an electronic groupset or any sensor on the bike.
If you already have a cadence sensor, it still works exactly as before. Bike IQ will use your hardware sensor when it's connected. The built-in detection is there for when you don't have one, or don't want one.
Try it
Update to the latest version and ride. Cadence appears on your ride screen automatically. No setup, no configuration, no sensor to buy.