it's too bad the aeroweenie app got bagged.

People have done similar for a long time (Boardman used a printer and scissors as I remember reading)
With photoshop, you'd get in front of a solid background, set up a stationary camera, and take pictures in different positions... then remove the background and see how many pixels are still there (you+bike)
When you compare A vs. B, one of them will be smaller, (in theory at least) the smaller one is less frontal area, which (*usually) is good.
Obviously that's not as fancy as the Bioracer setup...

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My Blog - http://leegoocrap.blogspot.com

It doesn't give you real-time feedback, but it should work:

http://www.triradar.com/training-advice/how-to-calculate-your-drag/

I have an app on my ipad that does this, along with analysis of joint angles etc whilst pedaling

This will give a two-dimensional snapshot of the rider, but aren't things [unmeasured by frontal area] like airfoil camber and thickness equally as important? It seems to me we'd all be riding on 700c x 19mm wheels/tires if frontal area was a valid measurement of aero.

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Madison photographer Timothy Hughes | Instagram

out of curiosity what app is that?

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My Blog - http://leegoocrap.blogspot.com

Bike fast fit.
The logo is a bike in a red app square.

My adviser, Dan Heil, did some work looking at frontal area, body size, bike position etc.
You can find the full papers if you do enough looking.




http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s004210100424
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00421-002-0662-9

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I talk a lot - Give it a listen: http://www.fasttalklabs.com/category/fast-talk
I also give Training Advice via http://www.ForeverEndurance.com

The above poster has eschewed traditional employment and is currently undertaking the ill-conceived task of launching his own hardgoods company. Statements are not made on behalf of nor reflective of anything in any manner... unless they're good, then they count.
http://www.AGNCYINNOVATION.com

Could an Xbox kinect be rigged up to do something like this?

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Pactimo brand ambassador, ask me about promo codes

Yeah, I wrote some software to do it with the Kinect, but canned it when I saw aeroweenie's. I might resurrect it now.

Frontal area correlates extremely well with aero. (There's a graph somewhere, but not sure where it is). But it's not a be-all, end-all.

The frontal area measurement isn't much about equipment selection. It's really about getting all your body appendages tucked in in a compact way.

That app only does fit, no frontal area...

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10373042

To quote Robert Chung: hmmm.

(See slide 12 of this presentation: http://www.slideshare.net/...nd-tunnel-compressed)

And if people can't access the original papers, the equations for the aero position can be found here:

http://www.trainingandracingwithapowermeter.com/...-anthropometric.html

That might be the graph I was referring to. The correlation isn't particularly surprising.

I don't get the "Chung comment." Attribution? (Which I clearly stated I didn't remember).

No, Robert has a habit of politely disputing people's comments by saying "Hmmm."

As for frontal area, there is indeed a correlation; I was just questioning your use of the adjective "extremely well" to describe it.

Pretty well?

I asked a friend about doing this a few years ago. He worked with the connect in health care. He felt I'd need huge processing power to do what I wanted.
I'd be very interested in seeing what you've done

What I did was very simple. I put a "green screen" behind my trainer. And the Kinect in front. I subtracted the green from the resulting video. The regular video camera gives 2D area. And you can use that as a mask to get the frontal 3D shape from the 3D stream. Then in real time I could try different positions and watch the screen to try to get the frontal area pixel count down. What I didn't do was find some way to calibrate so that the pixel area could be converted from a relative number to absolute area in cm^2 or some standard units. But that shouldn't be that hard since the Kinect is a reasonably good distance sensor.

I also didn't remove the "tare" (my trainer) from the calculation.

That took very little processing power. But it may be far cruder than what your friend is thinking of. To get a full 3D model would be very difficult. You'd need like 4 Kinects all precisely calibrated to each other or something.

We've developed a Kinect based FA system - automatically masks the background (no screen required) and removes trainer (unless it has a fork stand). Time averaged FA in m^2 with a Cd estimation applied to give CdA.



Not quite ready for release as we haven't done all the admin stuff (licensing, code protection etc), but soon.
The ideal is to use this in conjunction with our 3D Motion system so you're balancing the biomechanical factors with FA - experimenting to find a stable, comfortable position that punches the smallest possible hole in the wind.

software is...... http://bioraceraero.com/#bioracer-aero

My LBS has it or is getting it. Not sure how I feel about it yet. Need to do more research and test it out before I form an opinion.

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blog

So when are you hoping to get this released David? Presumably before your next wind tunnel visit ;-)

I always wanted to make something like this happen ever since I stitched together static images back in the day:

http://www.biketechreview.com/...tal-area-kw-position


http://www.biketechreview.com/...-and-tt-aerodynamics


http://www.biketechreview.com/...c/462-big-fat-helmet

http://www.biketechreview.com/...he-rule-of-the-thumb

http://biketechreview.com/...0-do-aero-forks-work


http://biketechreview.com/...hp/blog/151-thread-9

i keep waiting for someone to do this real-time FA thing in a tunnel, who knows what insights might come of that.

so yeah, i think that FA is a great tool to have in the tool box...and i wish i was able to have had the skills/time in 2004 to implement real time FA. then again, a full length mirror and a set of humanipers might ultimately be a quicker, easier, and cheaper way to the same speed:

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Kraig Willett
http://www.biketechreview.com - check out our reduced report pricing
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Put a selfie stick on front of your bike and get real time FA while riding.

Call it the F-Stick.

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http://www.cyclecoach.com
http://www.aerocoach.com.au