How to make a hi-tech bike computer from Locus?

A few times we’ve mentioned one of Locus gadgets named quite commonly Dashboard. You can obviously imagine a dashboard in a car. Locus Dashboard means much more – it displays selected items above other Locus features (map with your position, track recording, navigation etc.) in an extra layer. Dashboard can be used for many purposes, today we’ll have a look at re-creating it into a hi-tech bike computer.

Ready made solution

Locus offers several pre-set dashboards by default, some of them are suitable for cycling, for example this one:

Besides the map it displays actual, average and maximum speed, passed distance, pace, time of travel, elevation gain and actual time. The track recording controls and time circles estimating distance are part of the main background layer.

Pre-set dashboards can be found in the Main Menu > More functions >Dashboard:

Tapping it unfolds the portfolio of pre-set dashboards either from the Locus developer or from some Locus users:

By selecting some of them and tapping it you activate it and it starts displaying above the map on the main screen. Repeated tapping deactivates it. If you are content with some of them so much you’d like to use it repeatedly, we recommend to place its button in the function panel. How to do it see in our User Guide.

I want my own one!

If you miss something on the pre-set dashboards, you’re welcome to create your own either from the scratch or by editing some ready-made. Which is, for the start, much easier. In this case, tap the Dashboard editor:

Select which you’d like to edit, it’s displayed above the map with additional layout lines. For example, let’s edit the first one, Elegant blue:

Let’s peek inside its structure. Tap the speed cell and a dialog appears:

Here you can add items, change their content, edit its style and size, delete it or edit whole row. We’ll select “Change item” and an offer of available features and tools displays. Active feature is highlighted red, all other active functions are checked. The offer has two tabs – main features are on the Basic items tab, the additional and charts are on Various:

If you select Edit item in the previous dialog, a menu of settings of the text, colors, icons, alignment etc. appears:

Let’s get back to the main scheme. Notice that the cells can be dragged and dropped in other rows. Redundant cells can be deleted, a big cell can be divided by creating a new cell.

Would you like a speed (heart rate, cadence etc…) chart displayed above the map? No problem! Select a large cell over a whole line and tap “Change item”. Next, select “Various” tab and there, “Chart 1” among  track recording items:

The chart axes must be set first  so tap  the “Edit item”and select Speed in the Axis Y:

The whole procedure can be repeated so that we add another chart into the dashboard – altitude progress of navigated route. Don’t forget to save all of it! Best select your own name.

If you set up everything as you wish, the result should be like this:

The speed field is in slight collision with the navigation but we already know how to fix it.

Tell me, could you manage to fetch a better bike computer at this price?