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I get your very descriptive point, but...
- They're a hardware making business. Emphasis on business.
- Many people have tried hacking Shimano's system. As far as I'm aware, it's not happened yet, and neither does Shimano or SRAM. See point 1.
- Have you ever spoken to owners of shiny new electronic bikes? Not savvy bike users. Average users? I have. Many of them. They're the same people that will stare at you like a wizard when you tell them you can sync your Di2 bike to a Garmin.
Now let's make an open system and see how it all works out shall we?
- They're a hardware making business. Emphasis on business.
Chak-
Have you ever spoken to owners of shiny new electronic bikes?
I don't think I've ever even seen one being ridden to be honest
Now let's make an open system and see how it all works out shall we?
Good point. An open source thing would be great, you could have a bunch of people making just derailleurs and/or shifters without having to produce an entire groupset at once. I'm sure all the other manufacturers (FSA, WolfTooth, SunTour, MicroShift, Praxis Works, all the electronics companies doing dynamo hubs and power meters, etc.) would be all over it. I am just surprised that it hasn't happened yet. Maybe in a few years.
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Have you ever spoken to owners of shiny new electronic bikes? Not savvy bike users.
Goddamnest if that's not the gospel truth.
Had a customer with the old 10 speed Di2, he claim he doesn't need updating, but we need to run diagnostic to ensure the system is working in full capacity.
Turn out, it took 45 minutes cause it need a complete reboot after learning it never been updated since it been put together.
frankenbike
edscoble
I don't really want to get into it but from an electronics perspective it would be very easy to design a system of electronic shifters and derailleurs that would work with any number of speeds (up to the precision of your little servos) within some left-right/up-down range (i.e. the cassette would have some maximum width - at least 40mm if you want to do current 11-speed - and a maximum sprocket size - let's say design it to take up to a 50t). Then you just need to tell it the sprocket pitch and the number of speeds and you can put whatever cassette you like on there (assuming that you have a long enough cage). If 13-speed comes out in 5 years with this system you'd just need to get a new cassette and chain and reprogram everything for it to work (as long as it's less wide than the range of your derailleur).
This is not currently possible; i.e. there are only certain combinations of shifters, derailleurs and cassettes between road, MTB, 10/11-speed that work, and so you can't mix and match bits to get the exact setup that you want.
If you ask me Shimano/SRAM probably could allow this right now and perhaps will at some point in the future. If not maybe some computer wizard will write some software to get it to work one day. Or some other company will do it.