Is Cadence compatible with the Magene L508, iGPSPORT SR30, or other non-Garmin Varia or Bryton Gardia Radars?
Cadence is compatible with Bluetooth Garmin Varia and Bryton Gardia radars.
I’d love to add support for all the new bike radars coming to market, but it’s unfortunately not possible yet. There’s currently no standard Bluetooth profile for radars, each company seems to be doing it differently, so support has to be added manually.
The Magene L508, iGPSPORT SR30, Trek CarBack, and other radars that are not the Garmin Varia or Bryton Gardia only work with their own apps and don’t broadcast radar data over Bluetooth for other smartphone apps to use.
If you’d like these radars to work with smartphone apps, please encourage the manufacturers to add support.
Please see below for the latest updates.
March 21, 2024:
Cadence now supports the Bryton Gardia R300L radar!
April 10, 2023:
The Magene L508 now supports showing radar data in the Magene Utility app.
Unfortunately, there appears to be no radar data broadcast over Bluetooth when connecting with Cadence or other Bluetooth scanning apps.
My guess is that when the Magene Utility app connects to the L508, it somehow unlocks the radar data.
Unfortunately I don’t know how that happens. If there’s some kind of encrypted key that gets sent to unlock the functionality, there’s no way for Cadence to replicate that without knowing what the key is.
I’ve emailed Magene support without a response. If you have a contact at Magene, or even if you just want to request that they add support for third-party apps, please do so, or get in touch with me at support@getcadence.app.
January 5, 2023:
Cadence only supports Bluetooth Smart (BLE) sensors, and the Magene L508 currently only broadcasts radar data in ANT+.
The manual states “This device can be matched with other display devices that support the standard ANT+ protocol of radar.”
According to Magene, “The function compatible with mobile phone APPS and sports watches is under development, and it is expected to be launched in May 2023.”
Hopefully that means a firmware update that enables radar data over Bluetooth. At that time, Cadence will add suport.
