Alex: There may be plenty of you out there with Shimano's Di2 system on your bike. Were you aware
of all the different features that this system has to offer, or were you completely in the dark and
didn't know there was more to it? In this video, we're going to check out what you can adjust using
Shimano's E-TUBE app and Bluetooth module. [music]
First off, you're going to need Shimano's E-TUBE app on your phone or other compatible device.
You'll need the Bluetooth module itself, the EW-WU111, and a short Di2 cable too. If you
haven't got those parts sorted out, it's worth getting those done first,
and then coming back to this video. What exactly is Shimano's wireless unit EW-WU111?
Quite simply, it allows your Di2 gears to connect to your phone or compatible head unit
such as my Wahoo ROAM. Whilst the name of the module sounds quite complicated, it's actually
super easy to fit. Today, we're going to fit it in line with our Di2 system because we've got
an integrated battery in the seat tube here. We're only going to need a few basic tools
such as an Allen key, and a tool to remove and install the Di2 cables. As I mentioned,
the module is super easy to fit, and it's placed in line with the Di2 system, anywhere you've got
good access to. Like I said, we're going to do that on the seatpost battery tube today,
but it could also be fitted up at the junction box at the front, anywhere you've got a good
access to, depending on the setup of your bike. It's just a case of opening the connector up,
placing the module in with that short cable in line, and then making a tidy install.
If you haven't got a seat tube battery like myself, the module is super small,
it can pretty much be installed anywhere on your bike you decide you've got a good access to.
It's quite a similar case of unplugging one of the cables, plugging that into the end of the module,
plug in your spare cable you've got here, into the other end,
and placing that back in line to the component you've unplugged. It's actually that simple.
Let's make a start. First off, before you remove the seatpost, it's a good idea,
like I have, just mark where your saddle height is before you take the seatpost
out and make life a little bit simpler when you put it all back together at the end.
We can start with our 5-milli Allen key and just make a start here removing
this seatpost. One of the key things to remember, as we're undoing the seatpost and taking it out,
is to set this aside and make sure we don't drop this cable back inside the
frame once we've unplugged it, because it's just a bit of a pain to fish it back out.
With the seatpost removed, we can take our special Shimano Di2 cable tool and use the end of this to
nice and carefully remove the cable from the end of the battery, like so, carefully unclip that.
Now is when you really want to make sure you don't drop this cable back into your seat tube,
because it's going to be a right pain. Tuck this down to the side, make sure you don't drop that.
Then we can take our wireless module, which I've already installed the cable on, so that just clips
in the same as any other Di2 cable. We just got to take this, take our cable that's attached to the
bike, get the two, and we can use our Di2 tool again, using this slightly different end. Fit
that into there, and click that into place, and that's it. There's the module fitted in line to
the cable, ready for this end to go back attached to the battery, into here. Take your tool again.
That's the module installed. Like I said earlier, it really is that simple. I've left the seatpost
out of the bike just to make sure we can connect to the system nice and easily without running
into any problems of connection loss. Another point is worth noting, is that sometimes this
module can actually rattle when you fit it inside the frame, so you could put a little
piece of foam around it to stop that happening. I'm using a carbon fiber frame here. If you're
not using a carbon fiber frame, you could sometimes find you'll struggle to get a good
connection when installing the module inside of the frame. If you do have a metal frame, it's
worth installing the module externally to make sure you'd get a perfect connection every time.
Next up, we're going to need to pair the module to our phone. First, we're going to need to
activate the Di2 system by pressing and holding the junction box button until the lights activate.
The junction box on this bike is fitted up here, but your junction box could be located
in the bar end plug underneath the stem. Some bikes even have it fitted into the
seat tube as well. Depending on what bike you've got your junction box,
just press the button on that until the lights activate. Having activated the Di2 system, the
next step is to open the E-TUBE app and follow the on-screen instructions to connect to the module.
An important point to note, which isn't always obvious, is that the passcode for
the module is actually six zeros, and you'll be prompted to set your own passcode next as well,
if you want to do that. Having connected to the module, your phone will then display
all the different components of your bike that you've connected to, and now have access to.
Before we're diving in and changing a whole host of different features you have access to,
it's important to move across here to update the system. Scroll down, you can see here there's
quite a few components that need updating. The first one that is important to update is
the Bluetooth module itself. That will make sure you've got a really reliable connection and won't
run into any problems further down the line. Let's make sure we find the module click on that, and
apply any updates that are required. When updating the module or any component in the system, it's
super crucial to let it complete the process fully and not disconnect the app or your phone
from any of the components. Otherwise, you could find yourself in a situation where your gears
aren't working and it's a trip down to the bike shop, and nobody wants that. Having successfully
connected to our phone, and then updated any of the components that need it, we can actually look
to refit our seatpost into the bike. Before doing that, it's super crucial, as I mentioned earlier,
to follow the on-screen instructions to disconnect your phone from the Di2 unit correctly to make
sure you don't run into any problems and make sure it continues working perfectly.
You've got your Bluetooth module fitted, but what actually are the host of additional features that
you've got access to? First off, you can change the speed of the shifting, which is going to mean,
as you press the lever, the rear derailleur, you can slow down or
speed up how quickly that operates. You can assign multi-shift, which is going to mean,
as you hold the buttons in the rear derailleur will continue to shift until you let go of the
button. You can assign additional buttons to the front, so you can have sprint buttons chucked in
behind the levers or shift buttons at the tops of the bars when you're riding at the tops.
You can also change the shifting profiles of the front derailleur here, so you can have manual
semi-synchro and also fully synchronized, which manual, of course, you've got total control of
the front derailleur. Semi-syncro you have control of the front derailleur, but as you operate that,
the rear derailleur is also going to shift one or two gears to compensate for that gear change,
and fully synchronized where, as you operate the rear derailleur, the front derailleur will
automatically operate to compensate, to make sure you're in the most efficient gear possible.
There are a host of other features you've got access to. One of my favorites
is actually the additional little buttons on the top of the levers there. That's something
many people are not aware of, so it's quite a cool feature to make use of. My favorite thing
is to set these up to be shift buttons to actuate the rear derailleur, but also you can assign these
buttons to operate your Wahoo head unit, which I suppose we should dive in and look at next.
To make use of these hidden buttons on the top here, we're going to have to open up the E-TUBE
app and go into both the left and right shifter to assign the buttons to whatever job we want them to
do. That could be operating the rear derailleur, for example, or what we're going to do next,
set them up to operate our head unit. When you're in the app and trying to
decide what functions you want to assign to these little buttons at the top here, if you want to
operate your head unit, you need to change them so that the left-hand lever is activated as D-FLY
Channel 1, that's what Shimano called it, and the right-hand lever is activated as D-FLY Channel 2.
That'll ensure that, later on, we can use these to operate the pages on our head unit.
Now we can take our head unit and pair the module on the bike to the unit itself. First off,
we're going to need to activate the gears just to make sure the system is awake, and you can
do that just by operating one of the buttons on the levers, then searching through on your head
unit the same way as you would add any sensor, so scroll down the menu to sensors, click Add Sensor,
as it says on the screen, hold the sensor near the bike. We'll do that.
You can hold it near the bike and allow the head unit to search for the sensor. Once it's done
that, we can select the relevant one from the list to make sure we connect to the bike correctly.
Let's test out our handiwork. See these, press the button,
and it should operate. Woohoo, oh, yeah. As we can see, pressing the right-hand button on our shifter
is exactly the same as pressing the right-hand button on our head unit.
Pressing the left-hand button on our shifter is the same as pressing the left-hand button
on the head unit itself. Another handy little tip which lots of people might not have realized
is if you hold these buttons in, either on the left or right, it's the same as operating the
zoom in and zoom out buttons on the head unit itself. We can do that. Zoom in nice and close.
We can hold this one to again zoom out to make sure no one knows where I live.
To make best use of the features on your head unit, you need to set up a dedicated page on
your head unit itself or the app that accompanies your head unit. Here, we can see the page I've got
set up to give a nice clear visual representation of the rear derailleur gears, and then the front
derailleur gears. Also, we can go to the next page, we've got a numerical representation of
that. It makes it nice and simple, you have super clear visual or numerical, whichever
takes you fancy, and then we could go back again down into our Di2 gears more, and we can see our
battery status to make sure we don't get caught short having no battery halfway through our ride.
There you have it, some Di2 hacks and settings that you probably didn't know existed. Hopefully,
you've learned something cool today and you can impress your mates at the weekend with it.
If you've got any questions, of course, let us know in the comments section down below
using the hashtag askgcntech, and also let us know your favorite Di2 settings as well.
Thanks for watching. [00:10:05] [END OF AUDIO]