How can a phone in a pocket measure cadence?
Pedalling moves your whole body in a steady rhythm, and a phone riding in your pocket moves with it. Cado reads that rhythm from the phone's motion sensors — the same ones that rotate your screen — and counts the strokes. No GPS, no camera, no microphone: motion alone.
How accurate is it?
In bench tests against a metronome, the engine's median error is under 0.3 rpm, across 30 to 125+ rpm. On the road it has covered pedalling time fully and followed gear changes without lag. Proving that across many phones, pockets and riders is exactly what this testing phase is for — which is why shared ride logs matter.
What happens when I coast or stop?
Silence. Cado never invents a number: no pedalling, no signal, no voice. It resumes with your next pedal stroke. If you stop for long enough, it offers to end the ride out loud — and pedalling cancels that.
Does it work on a spin bike?
Yes — there's nothing to attach, so the bike doesn't matter. Pocket the phone, earbuds in, ride. Pocketless gym wear is the one catch, and a long sock solves it. The placement guide covers it.
What about music and calls?
Callouts briefly lower your music, speak, and hand it back. A phone call just takes over the audio; at worst you miss one callout. There's nothing to configure.
Will it flatten my battery?
The screen stays off, which is most of the battle. Cado measures the cost of every ride and prints it on the summary — an hour should stay under about 10%. If your phone does worse, that's a bug report we want.
Why is it free? What's the catch?
There's no catch to fund: no servers to pay for, no ads to sell, no data to trade. Cado is one thing done well, built by a rider who wanted it to exist. If that ever changes, it will change on this page first.
Where does my ride data go?
Nowhere, unless you send it. Rides are files on your phone, in a folder you choose — local or your own Drive. Cado has no networking code at all, so it couldn't upload anything even if it were asked to. The privacy policy is short for that reason.
Why no account?
An account would exist for our benefit, not yours — Cado works entirely on your phone, so there's nothing an account would add except a database of riders that shouldn't exist. Install and ride.
Can my bike computer or fitness app see the cadence?
Not yet. Broadcasting as a standard Bluetooth cadence sensor — so a bike computer or a fitness app pairs with Cado like any sensor you'd buy — is designed and planned, but isn't in the current builds.
Does it send rides to Strava?
Not yet — an export is on the roadmap, after the measuring is proven. What your rides are today is files you own, and files travel well; see the next answer.
What's the cleverest thing to do with a ride log?
Hand it to an AI assistant. A ride log carries every cadence reading with timestamps, so an assistant like Claude or ChatGPT can time-sync it with a Polar H10 or Strava recording and show you how your cadence moved with heart rate or hill gradient — analysis no bought sensor ships with.
Getting a log there: Cado's share button sends one straight to ChatGPT. Claude doesn't appear on Android's share list, so take the smoother road — auto-save your rides to a Google Drive folder and let Claude read them through its Drive connector, alongside your Strava data through its Strava connector.
iPhone?
Android only for now. One platform, done properly, first.
When can anyone install it?
When testing shows a stranger's first ride just works — that's the bar, not a date. Until then it's a small testing group, and you can be in it.
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