Karoo 3 SDK Di2 | Ki2 | Inbound as Hammerhead gives the green light to a new SDK

Karoo 3 does not support Di2 – a major omission.

Perhaps the only disappointment with Karoo 3 was that some of its key apps stopped working because of issues with the SDK. The bottom line for this story is that an app called Ki2 could no longer be used as a workaround for Shimano’s ban on SRAM/Hammerhead using its private ANT channels.

As you may have guessed from the post’s title, that is all about to change.

Karoo EXTENSIONS

also referred to as Hammerhead Extensions, Karoo EXTENSIONS is the name of the new Karoo SDK. Developers use that to get their apps working on Karoo 3 by a sideloading process, essentially manual copying to the Karoo.

Karoo Extensions (the karoo-ext library) is an Android library that can be used on Hammerhead cycling computers. Like other Android libraries, it can be included as a gradle dependency to provide APIs for use in Kotlin and Java code.

When

Developers will gain access to Karoo EXTENSIONS on 27 November if they haven’t already been granted it.

Let’s hope the Ki2 developer @valterc can turn this around quickly and plug the gap in Karoo’s ecosystem.

Edit: I’ve chatted with u/Valterc, who has seen the capabilities in GitHub, and everything needed seems to be there to get a full version of Ki2 working! @Valterc seems to think that porting to the new SDK might ONLY TAKE A WEEK OR SO!

What Other apps?

This is a ‘breaking’ new story, and I will update the information here as it surfaces. This site’s information from Hammerhead implied that more apps could be announced shortly.

• Karoo extensions are only available for Karoo OS version 1.524.2003. That version is not yet public.
• The new SDK extensions offer developers a MUCH easier and quicker route to market. Hopefully, this will encourage more developers to work on the Hammerhead platform.