What is E-Tube? Personalise your riding experience with Shimano

Lots of people ride bikes with either Shimano's Di2 shifting system or STEPS eBike system. Straight out the box both of these are designed to work perfectly (and they do) but with both systems you occasionally need to update the firmware or simply want to change how the drivetrain works to suit your riding style. For either of these, Shimano's E-Tube project is your best friend. 

What is E-Tube?

Put simply, E-Tube is an app that lets you customise your ride settings to (almost) however you want them, update firmware and identify and fix any errors that may occur within the system. It's a one-stop shop to accessing the parts of your Shimano groupset that may previously have seemed untouchable. And if you're not using it, you're not getting the most out of your bike. There are two apps, the E-Tube Project and E-Tube Ride and the differences between them are as follows...

E-Tube Ride App

If you have an eBike, then the E-Tube ride app turns your mobile phone into a bike computer that displays every metric you could possibly need. Better than that, you can customise the display by just dragging and dropping the different elements where you want them, or choose from five pre-set screens. Whichever you choose it gives you the ability to look at real-time information for speed, distance, time, range, power-assist level and more. Really useful stuff to know when you're out and about, especially if you're someone who habitually forgets to charge things...

To get started all you need to do is get the app from either the App or Play store (depending on which device you're using), connect it to your bike via Bluetooth and you're good to go. 

E-Tube Project

The E-Tube Project app is aimed at Di2 users and it's a whole level of nerdy above the E-Tube Ride app. The beauty of the Di2 system is that it's fully customisible in that you can get literally any button to perform whatever function you want. So if you want front shifting on the right and rear shifting on the left? You got it. Run your GRX Di2 1X and want one side to go upshift the rear mech and the other downshift? No problem. You can even customise the small buttons on the top of the shifters underneath the hood (you did know those were there, didn't you?) to shift through the pages on your Garmin. Pretty smart stuff. Even if you don't want to move too far away from the way Di2 shifts when you bought it, it's worth having a go and seeing what you can do. 

The other really important thing with Di2 is firmware updates. Shimano is continually optimising their Di2 shifting system and updating the firmware whenever a new system is released makes sure you keep your Di2 working optimally. 

If you want to know more about either the E-Tube Project ro E-Tube ride apps, you can find it on bike.shimano.com, and you can download either app from the App or Play store on your iOS or Android device.