I've been using the UP by Jawbone since January to monitor my exercise and my sleep patterns. Overall it is a nice device for collecting my movement, however it does not give very accurate information while riding my bicycle. I found a solution for this problem. I love riding my bike, and ride it all over whenever I can. I've noticed that when I stop riding to work or to appointments I start gaining weight. I was hoping the UP band would record the steps while cycling to see how much exercise I get while zipping through the streets of Amsterdam on my 2 wheeler. To use the device, one must wear it on the wrist. I'm not sure how you ride a bike, but my wrist is not moving much while riding a bike, except for giving turn signals, flipping off taxi drivers, smacking tourists off the bike path or to check facebook.
Instead of wearing the UP band on my wrist, I started to wear it on my ankle. It also helps to keep my pants from getting caught in the chain while cycling. I decided to do a A/B test between wrist/ankle while cycling to show the difference. For each recording I rode around the park, exact distance, and roughly the same speed [using a music playlist to keep time]. Here are the results.
As you can see, wearing the UP on the wrist records only 2% of the steps compared to wearing it on the ANKLE.
I hope this helps you get those steps recorded while cycling. If you want to know more about real bike culture [not talking about Armstrong spandex style, but more a crate of beer on the front and a couple of girls on the back of a bike style] check out amsterdamize.com. And for those that are constantly misplacing your UP caps, why not buy an extra set on Amazon?