Every day items are getting “smarter” on a regular basis now. Phones, robots, cars, watches, and now bikes are getting a hi-tech make-over. Today, Connected Cycle, a French startup that develops products to improve the overall cycling experience, announced the launch of a Indiegogo campaign for the world’s first smart bike pedal. They hit their $50,000 funding goal within 24 hours.
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These pedals, which come in 5 different colors, can turn any bike into a smart bike with a detection movement system that can instantly alert the owner if the bike has moved. By using GPS and a cellular connection, they can also notify the owner where the bike is and how long it takes to walk to the location of the bike.
These one-of-a-kind pedals can also record route, distance, speed evolution curve, incline curve, and calories burned which can be shared on the Connected Cycle cloud platform which bikers can retrieve via the Connected Cycle app. Another cool feature is that these pedals can do all this without batteries or being charged since it charges itself by generating energy when the biker pedals.
All of this is topped off with the simplicity of the pedals as they can be installed in two minutes and the removal of the pedals is done with a special coded key that only the owner will receive.
Co-founder of Connected Cycle, Christian Kravanja talked about how excited they are about the positive reviews and went on to say that they “understand that bike theft is all too common in numerous countries,” and added that they are still looking for more support through their Indiegogo campaign.
After some great reviews at the 2015 Consumer Electronics Show, they are gearing up to ship the GPS-enabled pedals to early supporters by the end of the year. This is an interesting solution as it has the potential of decreasing the number of bike thefts while allowing bikers to know more about their cycling metrics.