With changing times, the easy and simple bicycle has also changed. In this long course, the bicycle has been changed and modified to withstand different terrains with equal ease. So, to suit these modern times we give you some superb gadgets which every bicycle owner would love to have.
Scosche boomBottle
Imagine a bottle-shaped, wireless Bluetooth speaker that can slip inside any bottle cage to help you make your biking excursions musical and melodious? That’s essentially what the BoomBottle is – a speaker fitted with two 40mm drivers and a passive subwoofer. Not only can this 8-inch device deliver sound output for up to 10 hours, it can also act as a speakerphone (if you hook it up to your smartphone). The speaker is IPX4 splash-proof. It has dedicated buttons for skipping, pausing and playing songs, and is just a great companion to have if you’re going on a long cycling expedition.
Price: Rs. 8,288
BikeSpike
Sure, you secure your bike with a padlock. But what if a thief breaks past that easy barrier? This is where BikeSpike comes to the rescue. Nothing short of a spy gadget, the GPS device hides inside a custom-made bottle cage on your bike, tracking its movements all the time. And with a companion app, you can define custom perimeter ranges or shock sensitivity levels, and be alerted instantly if your bike leaves its pre-designated area or is subjected to severe shocks (both of which are signs of bike theft). It can collect, store and relay all this data in an easy-to-digest manner so that incriminating the culprit is just a piece of cake, once you get hold of your bike.
Price: Rs. 8,227
Blaze Laserlight
Research suggests that close to 80% of bike accidents happen when a car upfront inadvertently turns into a biker’s lane. To avoid such occurrences, and other potential mishaps, a USB pendrive-type device has been launched. It projects a laserlight image 5-6 metres ahead of the cyclist to alert anyone ahead that a cycle is coming through. Be it rain or shine, day or night, dimly-lit city streets, wide village roads or any other surface, the Blaze Laserlight can project a bright, attention-grabbing image of a cycle for anyone to see. It does so through a 300 lumen LED bulb, throwing a neon-green light up front. Easy to attach on any bike’s handle and extremely light.
Price: Rs. 12,107
Hammerhead GPS
Cycling through heavy traffic to visit an unknown location on the map without turn-by-turn navigation can be quite cumbersome. But in the digital age, there’s a solution to this problem as well. The Hammerhead GPS device sits atop your bicycle's handlebar, and it has LED strips running along its length and breadth in a ‘T’ intersection. Pair it with a compatible navigation app on your smartphone, and the Hammerhead illuminates to signal whether you need to turn left, right or keep going straight at every crossroad. Pretty neat, huh?
Price: Rs. 5,421
ICEdot Crash Sensor
This helmet sensor is a must-have for any cycle enthusiast, purely from a safety point of view. At the time of extreme impact and sudden shock, which the sensor picks up, a signal is sent over Bluetooth to the sensor’s companion app loaded on your smartphone. After this, a 30-second countdown timer is activated (giving you enough time to stop the alert in case of a false alarm), before emails and SMSes are sent to your emergency contacts with the GPS coordinates of the impact location. All this in the case of an accident, where every minute can be precious.
Price: Rs. 9,566