Weight Weenies

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ken ... smart-bike" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Mods, may be better stored under "Cycle Chat".

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I saw this. Very cool. But the GPS feature is going to makes these really heavy.

I like the idea of being able to track stolen bikes but I'd restrict this one to the "commuter" category.

Interesting the "inventor" is from Sacramento but the video is clearly San Francisco. Indeed San Francisco seems to be the pro forma location for cycling kickstarter videos, all of which seem to have a similar degree of professional slickness. This one in particular: the lack of helmet, not locking the bike out the cafe, tapping into the stereotypes of the hipster-genius-garage-inventer. They went with the cafe-design-session instead of the white board because if he could afford a white board he wouldn't need Kickstarter campaign, although he can apparently afford to pay rent in San Francisco. At some point you wonder if standard fully-funded product development teams are going to start using KickStarter as fronts for conventional product releases. This one almost seems that way: there's a lot there for garage-inventor-with-his-software-buddy.

That all aside, the shape of the bars is interesting:



Compare, for example, to Deda Newton, which I'd consider something of a paradigm of bar shape:




Or perhaps Zipp:

Interesting, but the fixed light probably limits the bar tilt range a bit?

Only adjustability is via HTA, from what I can see:

Is light without ability to easily tilt that useful?

I would be loathe to bind myself to a bar set with built in lights for many reasons. A major one is that Lezyne, just for example, makes a 70L set (for <$50.00 each) which is not only very small and inconspicuous, but is so nicely machined it's comparable in quality to my Extralite stem; in fact, they look like they were done by the same factory.

PP: I can imagine to make this light easily to be tilt in the front housing .
Something like this : http://www.avoluxlighting.com/urunler/engRL1238.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Also would be probably nice to have the chance to switch between a light and a camera fitting the same housing.

I like the idea of a handlebar light that looks almost built-in. But if you use these then you can just snap them off when you want to race. I actually leave mine on most of the time becaue I am too lazy to remove them, and they are very light.

Rick wrote:I like the idea of a handlebar light that looks almost built-in. But if you use these then you can just snap them off when you want to race. I actually leave mine on most of the time becaue I am too lazy to remove them, and they are very light.

What brand are those Rick?

Blackburn "Clicks".
http://www.blackburndesign.com/lights/s ... a9AjtLCZ8E" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Available at the site, at many LBS, and Pro Bike Kit.
They are brite flashing LED lights so people can see you. They don't put out enough to aid your vision after dark.

I just got a set of nice LEDs on eBay for 3.95. Rather pair that with a nice handlebar.

There's a lot more to this project than just static lights, obviously.

My Knog Gekko setup. They are permanently there, so not too ww.


But that Helios is not for road bikes, and probably cool for fixies and the like.

I'd worry that the lights in the bar ends wouldn't be visible from behind - as your legs would/could get in the way...?

Also that bar shape is disgusting and unusable IMO.

You can get plugs with lights too and I have seen them in action you see them but one good strong rear light on the back of the bike is much better. I would rather have seen him do lights that would make the bike visible from the side if he wanted to be creative.

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