German company iCradle is launching COBI, an all-in-one smart biking system that’s designed to be installed on any bike, starting at just over £100.
They call it the ‘world’s smartest connected biking system’ and say that it adds over 100 intelligent features to your bike.
The COBI system is partly hardware that gives any bike headlights, brakelights, and turning signals.
It’s also a smartphone app that offers GPS navigation, fitness tracking, weather forecasting, and Spotify integration.
COBI offers some features that are unprecedented in biking too – at least as far as we know. These include a security system that can only be unlocked with your smartphone password, and a battery pack that can charge your phone.
"I love biking, but I was so tired of looking down at my handlebars and seeing a whole mess of unintegrated gadgets, one for music, one for speed, another for heart race tracking,” said Andreas Gahlert, founder of iCradle. “COBI eliminates the clutter."
Gahlert has previous experience developing connected car systems for Audi, and has applied the same principles and functionalities to bikes.
COBI is being made available first via crowd-funding website Kickstarter. Of course it is!
You can get the system for US$159 – which is £101.47 at today’s exchange rate. iCradle are looking to raise pledges of $100,000 before 1 January 2015. As ever with Kickstarter, they won’t get anything unless they reach that target. Delivery is scheduled for May 2015.
Get full details on the Kickstarter page.
Mat has worked for loads of bike magazines over 20+ years, and been editor of 220 Triathlon and Cycling Plus. He's been road.cc technical editor for eight years, testing bikes, fettling the latest kit, and trying out the most up-to-the-minute clothing. We send him off around the world to get all the news from launches and shows too. He has won his category in Ironman UK 70.3 and finished on the podium in both marathons he has run. Mat is a Cambridge graduate who did a post-grad in magazine journalism, and he is a past winner of the Cycling Media Award for Specialist Online Writer.