Connected Cycle teased their smart pedal a while back as an easy way to both track your ride and improve the odds of finding your bike if it ever got stolen. Today, they’re officially live on IndieGoGo and they’ve just about hit their funding goal as of this post.
The pedal itself has a lot going on inside, using GPS and Glonass receivers to know its position and GSM and GPRS cellular data connections to transmit that location to the cloud. The rest of the embedded electronics capture distance, elevation, average and maximum speeds, ride duration and estimated calories burned for each ride. It automatically starts and stops, too, so you never need to start a ride at the beginning or have that “Oh shart, I forgot to turn on Strava moment” I frequently enjoy about half way through my own rides.
Once the ride’s over, everything is automatically sent to the cloud and viewable through their smartphone app for free…
Because all of the ride info is sent to the cloud first, you don’t even need to have your phone turned on or with you during the ride for the data to be saved. Still not easy enough for you? There’s no battery charging or changing needed, it powers itself just be being pedaled.
If someone tries to steal your bike (or even move it), you’ll get an alert on your smartphone. Then, the app will show you a breadcrumb trail of the shortest walking route to your bike.
All of that’s possible thanks to the included SIM card that works on global GSM and GPRS standards. At launch, they have carrier agreements for the USA, European Union (Germany, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Croatia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italia, Lithuania, Latvia, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Czech Republic, Romania, Slovakia, United Kingdom, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden), Switzerland, Russia, China and Israel. Other countries are in the works based on demand.
As a bonus thanks for backing their IndieGoGo campaign, supporters that order through the campaign will receive unlimited data for as long as they own the pedals. Once the fund raising campaign ends and things move to retail, the free data is limited to 24 months with purchase, after which there’ll be a small fee.
The pedals come with a security wrench so they themselves can’t be stolen, and they’re compatible with standard foot straps. Choose from black, red, blue, green and orange and snap up one of the remaining early bird specials on their IGG campaign page.
