Today gives me the opportunity to talk about two of my favourite things. Technology and cycling. It is also a story about how the modern world of product development works so differently to how it did in the past.
Go back before we had the Internet and almost unlimited sharing of information and if someone had an idea for a product, they would have to pitch the idea to an established manufacturer in the hope that someone would see the potential of the product – while at the same time hoping that a manufacturer didn’t just steal the idea. That may seem unlikely, but think of Robert Kearns who pitched his idea for the intermittent windscreen wiper to Ford; Chrysler and GM who subsequently just started using the idea. It took almost thirty years but Kearns was eventually paid over forty million dollars in compensation.
The alternative to risking the exposure of an idea to established manufacturers would have been to build your own manufacturing plant and process. A lot of time and money is consumed in the initial stages before you might – one day – see a result.
Fast forward to today and the process is a little different. Lots of people have great ideas. Not all of those people have the resources or capabilities to execute on those ideas. Along comes the Internet to save the day.
The concept of crowdfunding was not created when the Internet suddenly took over the world – but it suddenly became a very effective enabler. Books were often crowdfunded by way of subscription schemes. If enough subscribers signalled their readiness to buy a book once it was written, the author and publisher would continue. Crowdfunding is slightly different in the fact that the money flows in first – but the main difference is the incredible exposure the Internet can give to an idea.
As many people do, Kingsley Fiegert was out riding his bike late one afternoon. Suddenly he was hit from behind with an object fired from a slingshot out of a passing car. Some people had portable cameras – such as GoPro devices – mounted on bikes but there isn’t much room on the back of a bike and a GoPro is typically designed to record for a shorter length of time than a normal bike ride.
Fiegert came up with the idea of combining a tail light (and eventually a head light) with a camera that would record high definition for long enough that it would capture an entire ride. From a crowdfunded start-up the company is now listed on the Australian Stock Exchange and products are sold around the world.
The products themselves combine a range of advances in different technological areas. LED lighting allows bright front and rear lights to operate without huge power consumption. When I was a kid growing up I had a light with a generator that clipped down onto my wheel. To give me any decent light I had to be travelling above twenty kilometres per hour to generate enough power to light the bulb. Not anymore. LED lighting is both bright and power friendly. In addition to light advances, battery technology has made incredible leaps and bounds so more power can be packed into a smaller space. Add in advances in camera technology – largely driven by mobile phone manufacturers – and HD cameras can now be housed in tiny packages. The storage capacity of micro-SD cards also results in large capacity in a tiny space. Add up all of those advances and throw in the modern Internet enabled crowdfunding concept and the Cycliq range of combo camera lights is a product that would have been impossible to produce only a few short years ago. To top it off, the products themselves use Bluetooth and ANT+ and Wi-Fi to allow full connectivity to phones and bike computers to deliver a fully integrated solution. As an added bonus, they incorporate an alarm that will alert your phone when your bicycle is moved by unauthorised user – recording the motion at the same time.
With the estimation that over a trillion items will be connected to the Internet of Things by the year 2025, I can only see it being a matter of time before the location of your bike will be able to be tracked independently of your phone wherever you are in the world. This might create a minor problem for those avid cyclists who tell their partners they are out cycling when the reality may be that the cycling time and coffee time often compete for the highest priority.
Mathew Dickerson