Velocity

Last crawled date: 3 years, 2 months ago

This is a fairly obvious one!
A speed / Milometer.
I envisage it being RF linked to the wheel pickup. The magnet attached to the wheel spoke induces a current in a pickup coil, which in turn is used to generate a short duration pulse of RF, picked up by the speedometer, in much the same way as RFID tags work. Thus the pickup does not need it's own batteries.

The speedo itself would be a dot matrix LCD with a Red LED Backlight (to compliment the Velodroom colour scheme).

It would incorporate two capacitive touch sensors, sensitive enough to be operated while wearing gloves. The sensors would be positioned one at either side of the device.

When either is activated, the back-light is switched on for say 20 sec. The two individual sensors behave as the buttons you use to adjust the settings / display.

The first touch on either sensor just switches on the back light (when the ambient light level is too low to read the display without) and puts the speedo in to 'command mode' where the buttons change the mode / settings. Command mode persists while the back light is switched on.

I've never really understood why bike speedometers never have a backlight! Perhaps the designers never ride at night? Also, on existing designs, the buttons are too small & fiddly to sensibly use on the move.

I think there is a market for a well designed, ergonomic bike speedometer - particularly with a back light.

If a second pair of capacitive touch sensors were added at the top & bottom, it could also be used as a Bluetooth control for music players & phones using simple gesture control.
A Swipe upwards to increase volume, down to decrease, right to advance the track and left to go to the previous track. - though maybe this is packing too much into one device?

Pros:
Ergonomic - simple to use while moving
No Buttons or moving parts - easy to waterproof, cheaper to make
Visible and usable at night
Keeps brand style
No wires!

Cons:
Battery Operated
Back light reduces battery life
Electronically more complex than a wired solution with buttons.