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TECH NEWS
See.Sense Icon connected light achieves 100% Kickstarter funding goal in 16-hours + video
The new See.Sense Icon is an intelligent and connected bicycle light that can be controlled from a smartphone via Bluetooth and has achieved its Kickstarter funding target in just 16-hours.
At the time of writing, the company has raised £37,822 of funding, surpassing its £24,000 goal. The campaign still has 26 days to go, so it’s likely that final figure will be a lot higher.
The company launched its first light a year ago, also on Kickstarter, which used sensors to automatically flash brighter and faster to improve visibility when you need it most.
The new See.Sense Icon is cleverer than the original. It can be paired with a compatible smartphone (iOS and Android) using Bluetooth Smart so you can control the settings through an app. The light modes can be adjusted from flashing to constant, a slider allows you to adjust the brightness, and you can check the battery life. You can also adjust front and rear lights from the same app.
The light itself is apparently intelligent enough to sense when you need increased visibility, such as an approaching car or nearing a junction, and flash brighter and faster. A unique feature of the original light was a complete lack of buttons, it was turned on and off simply by rotating the entire light unit. The new Icon has actual buttons so you can manually switch it on and off.
The new Icon is also more than just a light now. It can alert you, via the smartphone app, if your bike is being stolen. Similarly, it can also detect a crash and alert a nominated contact.
The light uses a pair of CREE LEDs encased in a waterproof (IP67) unit. The battery is recharged in 5-hours via a USB cable, and the run time is a claimed 15-hours. The light weighs just 49g and 61g when you including the mount.
See.Sense offers two versions of the Icon, the regular pairs a 160-lumen front light with a 95 lumen rear light while the Icon+ boosts the output by 50 lumens.
Now the Kickstarter goal has been reached, the light is going into production (and it’s made in Northern Ireland) in November, with delivery expected from January. If you missed the Kickstarter early bird pledges, you can still get a rear light for £49 or a front and rear light set for £74. Shipping is free in the UK and the US with a £4 charge for European shipping and £8 to the rest of the world.
www.kickstarter.com/projects/1670187625/see-sense-icon-the-intelligent-a...
David worked on the road.cc tech team from 2012-2020. Previously he was editor of Bikemagic.com and before that staff writer at RCUK. He's a seasoned cyclist of all disciplines, from road to mountain biking, touring to cyclo-cross, he only wishes he had time to ride them all. He's mildly competitive, though he'll never admit it, and is a frequent road racer but is too lazy to do really well. He currently resides in the Cotswolds, and you can now find him over on his own YouTube channel David Arthur - Just Ride Bikes.
Latest Comments
- mctrials23 20 min 57 sec ago
Part of it is that but a large part of it is just deeply ingrained hatred of cyclists because cyclists are blamed for ridiculous things and drivers...
- chrisonabike 32 min 44 sec ago
The exact situation shown in this photo is pretty common near me....
- brooksby 1 hour 34 min ago
Nope - had an urgent appointment with his tax advisor
- brooksby 1 hour 38 min ago
I'm not sure which one of them looks more like a crook…
- OnYerBike 2 hours 11 min ago
It might not be Miche-specific, but across all the thru-axle, disc brake wheelsets in my household (including Hope, DT Swiss and Bitex hubs), none...
- S.E. 4 hours 22 min ago
That made me think of that "Hot Fuzz" comedy movie... so many truths in it.
- Rendel Harris 6 hours 15 min ago
Good to see a V-brake option available for all those people who ride Cosmic Elites with V-brakes...seriously, you must know really that the answer...
- mattw 6 hours 53 min ago
Get thyself over to Buildhub - a community owned forum where I am on the moderation team ("Ferdinand") which is about self-build and renovation....
- Destroyer666 16 hours 57 min ago
Nonono, not those, but those that have constructed Italian cars and motorcycles that have been driven to hundreds of race and championship...
- RoubaixCube 17 hours 5 min ago
This may well be the case although Im unaware of the brands popularity on their home turf. I used to see them being advertised more in the UK...
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20 comments
Sweet Jesus, cyclists are gullible fools.
I have a couple of £40 bike lights. I charge them. I switch them on. I ride. Er.. That's it. Oh hang on. An indicator light changes colour when they are low on power. At no point would an extra light beeping on my phone be a benefit.
An app that automatically texted my wife and kids to ask the to put a brew on when I'm 5 miles away from home after a long ride? I'd pay a fiver on the App Store for that.
The more gizmos you add to a device the more chance there is of some of it failing. If you press and hold the key fob for my car all the windows used to open at once. I was so proud of the feature! It was cool - literally. After a year the sensor failed. I've been through two sensors now and just gone back to opening the drivers door on a hot day and pressing the window buttons manually. So far no one's laughed at my pitiful lack of remote car window control..
It is a life saver. Get one. Try one. They are magical lights that make biking safer. HONEStLY
Solution looking for a problem.
Where's the science that says speeding up the flash makes a driver less likely to plough into you?
Well, evidently not, or we wouldn't be looking at £49 for one that supposedly tells the council to come and repair the road
Point broadly taken on testing, though none of that really tests how likely the light is to be seen at a distance and from various angles, which seems the only thing likely to make any difference to how safe you are.
I think there's a reasonable hypothesis that visual volatility might aid the cognitive process of noticing something as a stimulus to recognition, but if someone's already seen and cognitively registered your light then—to be somewhat hyperbolic—the fact that it subsequently starts flashing a bit faster seems unlikely to be the pivotal point at which they decide not to drive into you.
I remain healthily sceptical. To me, it still just looks like a tour de force of unnecessary bells and whistles. If someone wants to show some evidence as to how I'll be safer with one, then I'm all ears, but for now I'm sticking with a £15 light that doesn't do anything more than emit and reflect light, but doesn't need charging up either.
Point also taken. But, remember, my reference is not to this light. It is to the existing See Sense rear.
Sure. But then, aside from pondering how effective the anti-theft/pothole/not-needing-a-phone bells and whistles are, so's mine. If people want a light that has the other new features then that's a purely subjective matter; if people are saying this or the the previous version is a better light because it's safer, that isn't. Or, at least, it shouldn't be.
Why would you need to adjust the settings using a smartphone app? Just because you can in theory make your bike lights connectable and all "internet of things"y, why would you want to? (Showing my age, I think...).
I always wonder how people test this. Presumably by attaching it to someone else's bike and riding some distance behind them, and doing the same with a whole heap of other lights… otherwise you'd never know, right?
Or by having owned and used many of them. Let's face it. A light is a light. Some are brighter than others. You can see that easily by turning them on in a dark room. So it comes down to useabilty. It charges easily. It's waterproof. It lasts for ages. But the USP of see sense is knowing what it's doing. It flashes. Brake and it flashes quicker (you can see this by looking down between your legs). Pull off at lights it does the same. You can check that it does this the first few times. Then you know that it is. It reacts to lights coming up behind you. I know that my Lezyne, or Exposure or Smart rears never did this. They were never designed to.
So, all things being equal, knowing that my previous lights worked, were bright, and lasted x-y hours on a charge, I'll stick my head out and say, PERSONALLY, that it's the best rear light out there.
So, given that many of the cheap lights that students carry around here have all sorts of complicated flashing sequences that seem to change completely at random, will drivers have any idea what it means when your light flashes quicker?
"ICON lets you keep your phone in your pocket or bag (where it belongs) and your eyes on the road." Well, that's certainly a long-overdue feature of a bicycle light
I wonder how the "detect the road surface and upload it and tell the council about potholes" feature works if people ride round potholes instead of ploughing straight into them?
And +1 to the above thoughts on the anti-theft. My Bluetooth stuff doesn't work well through walls. If there's no Sim card in the light itself, I'm sceptical as to how this will work unless you're sitting next to the bike.
Crash alerts, hmm, maybe. But a simple phone app would do this, and with less risk of failure due to one of the two parts of the system being broken in the crash.
It certainly must win an award for the greatest number of features to grace a bicycle light. More is better, right?
It's costly coming on this site-just backed this.
Given how good the original is, backing these seems like a no brainer.
Not suite sure how it alerts via the app if your bike is being stolen, given that it works over bluetooth you'd need to be within about 10 foot of the bike anyway. It'll cut down on silent-movie thefts by moustachioed villains in stripy tops, but I suspect the modern thief is a touch more savvy.
It would be weird adjusting out on the road. But, and here we go, this could go either way, adjusting See Sense lights is, well, dark arts.
Personally, the rear is the best light out there. It's truly smart. But pointing it at the sky/floor etc to adjust the pattern is beyond me. So I leave it in default which is the best mode.
So, it seems, they could add a button, or do this. And this sounds pretty cool.
I'd definitely buy one. Brilliant things.
But does it have nano-technology?
Personally, I've never had a problem adjusting the settings on my lights manually.
But obviously I've been missing out - what I really need to do is get a phone out of my jersey pocket, remove gloves (in winter) so that touch screen will work, unlock phone, navigate to app, navigate options, change settings, lock phone, replace in back pocket, replace gloves....
I'd imagine that's something you'd do at home, before you set out on a ride. Not sure about other people, but I don't tend to adjust the settings of my lights once I'm riding (unless I'm using a super bright front light)
Just won't leave home without my see sense