Skylock

awec

Just popped up in a Facebook ad for me, looks interesting!

https://www.skylock.cc

The theft alert would be the biggest thing, knowing when someone is messing with your bike. Though I am not sure how it would work where a lot of bikes end up chained to the same posts and they knock against one another (seems common in Dublin city centre).

It also presumes that you'd be able to get to your bike faster than it would take someone to physically break the lock.

At like 230 retail it's pretty pricey though. Would anyone pay that much for a lock?

tomasrojo

Quite funny "review"
http://bikesnobnyc.blogspot.ie/2014/05/simplification-by-complification.html

ted1

Haha , not only is it ridiculous , but the icing on the cake is that it needs a WiFi connection to be able to use the alert function.

jon1981

Would love to see how much money they have sunk into R&D in that yoke :pac: :pac:

seamus

Yeah, this is a pure example of overengineering. Possibly useful if you have some kind of special city bike share scheme - tell renters to just lock the bike somewhere, then you can locate and collect it. But otherwise it seems like they have packed a pile of features into a bike lock just because they can.

So I lock my bike in an underground car park, and the lock runs out of power. What do I do then? I can't unlock it, either automatically or manually. I can't bring it outside into the sun, so I need to go and locate a portable battery pack to unlock it. Or I could just get a normal, stronger lock, that has keys.

Much like concept cars, this is a great idea when you make one or two of them to prove that you can do things like this, and then use the new technology elsewhere. But don't waste your money putting it into production. Nobody will buy one.

Collision detection, not a bad idea. But considering you're carrying a phone anyway, you could just build collision detection into that...

ted1

jon1981 wrote: »

Would love to see how much money they have sunk into R&D in that yoke :pac: :pac:

Probably crowd funded so they didn't put in a penny of their own money.

tomasrojo

It's becoming a bit of a joke, technologists trying to shoehorn smart phone capability into every device.

I think there even was a toilet that communicated with your smartphone. They try to justify it by saying it monitors your excreta for warning signs. Looking for that sweet intersection in the Venn diagram of technology fanatics and neurotics.

awec

seamus wrote: »

Yeah, this is a pure example of overengineering. Possibly useful if you have some kind of special city bike share scheme - tell renters to just lock the bike somewhere, then you can locate and collect it. But otherwise it seems like they have packed a pile of features into a bike lock just because they can.

So I lock my bike in an underground car park, and the lock runs out of power. What do I do then? I can't unlock it, either automatically or manually. I can't bring it outside into the sun, so I need to go and locate a portable battery pack to unlock it. Or I could just get a normal, stronger lock, that has keys.

Much like concept cars, this is a great idea when you make one or two of them to prove that you can do things like this, and then use the new technology elsewhere. But don't waste your money putting it into production. Nobody will buy one.

Collision detection, not a bad idea. But considering you're carrying a phone anyway, you could just build collision detection into that...

It says on the website that 1 day of light will charge the lock with enough power for 6 months or something.

The biggest issue would be not having a wifi signal for it to alert you to someone tampering, and also that it would probably only take a few moments to break it and what are the chances you'll get back to your bike in time?

jon1981

They have axed Wi-Fi, realising challenge they have...

The internals of Skylock have also undergone major changes. We made the tough decision to drop WiFi in favor of a new Bluetooth 4.2 radio. After a lot of testing, we realized that our Bluetooth antenna already provides ample range for theft detection (up to 3 blocks in dense urban areas with line-of-sight, and up to 1 block radius when inside a cafe). In addition we found that most public WiFi hotspots have login screens that use a web interface, making it impossible for our Skylock to directly connect to the network. WiFi also consumes much more power, especially while searching for networks. Instead, we chose a system-on-chip radio that will be capable of Bluetooth

OldBean

All this technology and still nothing that can deploy a temporarily debilitating shock of electricity to a would-be thief.