This device will make your bike smarter

If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. Or at least, that was the thinking behind a new device called SmartHalo, which is designed to attach to your bike as an alternative to looking at your phone. While it’s unquestionably a dangerous thing to be on your phone while riding your bike, sometimes it’s necessary — like if you need GPS because you’re not sure where you’re going, or have gotten yourself turned around. Rather than forcing riders to ditch their smartphones and risk complete and total cluelessness, SmartHalo works with your phone, meaning you never have to take it out of your pocket.

It sounds too good to be true, but here’s how it works. By attaching the device, which is a round piece of plastic with a series of colored lights, to your handlebars, and syncing it with their app via Bluetooth, you’ve set up a perfect, hands-free navigation system that uses only lights to communicate. For instance, when a turn is approaching, the device blinks green and white. If you’re going the wrong way, it flashes red. When it gets dark out, the headlamp switches on.

And that’s not all! It can also notify you when you’re getting a phone call, and even track your distance, speed and calories. Toss in the location tracker, and anti-theft alarm, and a three-week long battery life, and you’ll wonder how you ever biked without this thing.

If you’re itching to get your hands on a SmartHalo device of your own, then head over to the company’s website, where you can purchase this bad boy for $149 dollars. If you want a discount, head over to SmartHalo’s Kickstarter, where you can pick one up for only $99 in preparation for its release in the spring of 2016.

This is good news for those of us taking early morning bike rides to school, or late-night trips back from the library on a college campus we haven’t quiiiite figured out yet. SmartHalo has got ya covered — now put that phone away!

(Image via SmartHalo)