You may already know us for our ground-breaking and award-winning smart bicycle lights, all launched on Kickstarter. If you don’t know See.Sense, we’re an enthusiastic bunch of bike-riding designers and technologists dedicated to changing the world… for cycling… by doing things a bit differently.
With AIR, we’ve taken everything we’ve learned across everything we’ve done to create a clever little device to help you rest easy, knowing where your bike is anytime, anywhere.
It’s a combination of a few things. But let’s just say AIR is engineered the See.Sense way. It’s designed to be the most effective bike tracking device available on the market.
After a quick set-up, AIR operates all on its own… quietly doing its job in the background while you carry on living your life. It knows what’s happening all around it, immediately letting you know if it’s been moved, if it’s been stolen (more about this later), if it’s been in a crash and even what the road conditions are like around it. Pretty smart, eh?
You know that ‘find my smartphone’ feature? Think of that but for your bike. We’ve brought all our experience in smart sensor engineering to locate your bike down to the nearest couple of metres. However, even the smartest sensor is only as good as the network coverage around it, so being the first bike tracking device to operate across the Narrowband Internet of Things LPWA Network means AIR will work where your smartphone does when in an NB-IoT territory. Don’t worry, any techies can get deeper into NB-IoT with a bit more scrolling.
With a battery charge required every three months or so and a quick set-up to iOS and Android apps, AIR is uniquely fit-and-forget. It’s also a sleek and light device, weighing only around 80 grams, fitting unobtrusively to your bike. But even more than that, it’s intelligent; it knows how close you are to your bike and switches into its defense modes accordingly to let you know what’s happening to your bike.
We’re not talking about the stuff you breathe… although we do think this device is pretty essential too. Locks and chains definitely have their place but they can’t do everything. In fact, sometimes, they simply can’t do enough. Let’s talk through the features that showcase the AIR advantage:
‘Fight Mode’ is AIR’s always-on self-defense setting, sounding its in-built alarm and letting everyone around it know if your bike’s being moved. You’ll also get an immediate SMS alert notification, allowing you to check your bike there-and-then. You can rest easy on that club ride coffee stop, or city centre breather, knowing that AIR’s guard is up.
AIR will understand if it’s being stolen, automatically switching to its ‘Flight’ setting and rapidly transmitting high-powered tracking signals and locating your bike to the nearest couple of metres. If the worst happens, you can quickly pass AIR’s GPS location to police, giving a better chance of recovery. Think of it as an electronic tag for your bike.
AIR can keep more than just your bike safe, it’ll also help keep you safe, detecting if you’ve been involved in a crash and automatically sending an SMS to your assigned contact with your precise location, should the worst happen. Help is always within reach with AIR; it’s security and safety in one little unit.
AIR’s battery lifetime is unique for a bike-tracking device as we’ve built it on new NB-IoT low power wide area network (LPWAN) technology. We promised a bit more for those with a techie appetite and we don’t want to disappoint anyone, so here goes… LPWA is specifically designed for connecting devices with low bandwidth requirements, using low power whilst providing wider and deeper network coverage. Many millions of devices will be connected via LPWA networks in the next few years and See.Sense is proud to be the first to apply its use to protect the most important thing to any cyclist… their bike.
LPWA will operate across multiple bands worldwide, powered by the Vodafone IoT network, so we’re manufacturing three different AIR models, each designed to work in the correct band for the appropriate network coverage of the territory. We’ve included a list of countries and bands below for reference:
Band 20 / Most of Europe:
United Kingdom, Ireland, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Spain, Portugal, The Netherlands, Czech Republic, Malta, Turkey.
Band 8 / Australia, Africa & Asia:
South Africa, Australia, New Zealand.
Planned rollout of NB-IoT Networks from late 2020 include:
USA (late 2020), Russia, France, Switzerland, Denmark, Austria, Croatia, Poland, Slovakia, Norway.
We love the Kickstarter platform and the Kickstarter community because it allows us to really reward those who back us from the start. We offer a variety of pledges for AIR, each designed around the needs of our community, however, Kickstarter backers of all levels get two years’ free connection per device purchased. After 24 months, network connection will cost only around 3 pence per day for a year’s subscription. So you can put a price on reassurance, and with See.Sense, that price is low.
AIR’s first defence in Fight Mode is its alarm, which packs quite a punch for such a small and discreet device – check out the short clip above to hear AIR’s sounder in action. In our (slightly OTT) way, we’ve tested a range of different tones, pitches, patterns, then engineered a bespoke alarm specifically for AIR to get as much attention as possible and help cancel your bike being taken. Although the alarm will sound in Flight Mode, we’ve left it customisable so you can choose to turn it on/off or decide how long it should sound… it’s all up to you.
AIR is fixed to your bike quickly and securely using the security tools and bolts provided. AIR’s mounting kit is not only a tamper-resistant package but it’s a versatile one, with multiple mounting options available out of the box, allowing you to fix discreetly under the saddle or below the bottle cage. Fitting AIR in these locations means best-in-class connection to the network, accurately tracking your bike’s location and ensuring a battery life of months, not days.
Our R&D process involved consultation with antenna design specialists responsible for several generations of the market-leading smartphone. This was crucial to locate the device in a way that could deliver the best-in-class network connection and battery life we knew was the missing link in effective bike tracking. Once we had this design feedback, we then consulted with our customers and the findings were very clear… first-and-foremost, the tracker needed to locate their bike quickly every time, and if it could mount under a saddle (or under a bottle cage), that would be just fine. So we listened and we acted. As any existing customers know, this is the See.Sense way.
AIR therefore fixes to your bike quickly and securely using the security tools and bolts provided in a tamper-resistant and versatile package, with multiple mounting options available out of the box.
AIR can also make your experience of cycling better. The device is built on See.Sense advanced sensor technology and will monitor your environment as you ride, detecting issues such as poor road surface/route conditions. See.Sense then aggregates and de-personalises this data to work with city planners and advocacy groups to improve conditions for cycling for everyone. When we say AIR is smart, we really mean it.
See.Sense has already worked with cities including London, Manchester, Dublin and Antwerp to use these insights and we’re proud to be the Official Crowdsourced Data Insights supplier to British Cycling and Official Ride Insights supplier to Cycling Ireland.
We proudly manufacture in Northern Ireland, ensuring our products are made of the highest quality materials and components, and according to our exacting standards.
With six successful launches before AIR, we’ve built huge experience of manufacturing and distributing our products at scale. The diagram below indicates our expected timeline for AIR’s production.
All Kickstarter purchases include 2 years’ free connection.
AIR will be shipped with both saddle rail and bottle cage mounts, a charging cable, a security torx key and optional See.Sense stickers to identify the device as a deterrent, should you wish to do so.
For USA orders, we ship directly from our fulfilment centre in the United States. For UK & European orders, we ship from our fulfilment centre in the United Kingdom.
Please note you are responsible for any custom/import charges imposed at your border.
See.Sense was founded six years ago and we are now a team of 14 that handles all the design and engineering that goes into our products. We want to have more people cycling more often.
We’ve delivered five successful Kickstarter campaigns so far, three of which have involved manufacturing and delivery of electronics (our ACE, ICON, ICON2 bike lights), so we know technology and we know crowdfunding.
For AIR, we’ve worked closely with Vodafone, with validation facilitated by early access to their IoT lab in Newbury. This enabled us to develop against the new NB-IoT standard before the network is fully rolled out. Although this is new technology, we’ve done our due diligence to make sure it will work as it should and have designed its roll-out based on the latest data around the planned implementation of the Vodafone NB-IoT network. Each of our Kickstarters have been built on the learnings of what’s gone before and this is no different.