These bikers combined a trek that could save your life

Lumos will go on to benefaction is product during Silicon Valley’s HardwareCon subsequent month. PHOTO: LUMOS

Lumos will go on to benefaction is product during Silicon Valley’s HardwareCon subsequent month. PHOTO: LUMOS

Gandharv Bakshi keeps his bike circuitously a wall by a door. Backpacks line a walls of his office, and, in a open air, one can hear a tiny of a still travel below. He apologizes to me for a dirt and asks if we float a bicycle. When we acknowledge that we can though don’t do it really often, he recommends me some weekend trips.

At a heart, Lumos is a group of bikers that creates hardware for bikers. Winner of Revvx Hardware Accelerator’s initial batch’s DemoDay, it landed a display mark during HardwareConnext month in a Bay Area.

Its latest product is Aster, a trek that lights adult and, around a handlebar sensor and a smartphone app, tells cars behind riders if they’re branch or stopping. That helps with reserve – globally, 1.25 million people died in highway trade accidents in 2013, and half of those were motorcyclists, cyclists, and pedestrians.

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Gandharv says a association has only crossed 100,000 Aster orders, mostly in a US, Germany, a UK, and Australia. California alone creates adult over 10 percent of a orders. But co-founders Gandharv and Lavina Mahbubani didn’t devise for that. When it started, Lumos only wanted to assign your phone.

A Solar Start

Lumos’ products embody a Unplug Solar 2K (US$99), a Thrillseeker (US$134), and a Aster (starts during US$119). The Unplug Solar 2K and a Thrillseeker are formed off a co-founders’ strange thought in 2014 to build solar backpacks. The Thrillseeker, in serve to being a solar panel, is a 12-liter hydration bag that can also lift a apart three-liter hydration bladder.

PHOTO: LUMOS

The solar row allows a trek to assign equipment like smartphones. That energy could afterwards be delivered to your phone or other device around a USB pier in a bag. This is useful if we need your phone to navigate while riding.

The founders are cyclists themselves, and a lot of their feedback comes from their possess practice or practice of their customers. “We have a man who went on a 20,000-kilometer ride, opposite a length and breadth of India,” shares Gandharv. Via a bag, a biker had charged his phone with a object for many of a trip.

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The solar energy was also useful for powering other mechanisms like bike lights. “Those were things we built for ourselves, not for a outward audience, only given we can,” says Gandharv. They threw a product on Amazon and got buyers from countries including a US, Germany, and their warn winning marketplace – Mexico.

The arch square of feedback: give us lights on a bag.

Like a lot of wear designed for bikers, a solar bag was regulating contemplative strips, that assistance with prominence when another automobile shines a lights on a biker. However, a co-founders’ possess practice roving in opposite countries, total with some shocking bike reserve statistics, done them wish to take things a step further.

The Importance of Design

Their answer was Aster – a trek that uses an LED row to vigilance to drivers that (1) you’re there and (2) a actions you’re formulation to take. Through a smartphone app, it connects to a sensor on your bike’s handlebars. That will vigilance lights on a behind of a bag that will uncover if you’re interlude or turning. Meanwhile, lights on a front and behind of a trek keep we manifest in a dark.

PHOTO: LUMOS

The rechargeable battery will light a trek invariably for 10 to 15 hours, and a light is manifest from adult to 250 meters divided in transparent conditions. If a automobile pushing 62 mph stops, it takes anywhere from 104 to 144 feet to come to a finish stop.

Many of a six-person team’s “learning curves” concerned changes in small, design-oriented details, a specialty of Lavina’s. Those notation changes can make all a disproportion in removing a patron to purchase, says Gandharv. For example, while neon colors are many simply manifest on a road, Lumos found that business wish “to mix in [the] bureau and mount out on a road.” Aster’s handlebar sensor is in a routine of an refurbish – business wish to buy something sleeker in appearance.

Other changes take opposite countries into account, where a manners for cyclists might vary. In some countries, a blinking light is illegal, so Aster has a solid light and delayed blinking options. There are also settings for conditions like fog.

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With somewhat opposite light placement, a bag resembles that of UK-based Go LED, that has been accessible given Jun 2015. Go LED costs US$96 and is accessible in Europe. Another association called Lumos, formed in Boston and Hong Kong, takes a same proceed to biker prominence – though by a helmet instead of a backpack.

While a backpacks were creatively done in Bangalore, Lumos has shifted a production to Shenzhen in an bid to scale. It is operative on a pile-up warning complement for Aster, so if a cyclist gets into an accident, a circuitously management knows something’s happened.

Aster is accessible for pre-order on Indiegogo, where a association reached a crowdfunding idea in May 2016. Backpacks systematic by a page have an estimated smoothness date of Apr 2017, though it has already delivered bags to progressing backers in 18 countries.

This essay creatively seemed on Tech in Asia.

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