First Look | iCradle COBI – the future of connected biking?

Wow, we found out recently about an ambitious project: the COBI system (which stands for “Connected Biking”) aims to bring together every conceivable electronic function on or around your bike into one package. E-Bike-control, navigation, suspension control, Spotify, fitness functions, brake lights or just normal speedo data – the new company iCradle wants to integrate everything together in one system. A realistic endeavour or have they bitten off more than they can chew? In order to find out we visited the COBI team in Frankfurt to investigate.

At the beginning company founder Andreas Gahlert was frustrated about the numerous separate systems found on bikes. One display for the drive on your stem, a smartphone to navigate in your pocket, a sports watch with a save function on your wrist, lights and suspension remotes on the bars – all fitted with their own batteries and requiring space.
COBI aims to bring all of these devices together and beyond that off a whole range of additional functions.

The heart of the system is module mounted in the middle of the bars with an integrated front light. You attach your smartphone to this module and this then connects to all other devices within the system. You need to install an app on your smartphone, which allows you to control the other devices and show their status.

The idea of using your own smartphone as a control centre is one we like a lot. In this way you save having to purchase a further, expensive piece of hardware and the cost of COBI is astonishingly low. Furthermore modern smartphones have enough computing power to easily cope with the demands of COBI. In order to protect your phone on the bars a dust and waterproof case will be available. And if you’re riding tough trails with a higher risk of crashing you can just put the phone in your backpack – the connection to COBI will not be interrupted.

So that you are not restricted to the battery life of a smartphone it can be supplied with power from the e-bike whilst attached to the handlebar module. On normal bikes the module has an additional integrated battery which should increase the running time of a normal smartphone by at least five times.

So much for the theory – how does it all look in practice? To keep things short: pretty good!
The developers at iCradle have done a good job. Even the currently available functional prototype system already feels very well engineered. The housing looks strong and well thought out. The mechanical functions (bar clamp, clipping in of the smartphone etc) do their job as they should. The futuristic looks might not be to everyone’s taste – we found the whole concept visually coherent and appealing. Either way the bar module with headlamp will be available in different designs.

A full list of the integrated functions would be too much for this article, this on the other hand is an impressive fact in itself. Pretty much any electronic job on the bike which we can think of can be taken onboard. This includes of course the complete control of the e-bike drive and display of the battery capacity, speed etc. But as well as this the app already takes into account functions which are currently still rare such as electronic adjustment of shocks and suspension forks.

Beyond this a whole row of possibilities are offered which are not directly coupled with the bike. For example data from a sport watch can be recorded and processed, a well designed navigation system is available and various musical services as well as the current weather forecast can also be handled directly from the app. Finally COBI also has an anti-theft protection and proximity function built in. The latter recognises your presence and is automatically activated when your smartphone comes within range of the bike.

The whole project is currently just about to go into full production. Fitting then that you can also pre-order COBI directly via Kickstarter, starting at a price of 169 Euro. After our first impressions we’d say the system is very promising and were already very excited how the whole thing performs in the rough every-day world. As soon as the system is available in its final form we will be giving it an intensive test!

You can find detailed information about COBI and a complete list with the different functions on the following link: http://www.cobi.bike/ http://www.cobi.bike/

Text: Tobias Döring Pictures: Klaus Kneist

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