Helios bars - transform your bike into a smart bike

Also, am I the only one who thinks the drops have been welded on upside-down?

Difficult to steal? My allan key says otherwise (speaking from a handlebar theft experience).

one thing - if you were going to the trouble of integrating a light into the bars you might as well stick a better one than is likely to be powered by a couple of CR2302 cells. It does look a little like someone wanted all the gadgetry of yer modern cyclist but that didn't upset the aesthetic priorities of the hipster fixie rider.

@Arno I think it's funny that it has both mounts for a brake and braking surface on the rims

Personally I'd have at least a front brake

It is cool but seems a bit necessary, I basically have all the stuff just not in my handlebars

Call me old fashioned but I find difficult to call a bike made for city riding "smart" when it has no brakes...
(I know, fixed wheel,at one with the road bladiblah...)

anti-theft bolts and stem cap look like they ought to come as standard with this. Unlike most of the boutique crap that seems to turn up on kickstarter this actually looks quite nice and thought through but if you a packing all that electronic kit into one unit I'd want to be damn sure that individual spares were available.

I agree, some really good ideas for commuting bikes.

There's a fine line between useful and gimmick though, as demonstrated by the rear-facing lights. Of course they should be red - or perhaps indicators, fine - but why do you need a smartphone app to control them? You can't use a phone while riding (unless you're an idiot). So you'd have to stop, dick about with the colour of your 'rad ride', and then go again. Or how about, you put a small click-rotating bezel on the light that could be rotated as and when "necessary".

The GPS should be fine globally - although as my Garmin goes a bit funny when I put it in a pocket, I expect the signal will be terrible inside the headset.

These look great for a posh city bike. For the rear facing lights I'd want red, and then obviously flashing amber for turning.

A matching seatpost is needed. Collar'n'cuffs.

this will definitely catch on around here (London). I hate switching lights between bikes, taking them off at the pub, etc. Or just plain forgetting them in the morning and then deciding in the afternoon that I would have liked to have put in a couple of hours training on the way home, but now can't. Great idea, as long as replacing parts when they break is straightforward.

How do you change the angle of the light, if you change frame/forks etc?

Oh hang on, it might work, but the SMS messaging thing might only work with US carriers.

Confused. Does anyone know if there's a difference between US GPS modules and rest of the world. My incstinct says a GPS unit should work anywhere in the world, or what's the point.

If you're going to pledge for this, be aware that the GPS unit won't work outside the US.

Really, really nice project and I hope it does well.

Like. Want.

why on earth would you want the rear facing lights to be anything other than red?

They don't have all the fancy smartphone features, but I've got a set of these* for my commuter. Surprisingly powerful (given a single AA battery) secondary front and rear lights, with not-entirely-useful indicators (the buttons are on the units- ie at the very end of your drops)

*(widely avaible through other retailer, shop around for the best price, wiggle was just first in my search for them)

These are going to divide opinion pretty strongly I predict.

Not much use for me living in the country and commuting during the day, but if I still lived in the city I could see them as quite useful maybe... and quite cool. Or am I just deeply uncool?