Bike sat-nav is not a new thing. GPS-equipped computers with bike-specific turn-by-turn functionality have been with us since the days of the Garmin Edge 705, but while data-capturing computers have plummeted in price, bike navigation has mostly remained the preserve of gadgets that sell for bigger bucks.
BeeLine is promising to give your bike navigation for just £30 (US$46 / AU$64). At least, that’s the earlybird price for the Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign, which launched the device today. (If you miss out on that, it’ll be a still-rather-good £40, and final RRP is £60.)
Related: Garmin Edge 1000 review
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Your £30 will net you a lightweight, shock- and waterproof plastic puck with a 1in backlit ‘e-paper’ display (that’s a monochrome LCD to you and me), which borrows your smartphone’s GPS capability over a Bluetooth LE connection to tell it where it needs to direct you.
There’s no built-in GPS; thanks to a built-in magnetometer (compass), accelerometer (movement sensor) and gyroscope, the BeeLine understands which way it’s facing and which way up it is, so once it knows your destination, it points you in the right direction. The theory goes that you just plug your destination into the BeeLine app, send to the device with a tap, and ride off. Because the gadget is relatively simple, battery life from a tiny 400mAh unit could be as high as 40 hours.
Consumer tech, not sportswear
I had a look at a prototype BeeLine device last week in its creators’ design space in east London. The unique industrial design is almost nailed down: BeeLine looks nothing like most bike computers, sharing more of its DNA with smartwatches and other consumer tech.
It’s navigation, Jim…
The community is key
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