Lost your keys? Sure you have, you absent-minded fellow you. And you iPhone? No frickin; way, right? What you clearly need is a way to replace your keys with your iPhone. That’s already been done for the home, and now you can toss the keys for your bike lock.
The gadget is called the BitLock, and it locks automatically when you leave your bicycle. The D-lock (U-lock?) communicates via Bluetooth and locks itself when you get three feet away.
The lock has a button so that you can actually close it without it falling off the bike, and when you come back you need to fire up the app and unlock it from there. iPhone battery dead? No problem! You can tap a 16-digit binary code into the two buttons to unlock it. BitLock battery dead? No problem. The battery will last for five years, and you can just swap a new one in when it dies.
But there’s more. The Bitlock app remembers where you parked the bike, so you can locate your bike on a map, and also share the location and unlock codes with others. If they also have the app then they can unlock your bike and borrow it. This is actually pretty great.
I see a lot of zombie bikes locked up for years, and some of those must be there because the owner lost the key. Then again, if you’re happy to just dump a bike because you don’t have the key, then maybe you’re not in the market for a $140 lock (which might cost more than your bike). The BitLock is on Kickstarter right now for $99, but isn’t expected to arrive until July next year.
Source: BitLock
Source: Kickstarter
Thanks: Mehrdad!
