See Sense Alarm

Hi, just posting this in case 10 people in London want to chip in £59.90 each and get 10 of these to sort out between yourselves.

I’m up North and pledged £74 for one.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1670187625/seesense-air/rewards

I have the see.sense light and I wouldnt go even a mile close to any (more) of their products even if they were handing it out for free let alone ‘back’ it on kickstarter.

Could be said for 99% of crap on kickstarter.

Fair enough. I have an Ace set and Icon2 rear and apart from a couple of early issues with the app, they have been great.

I have no association with them either.

Sadly have to agree with my first iteration of the See Sense ICON. Nice bright light, but overly complex really & just stops working randomly every few weeks, to then start working again. Also doesn't cope very well in the wet. First one conked out so got it replaced & the second one is flaky now too.

Same experience pretty much. Basically all these kickstarter hosers are ‘testing’ on real consumers with no savings built onto the product either.

Exposure or dynamo or nothing. Maybe Moon if you are poor.

Disclaimer: my see sense icon 2 abruptly stopped working and they replaced it. But something as essential as rear light shouldn’t fail, ever. So a swift replacement is still an empty gesture to me, just test rigorously, make product better and then launch.

Also battery life is quite poor. They keep saying ‘update the firmware’ .. makes me want to file these under ‘internet of shit’

I don't share @amey 's concerns, my see sense lights are actually quite good. One failed after it got a complete hosing in 2 solid days of rain and they replaced it really quickly. Otherwise they've performed OK, even if the functions are a little more than you really need. I actually use the ability to turn them on off and up and down from my phone quite often whilst riding. Dead simple to do, and pretty effective.
My main concern though is the device they're just launching, as there is no reassurance that the unit won't be in a canal when you finally track it down, whilst the bike is somewhere else.

Regardless of how well it works. It's a big visible unit. What's to stop a thief from just taking it off the bike and chucking it?

My icon rans for 2 days and still didn't need to be charged. Luck of the draw

Agree with @lazysuperhero here. A thief will spot that and smash it off straight away, regardless if it's attached using security bolts. The mount is made of plastic so won't stand much beating.

I'd prefer something like a bar end plug or and would be happy to remove it every 3 months to charge.

That’s a good idea. Especially if they could resist putting a logo on the cap end, so it just looked like any other plastic bar end

While I love my Ace's flash patterns (I'm one of the original backers on KS, took exactly one year from KS to mailbox) and brake mode, the random stops / battery drains really bug me too.

One and only thing I like about my Ace set is brake mode (even though not sure if it works all the time).

The rest of the lights are absolute disaster.

Awkward charging, ABSOLUTELY TERRIBLE mounting, hard to press button, random moments when you can’t turn the lights on.

Was quite excited about this security thing, but turned out to be another shit product (most probably).

I would also probably get pissed off at the frequency of the alarm going off every time the bike is nudged or shifted when people lock up next to it etc etc

A bike is often frequently and innocently moved or touched while it's locked, an alarm going off every time that happened would get tiresome. That aspect doesn't seem very well thought out.

If another product with brake mode + COB LEDs existed, I would definitely switch. Not sure why Knog or Lezyne don't have similar products. Find the mounting mechanism fine btw. Button's a nightmare especially with winter gloves. (Good mini review of the ACE light...)

I digress. The alarm, not really sure. Maybe on bikes that you can't easily lock up or take inside, like a cargo bike, or something with a trailer etc. Other than that, I don't really see the appeal.

Yeah, I really like the light spread and brightness of the Ace's but I've had to get the rear replaced once, the newer one has a dodgy on/off button, and I've love for them to have a knogg style mount.

If another product with brake mode + COB LEDs existed

There is this Cateye - not used it, but have another model in the range without brake light feature:
https://www.cateye.com/intl/products/safety_lights/TL-LD710K/

The lupine rotlicht has a brakelight and scored highly with road.cc https://www.deporvillage.net/lupine-rotlicht-rear-light-negro?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI-JPKhK_75QIVh7HtCh0hOQ4jEAQYASABEgImUfD_BwE

Exposure Blaze reakt?

https://road.cc/content/review/253186-exposure-blaze-mk3-reakt-and-peloton

Neither of those have a

COB LED

Fair point. I'd be interested if that would that be a deal-breaker though?

Edit: Given that the cateye reviews basically say it doesn't work as a brake light.

I think COB might be more efficient in terms of lumens per watt. (One of the reasons might be them being easier to cool down due to the copper backing on the PCB acting as a heat sink)

the cateye reviews basically say it doesn't work as a brake light.

ah - well that's knocked an item off my christmas wish list

I think COB might be more efficient in terms of lumens per watt.

Yet the bloatware makes battery life shite