The Cricket - A Small Lightweight Bike Alarm

Wow. Did anyone even think this through? Is this a scam? It just makes very little sense. 150 feet? As long as someone knows to take a peak under the seat, they can just make one pass with a pair of dikes and steal the Cricket. Then come back a little while later, presumably after the owner checked on their bike, and simply go on with their original plan of stealing/defacing the bike.

This is my favorite:

> It is advisable not to attach the Cricket to metal objects such as your bike frame.

And also this about how long it "lasts":

> At least a year, usually a lot more, depending on how much you use it.

Even though the second paragraph says (in bold text, no less):

> works for years without replacing the battery or switching the device on/off.

So it does matter how much I use it? Or it doesn't?

Works only with Apple phones/tablets :(

It works over Bluetooth so it will alert you if you stay in distance of 150ft (45.72 meters). I wonder if you can use your phone to listen music over Bluetooth while staying connected to the cricket device?

I have got my bicycle recently vandalized because the thieves could not brake the lock, so they destroyed everything they could and left with just the seat - it was in the night in front of the building where I live in :(

I would love to have a solution to keep thieves away without adding too much weight - in my case a loud alarm would have been enough - but I cannot imagine one small and light enough for a bicycle.

I'll never buy a bike alarm that's just visible like this to the naked eye. This will never work in The Netherlands because it's too visible.

My sights for my MTB are still on the SpyBike GPS track that has an NFC tag to activate, and is completely invisible to the naked eye (So a much larger chance it remains there even if i gets stolen)

http://www.integratedtrackers.com/GPSTrack/Spybike.jsp

"The Cricket works best at close, over the shoulder distances. People will touch your bike by mistake from time to time, so it is best to use the Cricket when taking a look at your bikes is as easy as looking over your shoulder."

I'm really having a difficult time seeing how this is useful...

Wow, that is mind numbingly stupid. Use 150ft range Bluetooth to track a stolen bike.

Why does the light pulsate, thus drawing a thief's attention to it? And can't a thief just use the app?

Cricket has a motion sensor inside, making the Cricket respond in a tenth of a second, no other product can do that" <- Yariv Bash, Product Designer

I'd like to see them test this in The Netherlands, where, especially here in Amsterdam, it's quite normal for bike thiefs (or junkies) to steal a bike in seconds and sell them for 15 euro just minutes later.

Success of this device depends on the reaction speed of the owner or other Cricket users being quicker than the thief can steal it. Good challenge, but my money is on the thief ;-)

I'm not a bike rider, so can't comment much on the utility, but I think there's some utility in generalising the application of the devices. Tile is taking a while to get to market, but is quite nicely generalised.

The trick will be to get scale so that the network features become a reality.

Cool, so you can use your iPhone to track exactly which bin the bike thief dumped your Cricket in.

sweet product - got me a couple of those!