A number of months ago we had a look at the future of motorcycle heads-up displays, where we looked at three different approaches to the idea of displaying information directly into a riders field of view. And while the BIKEHUD in our opinion definitely had some issues with regards to practicality, it was the only product out of the three that you could actually purchase and use today. The Skully AR-1 helmet and NUVIZ Ride:HUD are both not to be actually released until sometime in 2015.
BIKESYSTEMS is so far in front of the market that they’re now looking to release their second generation product by August 2015 with a major overhaul of the BIKEHUD to be called the BIKEHUD ADVENTURE (for some reason, BIKESYSTEMS, the creators of BIKEHUD like capital letters. We’ll refer to the products in nicer letters for the rest of the article).
Here’s a quick recap of the existing BikeHUD:
- Fits onto any helmet – full or open face.
- Displays GPS, Speed, Gear and Speed Camera locations
- Ability to display race track data (lap, split, etc)
- Let’s you know if your indicators are on
- iPod connectivity
These were all great features, but our issue with the BikeHUD was that it was somewhat cumbersome. A control unit is fitted to the bike, which in turn had to be connected by a cable to the display unit every time you go for a ride. The actual display also wasn’t a true HUD – the display was a screen and wasn’t transparent that in our opinion wasn’t ideal.
The proposed BikeHUD Adventure fixes both of these and more.
BIKEHUD ADVENTURE: wireless in-helmet Head-Up Display monocle. Fits in your current helmet. Shows speed, GPS navigation, safety cameras, and interfaces with your smart phone to play music and show who’s calling you.
BIKEHUD ADVENTURE PLUS: in-helmet monocle with BIKEHUB on-bike controller. This is the BIKEHUD ADVENTURE monocle with BIKEHUB controller fitted on your bike. It does everything the standalone BIKEHUD ADVENTURE does and:
- Adds high frequency speed display (updates up to 100 times each second)
- Shows extra info in the HUD monocle: gear selected, engine revs, indicators. Comes with a handlebar-mounted keypad. o Can take calls from your smartphone.
BIKEHUD ADVENTURE VISION: monocle, BIKEHUB controller and BIKEVISION rear and forward facing cameras. Does everything the BIKEHUD ADVENTURE PLUS does with the addition of:
- forward and rear facing bike-mounted cameras giving wide angle vision and eliminating blind spots. The cameras are always ready to capture images as they are powered by the BIKEHUB controller (no need to worry about charging batteries) and they do not need to be fitted each time you ride – unlike other commercially available cameras.
A cool new features includes is called the BikeHUD Pitlane which provides one-way communication via a smartphone from the pits/support teams to the racer. Messages you could display include:
- STOP. Race abandoned due to accident/ hazard on track etc
- Return to pits either now or countdown in X laps
- You are X many seconds in front take it easy
- You are about to be overtaken speed up
- You are X seconds behind the leader go for it
There’s a bunch of other really impressive features that are set to be included in the new BikeHUD Adventure which are all available to read the the Kickstarter page for the project. You can get yourself a BikeHUD Adventure for £397 on the Kickstarter and help support it’s development.
While we were somewhat critical of the first iteration of this product we’re really, really impressed with what Dave Vout and the team at Bikesystems has proposed. Unlike Skully and NUVIZ, Bikesystems has actually got the runs on the board with a proven product and the feature set surpasses even what those proposed products will have.
BikeHUD Planning Second Generation Motorcycle Heads-Up Display
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