four season cycling

A few weeks back I was at my LBS, Twin Ports Cyclery, and they had this new product in. It’s the CYCLIQ FLY6. It’s a rear LED blinky light with a built in HD camera. The owner wanted to get some feedback on how it works. He offered to let me try it. At first I turned him down. I’m not always that interested in all the new technology out there. After thinking about it for a few days I went back to the shop and asked if the offer was still open. It was. Home it went with me. The box sat for over a week. I also have a brand new smartphone, my first smartphone. So I had a bit of new tech toy overload. I tend to procrastinate over learning how to use new stuff like this. Without access to a teenager, I can never get this stuff to work for me.

Today I had the day off from work. I thought I’d better get this out and see if I could get it working. I’ve been keeping the bike shop in the dark about how it’s been going with this item.

After all my worrying about having to figure out how to use this it only took five minutes to get it up and running. I charged it up earlier. So all that was left was to connect it to my desktop computer to set the time and date. Then mount it on the seatpost of my bike. All I needed to do is pick the correct seatpost mount, slide the light into the mount, and then use two rubber straps to attach it to the post.  A power button on the side of the light turns on the light and the camera. A second button changes light modes. The camera and light are either both on or both off. It has 6 hours run time. The camera shuts off automatically  when the battery gets low giving you about 1.5 hours of run time left for the light. At 30 Lumens the light is very bright and rivals most other LED blinkies out there.

When I got home I connected it to my desktop computer. The video automatically uploaded. It uploads the files in 10 minute segments. If you rode for an hour, then you’d have 6 video files from your ride. Each file overlaps from the one before it and after it by about 5 or 10 seconds.  It couldn’t be easier. I wasn’t sure how to post it to my media, so I uploaded it to YouTube. Here’s two segments of video from my ride today.

In the first one watch for the women on the left side of the road 12 seconds into the video. Keep in mind it was 20F/-7C degrees outside today. She’s in a t-shirt doing tricks with a hula hoop.???

If my drivetrain in the video sounds unfamiliar to you, it may be because it is a Rohloff IGH Hub.

This next segment shows off my mad descending skills starting around 42 seconds in. I pass by my LBS at 4:45. It’s on the right side of the picture:

Overall the quality of video was much better than I expected. It’s designed to be good enough to read license plates. It’s fairly stable considering the rough roads I was riding.

I never thought I’d want or need something like this. But after one day with it, I’m sold. I learned drivers are giving me more room than I thought they were. It gave me a strange sense of security knowing that if someone was being a jerk I would have video proof of it. And just think, if the general population knew about this rear facing camera/light, they may think twice about harassing anyone on a bike with a blinkie light. Because they would know they might be recorded. It also caused me to think back to a local bicyclist that was hit from behind a year and a half ago. He survived, but was knocked unconscious and had some injuries. The driver left the scene and there were no witnesses that came forward. He had a hefty hospital bill. I keep thinking if he had this camera he would have the whole thing on video. The hit and run driver could have been caught. Something to think about.

For the record I did not buy this item myself. It is on loan from my neighborhood bike shop.