Categories
Cycling

RideAir portable tire inflater will pump you up on the go

It’s pretty amazing what the single press of a button can do for people nowadays. Controlling music, brewing coffees, opening garage doors — the applications for connected technology are effectively endless. However, there’s been no button to press to deal with the inconvenience of flat tires.

RideAir extends that one button utility to flat tires, using an 22 oz. aluminum canister holding 300 psi of compressed air to rapidly inflate both Presta and Shrader tires, or anything else for that matter with a suitable needle adapter.  This gets about 1.5 full tires for a standard 700mm x 25mm road bike tire, and more or less based on size and use.

Categories
Cycling

Piston Pedal Power compresses air to help climb that hill

In parts of the world, bicycles are the foremost method in getting from A to B. Europe is particularly famous for this, while the US is beginning to embrace bicycles with bike friendly initiatives designed to get people out and about. For the most part, it’s relatively easy to get around in these cities, however biking obstacles such as hills can be a challenge. Without a bulky electric bicycle to help, sometimes hills can make a short ride into one filled with burning thighs and sweaty faces.

Inventor Alex Baldwin’s Piston Pedal Power marries the lightweight design of most bikes with a pneumatic air canister to give riders small assists whenever they need it, turning it off whenever they don’t. The addition adds 6.5 pounds to the weight of a bicycle which isn’t too much, but still enough to be noticeable unless the product takes away the sense of the extra weight. In any case, he is still refining the design which is why he is asking for $15,000 to complete a third prototype and obtain a patent. A donation of $20 gets you 20% off the final price, estimated to be a saving of $240 — pretty pricey compared with other electric solutions like the ion Smartscooter which costs $399.