As cyclists all over the world receive their SmartHalo devices, we are hard at work gathering user feedback, improving the overall experience and developing new features. The beauty of connected devices such as SmartHalo is they can be continuously improved. Here’s a roadmap for the next few months to give you an idea on how your SmartHalo experience will evolve.
Bluetooth improvements
The difference between SmartHalo and other bike accessories is that it detects you as soon as you hop on your bike, by detecting your phone (and its app opened in the background) via Bluetooth. This being said, we are aware that on some phones, this connection isn’t happening each time now. We’re currently investigating ways to improve this, as it is one of our main priorities. The challenge behind this is that each phone OS and Bluetooth chips behave somewhat differently, but we’ll figure out ways to improve it during the summer.
Navigation improvements
We’re constantly improving our navigation feature: we want to build the best navigation system for bikes in the world. A big part of summer will be spent improving the following:
Flexible routing options
One feature that’s being requested a lot is to show multiple paths to destination – we’re fully onboard with the idea and we’re working on it. We also want to make those paths better, by taking into account things that matter while riding, like elevation and road safety.
We’ll also release the ability to add and edit waypoints to your trips, which means you’ll be able to create trips with more than one destination.
Finally, we’re working on adding GPX support to your trips since it’s a feature a lot of people request. This will allow you to import GPX files created in any mapping app in the SmartHalo app and ride on that path.
Compass mode
When only the destination counts, you’ll be able to switch to compass mode. In this navigation mode, SmartHalo only points towards your destination it doesn’t tell you which road to take.
This feature has required a bit more work on our end. We are currently testing in house and the feature should be ready before the end of summer.
Clearer turn signals
We’ve recently improved visibility of turn signals by making them wider and brighter.
In addition, we’re improving the way SmartHalo displays turn signals. For starters, right now, SmartHalo only displays one turn at a time. The drawback is that when you have to take two successive turns, sometimes the second turn displays too late. In an upcoming update, SmartHalo can show that a turn is coming right after a first one.
We’re also adding a cool new animation for roundabouts (hello European friends!).
Bike finder on iOS
Finally, we’re adding the parked bike location reminder on iOS (sorry for the delay!). Just tap the bike icon when disconnected to get a pin to the last known location of your bike.
Alarm improvements
We’ve had great feedback regarding SmartHalo’s alarm. Some people also said it was maybe… too good.
Indeed, when parking your bike in public areas such as bike racks where there is a lot of coming and going, the current alarm sensitivity might be too high. We’re adding a second sensitivity option in the app for these cases. You’ll be able to easily switch between modes as you see fit. You’ll also be able to see how often your alarm went off since your last connection.
How do you upgrade SmartHalo?
There are two ways to upgrade the SmartHalo experience: Device Firmware Updates and App updates.
Device Firmware Updates pushes new code to SmartHalo’s brains. When one is available, it shows up in right hand menu of the SmartHalo app. Just follow the instructions on screen and it’ll update, it’s real simple.
The second way SmartHalo will improve is with App updates. Once in a while, the app on your phone will receive an update – either automatically or manually (most of you probably have app updates set to auto, which is what we recommend). Each time the app is updated, you will find what has changed in the update description.
In any case, if you need help updating SmartHalo, you can always visit help.smarthalo.bike.
Needless to say, we’re really excited to be working on these new features and can’t wait to share them with you when they’re ready to go. As always, keep the feedback incoming, this is what allows us to create a product you’ll love.
-The SmartHalo Team
