#loudbicycle

So yesterday, the second of my kickstarter fantasies became a reality. (the first was my Boosted Board) And don’t quote me on that, because I’m not even certain this one was on kickstarter. I’m talking about the #loudbicycle. It’s basically a car horn for your bicycle. My challenge is to adapt it for #electricskateboard use.

Now that I have the thing in my hands, it’s a lot easier to gauge how to use it. First thing, it’s kinda too big and heavy to hold, or attack to my arm. As a matter of fact, only the Evolve Bamboo Series 2, with its motor sticking out of the back, seems to be large enough to accommodate it. Even that’s a stretch. There’s also the matter of vibrations. Of which a skateboard receives much. I’m not sure how sturdy a product this is, but I’d hate to immediately mount it to the board only to find it doesn’t like being shaken.

The thing came with directions, which said to charge the thing first. They said it might take up to eight hours! But I noticed it uses the same, *Mini* USB port that for some reason is increasingly common to see. And though I kinda hate this port and wish it would die and leave the rest of the world to make *Micro* USB the standard, apparently Mini USB *is* popular because at my charging station, I’m already setup for Mini. It’s the same port that Evolve and Boosted use for their remotes.

So I plug the thing in to charge. Keep in mind, this was just after coming home from work. So there at my charging station, I also have my laptop, the Boosted Board, the Boosted remote, and now this #loudbicycle horn.

The Boosted remote’s light was the first one to turn green. I unplugged it. Then the Boosted Board turned Orange. Remember I have one of the earlier models that turns orange, not green, when it’s charged. I unplugged that. Finally my laptop started flashing orange a blue. I swear, this isn’t because I’m some sort of huge University of Florida Gators fan. That’s just how chromebooks work. My chromebook, at least. And it’s usually the slowest to charge.

But it’s my routine to unplug the whole power strip, once everything is charged. When I did that, I didn’t realize that the #loudbicycle horn was no longer charging, as it was plugged into the power strip. When I was the horn was no longer charging, I was tempted to simply plug the strip back in. But the strip has all of these AC/DC converters plugged into it, and they might draw some power away from the charge, so instead I plugged just the #loudbicycle horn directly into the wall.

And when I did, it’s light turned green. I always kinda wonder about batteries and appliances like this. I bet if I had left it plugged in, it would have taken quite some time to charge. But for some reason, unplug it and plug it back in and it’s all good?

So what was the next step? To honk the horn, of course. It has an external button on a wire that you have to plug in, and I connected it. There was some tension in the air as I braced myself for what should be a loud noise. I hit the button.

The honk was loud enough to make me jump, even though I had braced myself for it and pointed the horn away from me. Also, that single honk caused the charge light to go from green to red again. I let the horn charge.

I have a big pocket on the outside of my backpack that has #loudbicycle written all over it. I cleared out the pocket, and now the horn lives there. To be fair, it was so loud, I’m almost scared to use it. Which might be a good thing.

For my morning commute to work, I take a bus most of the way. So for that short ride, almost entirely over sidewalk, I elected *not* to connect the button and have the horn as an option. I plan to enable it for my ride home. So, yeah, I haven’t actually field tested the thing. More posts to follow. As always, see the horn on my instagram @maulakai.