Climbing Bike Storage Thwarts Thieves?

If you’ve got an expensive bike and don’t mind carrying around a whole bunch of extra weight in your courier bag you’ll like this concept. A design team built a pole-climbing bike rack in about 14 days. The video after the break shows the prototyping process as well as the finished “lock” in use. It’s a commercial for the company that employs the designers, but this is one kind of advert we don’t mind watching.

Square channel makes up the body of the device, with a set of Rollerblade wheels which grab a light pole and use three 12V gear motors for climbing. The controller is a wireless fob similar to those used for keyless entry on cars. In the video you can hear the cliché sound of a car alarm being set once the carrier reaches its finished height. Nice.

[Thanks JonnieCache]

51 thoughts on “Climbing Bike Storage Thwarts Thieves?

  1. What about where the light poles taper as they rise? Perhaps the square tubing doesn’t impede while the device has the tendency to tilt to the heavy side, thus allowing the wheels to still grip and climb.

  2. LoL, any real thief would get a laptop and do the same thing and just drive away what a crap idea,
    well, ye you could use encrypted key transmission but it is exactly there where the flaw comes into the game.

  3. “Great.. until the second guy uses the same pole as you.”

    Hey sorry i’m late for work, some guy parked underneath me and i had to wait for him to finish his latte before i could get my bike down.

    Of course you could build one with extra torque so it pushes all the bikes below it

  4. ..light pole? seriously?
    In my country we call them lamp posts.

    If you’ve got an expensive bike why not dangle it at a height from a lamp post on a busy street using some hobby motors and rollerblade wheels.
    hmmm not sure about this one.

  5. okay to all of you who think this is impractical: You obviously have never been to Bremen. Me and my 8 friends lost a total of 18 bikes to that city.
    Since these guys speak a nothern dialect of German it’s save to say the come from Bremen. :D
    That’s about the only place where this makes sense.

    Also nice in the vid he tests the remote saying:
    “Hoch”, “Runter”, “Disco” (“Up, down, disco”) and the leds flash.

  6. @vonskippy & others: you could also simply use a padlocked cable / chain through the frame of the bike and around the pole… this pole-climbing rack certainly would make it a lot more difficult for someone the saw the cable or pick the lock to get your bike or steal the wheels or something.

  7. That bike is mine! long pool with hook to yank it down with. or grapling hook ;)

    What happens if the batteries die, does the bike fall? How does it stay in one place once its up there?

  8. @pRoFlT: I’m just guessing, but no small motor has that kind of torque by itself. Therefore, I would bet it’s a worm gear. Which by the way has the nice property of irreversibility (usually), ie. it locks up where it is when you stop driving it. But hey, I could be wrong.

    And sure, you should have an acrobat on retainer (or at least the Super Marios), in case your battery goes flat (or the electronics get wet) while the bike is up there.

    Oh, and a lawyer, just in case the bike comes crashing down on somebody’s nearby parked car / cat / dog / offspring / head etc. Otherwise, great laugh, sure.

    1. @max yah but did you see how the bike is held? Looks like they just have it resting there on a bracket. I did not see a clamp to secure the bike to the system.

      Now a tenacle system would be real difficult to build for that. And would need a bigger backpack.

      When I first saw this I thought back to an idea I had for poll cleaners. We have several flag polls at work and I’ve seen them be hand cleaned. I wanted to make a robot that could climb to the top and clean the poll. Like a romba for flag polls :)

      anyways a bike secured this way is no more safe then with a chain. If someone wants it the will figure out how to get it down from thre.

  9. “Great.. until the second guy uses the same pole as you.”

    @Captain Obvious: Elementary, dear Watson. They just need to make a Mk.II, that can pass itself on the way up/down. Perhaps with two of these rings, connected by a worm/arm/tentacle/thingy that can swap them… Hmmm, this is starting to have some serious mad science potential…!

  10. This is something thinkable only in the land of the 700cc sedan.

    A nudge from a RAM 3500 would have that bike to th go the ground and in bolt cutter range, in about 8 seconds just lettin it idle. quiet, no fuss, and gone in 60 seconds.

    I imagine ‘d be even easier with a hotwired Hanomag

  11. you would call a friend with a ladder

    obviously if this was for everyday use, a lot of time and money would be spent on lightening it and making it failsafe. one motor, carbon fibre, high density batteries and a carrier or permanent attachment to the bike frame might make it more viable

  12. GREAT, I saw the germany add in german tv few days ago bud didn’t that there’s an instructable for it! :D netver the less i would never ever buy anything there, their prices are muuuuchhhh to overrated!

  13. A Lot has been said about it’s feasibility but very little about the legality. Where I live you can’t even tape (yes tape or nail or staple) a yard sale sign to any pole owned by the city or a utility operating under permit by the city. Now I guess a person could start a company installing poles for this purpose but then you may as well build the lift into the poles at least then you could put a bike on each side and not have to carry anything with you just your padlock (to lock the bike to the lift) and your (leased) encrypted key fob remote control thingy to raise it and lower it.

  14. Brilliant! The main flaws (dead battery, no locking clasp) are easily fixed. The rest of the arguments apply equally to any physical security technology. Except you have to be a whole lot more obvious about your attempt with this one. A bloke on a pole is pretty conspicuous.

    Most of the time, you just have to rebalance the equation of risk/effort vs. reward for potential thieves. I think this accomplishes that goal quite nicely.

    This would be great for attending outdoor concerts. Put your bike up a pole, easily keep an eye on it from elsewhere in the park!

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