I guess Precious didn’t want AJ the Fiesta having all of the telemetric sensing and twittering vehicular fun. Precious was created as a “smart” bike that can carry his rider, Janeen, across the US to raise money to benefit LIVESTRONG. Precious is outfitted with an array of sensors and a microcontroller, and like AJ, the system correlates that data into moods and thoughts that are then tweeted. I’m not really sure if all the tweets are pre-canned or if somebody is reading the sensor data and interpreting it as the thoughts and feelings of the bike and composing some of the content.
I really like the website and how you can scan back through the days traveled, see some of the scenery, direction of travel, relative speed, incline, and stats like: How much roadkill, how many times honked at, number of rainy days, miles traveled per day, and probably most importantly of all, how much money raised.
(And yes, I know I’m personifying Precious as a boy. They refer to him as such on the site. Hey, who am I to argue with a bicycle’s gender identity?)
Yes, I Am Precious
No Direction Known (Janeen, Precious’ rider’s blog)
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