IEEE Spectrum May, 2013 - 22

resources_hanDs on

riDe by Wire
Build A PushButton-controlled
electronic Bicycle
shifter on the cheAP

That's not quite as many as you find
on an Xbox 360 or PlayStation controller, but it's enough for most games.
The game pad fits nicely in the hand
and takes only a few moments to set
up, and it comes with a stand to support the iPad during play.
The Duo Gamer's biggest drawback
is the small number of titles it currently
works with, all from the games developer Gameloft. Discovery Bay struck a
similar single-developer deal a couple
of years ago with its successful Atari
Arcade joystick controller. The difference, however, is that Atari made available a huge back catalog of beloved
games for both its coin-operated arcade machines and home console,
while Gameloft has only about half a
dozen titles that work with Duo Gamer.
How well does the Duo Gamer justify the $40 investment? I played a
car-racing game and a first-person
shooter from among Gameloft's titles,
first with the iPad's touch-screen
interface and then with the game pad.
The game pad certainly improves the
experience. Not only are the games
more fun to play, but you're also not
constantly covering up parts of the action with your fingers. And it's much
less fatiguing to play a fast-paced
game with the controller.
If the Duo Gamer-or a similar
controller from another manufacturer, such as the Kickstarter-funded
PhoneJoy-becomes broadly available to mobile-game developers, we
could see the last good reason to own
a console evaporate.
-Stephen CaSS

hen I was a teenager, I went from a bIcycle wIth a
3-speed gear hub to a 10-speed with front and rear derailleurs.
The wider range of gearing was empowering, but the derailleur
shifting was sometimes a bit finicky, something that's still the
case even as I've gotten better bikes over the years. My road bike (a 1980sera 12-speed) always seems to need its shifter friction tweaked. And my
21-speed mountain bike-which I converted to a human-electric hybrid a
few years ago [see "The Hybrid E-Bike," IEEE Spectrum, September 2009]-
has always had trouble with the indexed shifter for its rear derailleur, perhaps a consequence of the time it spent rusting on an outdoor scrap heap
before I rescued it. * One solution would be to buy better mechanical components, of course. But instead I decided to experiment with electronic
shifting. Bicycle designers have been dabbling with electronic shifting
for more than two decades, and in 2009 the Japanese company Shimano
started selling its Ultegra Di2 electronic system. Problem is, a Di2 shifting
kit costs nearly US $1900. Ouch.

REMOTE cOnTROl: With the iPad
mounted on a stand rather than held
in the hand, playing games is more like
using a console with a TV screen.
22

May 2013

norTh aMerIcan

sPecTruM.Ieee.orG

left: discovery BAy gAmes; right: dAvid schneider

A version of this article appeared
online in March.

http://sPecTruM.Ieee.orG

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Spectrum May, 2013