Servo
Automatic shifting for your acoustic bike
Kickstarter backer all-in$999.95
Planned store price$1,099.95
These are product renderings. Actual product may vary slightly.
Your bike shifts itself. You're just along for the ride.
Avenue Shifters is an automatic gear-shifting system for regular bikes and e-bikes. A small servo at your rear derailleur does the shifting — a microcontroller watches your cadence, wheel speed, and motion, and picks the gear for you. Roll up to a red light and it's already downshifted, so you pull away smooth instead of mashing the pedals in 7th.
No new bike. No electric drivetrain. It bolts onto the bike you already own.
Launching on Kickstarter — December 30, 2026
The problem it solves
You're cruising in 6th or 7th, and the light up ahead turns red. You brake, you stop — still in 7th. The light turns green and you're standing on the pedals, knees screaming, trying to get a bike moving from a dead stop in the wrong gear.
And here's the part nobody builds for: the shift has to happen before you stop. A derailleur can't shift while it's stationary — the chain has to be moving. So the system has to see the stop coming and act early. That's the whole trick, and it's what Avenue Shifters does.
How it works
- The hardware. A servo-driven spool mounts at your rear derailleur. The spool pulls 2.9 mm of shift cable per step, across 6 steps — 17.4 mm of total cable pull, exactly what moves the derailleur across the cassette.
- The brain. A microcontroller reads your pedaling cadence, your wheel speed, and a motion sensor that knows when you're slowing down. It combines those into a gear decision, in real time, on the bike — nothing goes to the cloud, nothing needs your phone.
- The preemptive downshift. When the motion sensor sees you braking toward a stop — light, sign, traffic — the system steps down before the wheels stop turning. By the time your foot hits the ground, you're already in the gear you'll pull away in.
- Never shifts while stationary. A hard rule in the firmware, not a suggestion. If the wheels aren't turning, no shift command is issued — period.
The models
Six systems cover the whole spread — acoustic bikes, e-bikes, long-range e-bikes, recumbents and trikes, e-recumbents, and long-range e-recumbents. Every one shifts the same way: before you stop, never while stationary.
Servo-E
Automatic shifting for your e-bike
Kickstarter backer all-in$1,649.95
Planned store price$1,849.95
Servo-E XL
The long-range e-bike system
Kickstarter backer all-in$2,549.95
Planned store price$2,849.95
Servo-R
Automatic shifting for recumbents and trikes
Kickstarter backer all-in$1,189.95
Planned store price$1,329.95
Servo-ER
Automatic shifting for e-recumbents
Kickstarter backer all-in$1,829.95
Planned store price$2,029.95
Servo-ER XL
The longest-range system we make
Kickstarter backer all-in$2,729.95
Planned store price$2,949.95
For manufacturers: OEM Software License
For bike manufacturers: license the Avenue Shifters predictive-shifting firmware for your own builds — licensed firmware build, integration documentation, calibration tooling, and engineering support. No hardware.
$35 per bike · fleet licensing for larger runs by direct arrangement: bill@aitoolsfortoday.com
Prototype status — honestly
Our prototype is a 1992 Trek Multitrack 720. We call it the mule. The servo + spool mechanism is designed and bench-verified (2.9 mm × 6 steps = 17.4 mm cable pull), the firmware runs with hard servo limits (30–150° safe sweep, verified), and bench testing is in progress right now. What remains is proving it on the bike — stand tests and parking-lot roll tests — and we're telling you that before the campaign, not after.