This thanksgiving break, I decided to complete the project of adding lights to my bike in order to increase night visibility since I do a good deal of riding after dark. Also, pedestrians could not always see my bike as I approached. Building took about 8 hours. This is the final result:
My bike features 192 individual LEDs controllable over 6 PWM channels by an ATmega microcontroller. Eight light strips are attached to the bike via superglue and zip ties. All connections are watertight. The electronics are housed within a seat pouch which is water resistant as well. The pouch contains a 4Ah Lithium Ion rechargeable battery as well as an Arduino board attached to a custom built MOSFET shield which directly connects to the lights. It is easily detachable from the Arduino, meaning that I can simply unplug the microcontroller in order to update the bike’s firmware.
I can select flash patterns via a single button mounted on the handlebars. The microcontroller interprets Morse Code from this button in order to determine which flash pattern to select.
As a bonus, the black wiring I used matches the bike’s existing brake lines very well and as a result looks natural.
With the microcontroller, I can create various flash patterns. In the video below, I illustrate this. I can program additional flash patterns extremely easily and will in the future.
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An Arduino hooked up to the icm7218 chip.