Matt Richardson and the world's smartest bike light

20th of March 2013 by liz

Our friend Matt from Make (whom I totally failed to hook up with for drinks when we were in NYC last month – sorry Matt! We’ll see you at Maker Faire San Mateo) has been busy. This demo is absolutely superb. He’s rigged up a light on the front of his bike that works as a headlight and as a projector to show what speed the bike’s travelling at – Matt has plans to add some more features and make the whole thing rather more beautiful, and we’ll be putting video of the finished article up here as soon as he’s ready.

Matt’s book, Getting Started with Raspberry Pi is published by Make – check it out!

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24 comments

Extreme coolness! Being one of what seems many cyclists here (not to be confused with “biker” despite the “style” of my beard ) I am just going to have to do this on my bike!

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I see the makings of a game – a spot of object detection and rather than your speed a score achieved for staying alive on that ride is dispalyed

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I never cease to be blown away by the ingenuity of Raspberry Pi owners!

Yet another truly amazing project

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Matt, that’s very cool. And you don’t have to take your eyes off the road to see how fast you are going. You’ve got more guts than I do. I would not dream about riding a bicycle in New York. For me, it would be a nightmare.

Have you considered some sort of proximity sensor and alarms when cars come too close?

Splendid idea though.

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Extreme coolness indeed! I can see a few iterations down the line of this to be used indoors on a turbo trainer which is synced to a cycling video so you can join in on the ride (tour de France etc) and the speed of the video playback linked to the speed of your cycling. If you could link the pi to some way to control resistance of your turbo trainer, and elevation maps/GPX data then you could very quickly have a system comparable to the very expensive virtual reality esque trainers

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Simon D on
March 21, 2013 at 2:21 pm said:

This what I thought. Two parts to a project: 1) collect data from turbo 2) do something with it.

Cheap turbos are adjusted by a lever. But if you know the lever position and your turbo flywheel speed then the power + roadspeed are an easy calculation. You could read your bike speedo and eyeball a lookup table, but I can’t be bothered with that.

Writing a VR output system isn’t that hard. So long as you have elevation data and video then the rest is “trivial”. Your power/speed log will allow the computer to calculate your ground-speed for the gradient. Note that your aerodynamic drag power is cubic. Then numerically integrate this to give your current position on the course.

The output is really just a computer controlled video player. Normally the human controls the display. Here the VR machine controls the framerate.

Of course you could just ride on your own, or ride in a virtual peloton. Or do timetrials where you can’t be online together.

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- Stephen on
  March 21, 2013 at 6:32 pm said:
  
  Now you’re talking. Online multiplayer indoor cycling against your mates when the weather is terrible. You could have a Mariokart like onscreen map with your and your friends locations plotted on top.
  
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  - Andrew Scheller on
    March 22, 2013 at 4:09 am said:
    
    Yeah, I made a similar suggestion in the comments on http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/3376#comments
    
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Looking dangerous staring light against the moving car. Did you get people pointing finger and laughing at you saying “Hahahah. Look at that Nerd bike”?

Sigh*… Next day you won’t ride again.

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This is very cool, I love the concept, I think the coolest thing I can think of here is linking this to turn by turn directions from google maps and having it project the turn signs. not sure how this would work at day, maybe some cool led colour lights or something, There is so much potential here!!!

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what would be cool is to add a dymo or something that charges the battery as you ride

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JBeale on
March 21, 2013 at 6:23 am said:

Only if they work a lot better than the wheel-powered bike light I remember trying briefly about 30 years ago, the stiff load made it almost impossible to pedal. It was like having the brake almost fully on… but I guess LED lights are a lot more efficient now.

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- Andy on
  March 21, 2013 at 11:04 am said:
  
  When I were a kid, we all had dynamo-driven lights – it was cooler than batteries. The major problem was when you stopped, the light went off. More than once a car mashed my bike.
  
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  - liz on
    March 21, 2013 at 12:57 pm said:
    
    I had a bike with a dynamo when I was at university – it was a heavy great bike, and if you weren’t going as fast as your little legs would move, the light was thready, weedy and fluttered on and off. (And, as Andy says, it was a bit rubbish if you were stopped in traffic, ‘cos it went out.) I hope dynamo technology has improved since then, but the lights on my bike now are LED ones driven by a battery!
    
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    - silverfox0786 on
      March 21, 2013 at 6:07 pm said:
      
      I dunno
      
      I think its possible I got a wind up torch and its pretty good and real easy to wind
      
      and all you want really is for when the back wheel turn during riding to wind the dynamo and send power to the battery to keep it maintained and charged
      
      its possible as I have made a solar charger that keeps my pi running so the concept is same just replace the solar panel with a dynamo system
yakko TDI on
March 22, 2013 at 2:48 am said:

Modern technology to the rescue!*
http://sheldonbrown.com/harris/lighting/shimano.html

*I did not do any research so this may not work.

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Interesting idea. Maybe work as a head up display for cars etc ?.

Didn’t look like balsa wood to me

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This is, to be fair, a bit silly.

Because the projector is designed to project precisely in one direction with as little overspill as possible, it’s not going to help oncoming drivers see you.

Much of the bulb’s power is wasted by the dark areas. The remaining light isn’t bright enough to see where you’re going.

The small spot won’t help you spot obstacles in the road, like potholes.

You will have to have some other way to see your speed in sunlight.

I could go on…

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JamesH on
March 21, 2013 at 10:55 am said:

You could go on, but it’s seems that you have rather missed the point….

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Interesting project. At work we have a lot of projectors and they blind you when you look into it…how does it wor here? im concerned that ppl going towards you on bike,car and so on wont be blinded by the light.

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I’d have started with a cheap projection alarm clock (something like this: https://aldi.co.uk/uk/html/offers/special_buys3_26892.htm ) and re-purpose the projection bit. A bit of GPIO twiddling later and you have a four digit 7-segment readout on the road.

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Andrew Scheller on
March 21, 2013 at 1:55 pm said:

Would that be bright enough to be seen on a street-lit road though, rather than just a perfectly-dark bedroom ceiling?

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- Neil on
  March 21, 2013 at 11:33 pm said:
  
  Maybe – you can just about make out the one I have during the day. By early evening it is clearly visible.
  
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Congratulation and Jubilation for this “Bike-light” on the streetfloor. Many Greetings from Raphael kopfmann, Switzerland, Europe

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