UV drip bicycle tracker

posted Jul 25th 2008 7:00am by
filed under: classic hacks, transportation hacks


[Che-Wei Wang] has a few more projects up his sleeve aside from his pneumatic power suit. This is a bit artsy, but he created an ultraviolet ink dropper to leave a trail of invisible ink wherever he rides his bike. Just think of it as a modernized version of [MacGyver]‘s paint can under the bad guys car tracking system.



8 Responses to UV drip bicycle tracker

  • loosenut says:

    somehow i dont think having a constantly wet rear tire is the best idea.

  • Haku says:

    loosenut, exactly what I was thinking, surely it would’ve been better to have it drip directly onto the road or pull a 1-wheel trailer so the water drips onto that wheel.

    What exactly sort of hack is this? there’s not even any real article about the contraption, just a video and what’s with that? it just shows someone shining a blacklight onto a bike wheel with UV reactant dye on the tyre – where’s the video of the trail left by the tyre??
    Furthermore you’d need a pretty powerful blacklight to find & follow the path laid down by the tyre, and to prevent damage to your eyes some of those yellow UV filter glasses.

  • John says:

    Wasn’t this already done by “The Three Investigators”….

    Admit it, we all read those books as kids because they were totally better than the hardy boys.

  • michaelb says:

    Brings leaving a trail of breadcrumbs to a whole new level!

  • dielectric says:

    rats do pretty much the same thing, but with urine. they use it to navigate inside your walls and in your basement where it’s dark.

  • miked says:

    as anyone that has ridden a bike knows, you are almost guaranteed to get your a$$ wet. oh yea, i do not approve of this post.

  • blizzarddemon says:

    Miked what the hell are you still doing here? I thought you went of to make your own little HAD?

  • Andrew says:

    It’s also not scalable, since you’d have a hard time tracking anything down if many people were using it in the same area.

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