Excellent, I really hope this project gets close to that of MonkeyElectric’s amazing (but expensive) display, but I fear 16 LEDs is not nearly enough, I’d want triple or quadruple that amount.

SpokePOV is good but it only caters for one colour and four frames of animation.

Posted at 8:14 am on Jun 11th, 2009 by Haku

While they’re at it, why not add analog audio input? You could plug in your MP3 player and have the wheels display cool effects in sync with the music. One wheel for each stereo channel. Or rear for bass and front for treble. Kind of like the Windozzz Media Player.

However, that would require adding speakers to the bike as well… if we’re going overkill we could integrate the MP3 player on the bike. Imagine having the wheels display the title, artist, album and full-color cover art. That would be awesome.

Posted at 8:33 am on Jun 11th, 2009 by thumpathumpathumpa

Is it just me, or does the Monkey Electric one not track RPMs? That is, it doesn’t seem capable of displaying a static image like LadyAda’s SpokePOV. I don’t see any mention of a magnet in the install guide so I assume not. For $2000, that’s unfortunate.

I may just have to make the rgbike-pov sometime.

Posted at 9:16 am on Jun 11th, 2009 by Mike

it would be neat to take this idea and apply it to the hubcaps on a vehicle. then put led’s underneath it and have those sync with the music too. o.0

Posted at 9:53 am on Jun 11th, 2009 by matt

Me and a friend did a simple bike wheel POV, but our experience showed that you need to go at least 30km/h to have a nice full picture. To be practical in more normal bike speeds at least two spokes (or going the full diameter of the wheel) need to be lit.

Posted at 9:56 am on Jun 11th, 2009 by Rado

@matt

There is a version for cars (its called the pimpstar).

This looks cool, I hope it can scale up with 2-3 sets per wheel on the same controller, so you can get a good effect at lower speeds

Posted at 10:49 am on Jun 11th, 2009 by nubie

Seems as if the price tag isn’t quite 2k… http://store.monkeylectric.com/category_s/3.htm
not sure where that price point came from…

Posted at 10:53 am on Jun 11th, 2009 by Jack

@Jack,
You’ve found the page for the M132. that’s a different unit.

The price point came from the link in the story:
“the video pro is built custom to order, pricing starts around $2,000 per system. contact us to discuss your application. “

Posted at 11:54 am on Jun 11th, 2009 by Caleb Kraft

@jack: that one just displays pre-programmed patterns, and is only 32 LEDs. The video pro is the one referred to in the post. It has 256 LEDs, 12-bit colour, custom user images/video and wireless control.

@mike: you are probably also looking at the wrong one, the cheaper one clearly doesn’t track RPM. The video pro does: http://www.monkeylectric.com/m464q_gallery.htm

Posted at 11:59 am on Jun 11th, 2009 by jproach

@jproach: You’re right. I hit the gallery button on the m464q page, which showed me pics and video of the other product. The Video Pro gallery is linked from that page and I skimmed over it.

Posted at 12:25 pm on Jun 11th, 2009 by Mike

I know of at least one person who has ordered one of the $64 spoke LEDs from Monkey Electric thinking they’re getting what’s shown here – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mT13ZcpwYtA
It pays to take note on what you’re buying before getting out the bank card…

Posted at 5:42 pm on Jun 11th, 2009 by Haku

Yay! My project is on hackaday! :D
For those who wish to see this project further developed, take in consideration that the lack of certain capabilities is due to the features I chose.
Specifically:
- Single sided board;
- Fit in 20″ wheels (wich i really didn’t test);
- Arduino compabilility (which I also need yet to test);
- All through hole components.

But yes, I think the number of leds can be triplicated and still meet the time constraints. By triplicating the number of leds and TLC5940 or by using more LEDs and using several TLC5947.

I believe monkeylectric is using a similar LED drive, because they also achieve 4096 greay scale levels :D

Posted at 5:22 am on Jun 12th, 2009 by Hazard

That´s sound cool!!! very good design and aplication.

please send me your contact because we have some job for u.

prcga (at) hotmail com

Posted at 12:47 pm on Jun 13th, 2009 by CineFocum