Dynamic bicycle headlight uses the open road as a display

dynamic-bike-headlight

This thing is so cool it almost looks fake. But [Matt Richardson] isn’t a hoaxster. He actually built what might be called a heads-down display for your bicycle. He refers to it as a headlight because it borrows a similar function. It mounts on the handlebars and shoots light off the front of the bike. But it’s more than … Read the rest

Brake Light Backpack overpowered with LED pixels

led-motorcycle-backpack

Here’s another Flora Arduino based project from [Becky Stern]. It’s a backpack with brake lights and turn signals for use when motorcycling, but it should work just as well for bicyclists. From this view the project looks pretty normal, but things get downright crazy when she decided to use the WS2801 pixels for the LEDs. Sure they take all the … Read the rest

Brilliant auto-off feature for a bike light

auto-off-bike-light-switch

If you’re going to use your bicycle as transportation at night you really must have a head and tail light in hopes that the crazy drivers don’t hit you. For good reason, these lights don’t turn themselves off. But [Miceuz] kept forgetting to shut it down upon arrival and always ended up with dead batteries. His quest for an auto-off … Read the rest

Robot performing a tightrope act

This robot is able walk the tightrope (translated). Well, it’s more of a shuffle than a walk, but still a lot better than we could do.

In the video after the break you can see the bot starting on the platform to the right. As it steps out onto the wire (which rides in a groove on the … Read the rest

Turn signals on your head

Several weeks ago, I was in Culver City L.A., and happened to find a hackerspace nearby. It was a pleasant coincidence that the night I chose to randomly show up, was their public meeting which focused more on projects people were doing. The place was packed, I was barely able to squeeze in the door and actually stood outside for … Read the rest

Washing machines that do it without electricity

Those of us living in the first world take clean clothes for granted. Throw them in the washing machine, transfer to the dryer after 45 minutes, and you won’t smell for another two weeks or so. But for people living in areas without electricity, clean clothes are a huge amount of work. Hand washing a family’s clothes is estimated at … Read the rest

DIY GLOBARS for nighttime bike visibility

Inspired by a non-existant yet still cool illuminated bicycle handlebar project, [Becky] over at Adafruit came up with her own version of light up  handlebars. Not only is her project actually real, they’re also a pretty cool build that brings a little lightcycle ambiance to twilight bicycling.

[Becky]‘s light up handlebars are inspired by the GLOBARS concept design … Read the rest