Tandem Stoker needs night-time directional arms
garyg
Posts: 420
Hi
Myself and my Wife are part time Tandem Bicycle riders.
Sometimes we find ourselves riding in the evening.
We have headlight, tail light and bicycle light setup on our tandem.
I've been thinking about making my wifes Stoker jacket arms LED directional signals.
After dark, Car drivers really don't see my wifes flapping arm signals.
The general idea would be to set up LED strips on the Stoker's jacket so that when she
is sitting on the Tandem normally, the LED's would blink at about the same rate as the
bicycle tail light.
When Stoker would signal a turn by raising an arm, the LED's would create an arrow shape and blink at a rapid rate,
which would signal a turn.
I'm currently looking at Adafruit products, but am open to any suggestions.
It's possible that I could purchase a jacket that already does this, but have not been able to find one.
It also would appear that the Adafruit people promote Arduino controllers.
Has anyone viewing this forum attempted something like this?
Any suggestions or comments would be appreciated.
I'm also hoping that I'll be able to machine sew the LED's and Microcontroller circuitry.
Thanks
Myself and my Wife are part time Tandem Bicycle riders.
Sometimes we find ourselves riding in the evening.
We have headlight, tail light and bicycle light setup on our tandem.
I've been thinking about making my wifes Stoker jacket arms LED directional signals.
After dark, Car drivers really don't see my wifes flapping arm signals.
The general idea would be to set up LED strips on the Stoker's jacket so that when she
is sitting on the Tandem normally, the LED's would blink at about the same rate as the
bicycle tail light.
When Stoker would signal a turn by raising an arm, the LED's would create an arrow shape and blink at a rapid rate,
which would signal a turn.
I'm currently looking at Adafruit products, but am open to any suggestions.
It's possible that I could purchase a jacket that already does this, but have not been able to find one.
It also would appear that the Adafruit people promote Arduino controllers.
Has anyone viewing this forum attempted something like this?
Any suggestions or comments would be appreciated.
I'm also hoping that I'll be able to machine sew the LED's and Microcontroller circuitry.
Thanks
Comments
http://www.instructables.com/id/turn-signal-biking-jacket/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cw8ulMPKZUk
Plus it mounts to the seat post, so your wife can focus on witty comebacks for the all the "Hey! She's not pedaling!" jokes.
Is that in addition to or in place of the standard "that's what I married you for" reply?
Clearly Jen has experienced this, as we and every other tandem couple has. One of three universal constants: death, taxes, and "Hey! She's not pedaling!"
When starting to research projects like this, I can never seem to get the search terms correct.
Jen
I really like the project you suggested.
I will be looking into that.
I'll be needing to mount the display on a vest instead of a seat post.
Our arrangement is peculiar in that I'm over 6ft tall and Wife/Stoker is 5ft tall in the morning.
It would appear that myself and my wife/stoker are the entertainment for our locality.
Most frequent comment shouted out by bystanders happens when I drop Wife off and am looking for
a proper place to park and secure the bike.
Someone always shouts "Hey, You lost someone!"
It's good to know people are looking out for you, or at least at you.
I've done so many LED projects lately, I think I can now write code to manipulate the colors and positions on these strips in my sleep.
Here's my hexacopter with some WS2801 LEDs.
I also use these LEDs in my mood enhancing LED project.
If you want a solid array, you can use cheap 8x8 arrays from ebay. I can't quite code for these in my sleep yet, but I can scroll rainbow text without a problem.
Now that we're approaching Christmas again, another option would be to use LEDs from CostCo. These might be a bit too bulky for your 5' wife.
(Rainbow text starts at 0:15.)
If you want to use any of these LED types, I'll be glad to help with some code to generate the patterns you're after.
Edit: Another LED option is the WS2812 LEDs (aka Neopixels). These only use one control line rather than two.
I realize all these options are RGB LEDs but really, if you're going to bother with LEDs, IMO you might as well use the RGB variety.
@garyg: I'd be tempted to go with some custom LED wristbands. Shake activated? That way you don't have to be wearing the jacket.
Doc
PoundSign2
Your suggestion was very worthwhile.
It filled me in on some of the details of sew on electronics.
I think I'll be starting with the Adafruit starter kit.
It will take me a bit of time to learn the small details.
Has anyone here had any experience using the EL wire and the 2 AAA battery powered inverter arrangement?
I realize that after looking at some internet info, that the EL wire needs to be powered by AC voltage or a
battery powered inverter.
While the EL wire is not as controllable, It may fit my thoughts of building hand signal directionals.
Any comments are very much appreciated.
Thanks
Garyg
SparkFun sells a variety of EL wire inverters. This inverter includes a place for two AA cells and seems pretty small.
There was recently a thread about illuminated strands. You might find something applicable there. Light pipe my be easier to use than EL wire (I personally haven't used EL wire).
Is the high voltage powering the EL wire painful if accidentally touched?
Duane
I checked out the information at Sparkfun and read the thread concerning Illuminated Strands.
This lead to more links and information.
I don't think the High Voltage power would be a problem, BUT I think the inverter hum that was constantly discussed
would be somewhat of a concern.
The more I read, the more I thought about my original tangent.
Another thing that was discussed on the links was the fact that EL wire is solid as opposed to multistranded.
AND
It also appears that you cannot machine sew the EL wire, you need to hand sew with fishing line preferred.
This afternoon, I stopped at my local Radio Shack store, only to discover that they had some new items in their somewhat DIY section.
I ended up purchasing a 1 Meter water-resistand led strip with the TRY IT OUT button and 3 LED strip section and one of their U Mold Plastic kits. I think I Over Paid for both of these items, but it felt good just to have something in my hands that I may be able to make work.
The U Mold plastic was directly related to the feet you made for your Hex Copter using this type of low melting point plastic,
but that is an entirely different adventure.
My plan now, going forward is to mount sections of the LED strip, some type of LED driver and one of those new very small Propeller controllers onto a patch that will be velcro'd to my wifes jacket back.
I will be attempting to use two of those Parallax tilt sensors that cost about $9 each as arm sensors.
The arm sensors, according to my current plan will fit inside of the jacket sleeve.
When wife raises her left arm to horizontal, with her left forarm horizontal, Propeller will tell the patch to signal a left hand turn.
When Wife raises her left arm to horizontal, with her left forarm vertical, Propeller will tell the patch to signal a right hand turn.
I would like to keep the operation of turn signals consistent with what I believe is the standard turn signal procedure.
I don't want to encourage peculiar arm movements when signalling a turn.
That would be bad training.
While my impulse buy at Radio Shack was rather costly, I think I'm starting to actually be able to start building something.
My next step is to design the patch, into which I can slide the LED segments, propeller and power supply.
Any thoughts or suggestions are still very much appreciated.
Garyg
Just thought I'd give you all an update on my tandem directional project.
..
I screen printed a blue mask onto a piece of orange nylon material and sandwiched the LED strip to
the inside.
The arrow is about 10" long.
With 9volts supplied the arrow draws about 140ma.
I was intending that the mask would be on the inside of the sandwich, but I folded it backwards.
The effect with the mask is pretty good though.
I ordered some 4-Directional Tilt Sensors #28036 to test how they will behave when mounted in
a shirt sleeve but am now somewhat curious about how much current the tilt sensors internal IR LED will draw.
Has anyone monitored this?
I also ordered a KeyFob Remote #700-10016
I'm thinking that if the tilt sensors do not work out in my sleeve design, I could maybe mount the
key fob on the stoker handlebar and wife could use it like a car blinker.
I would possibly use a mosfet transistor driven off the directional to turn on my Propeller or BS1 controller
Then, the controller could latch itself on with another mosfet and flash the arrows.
I'm wondering how much current the Key Fob receiver will draw when a button on the fob is not pressed.
I'll be able to test this when my order arrives, I'm thinking about a week from now, but since Parallax has already
shipped them, I may see them sooner.
As usual any comments, suggestions are very welcome.
Thanks
So wearable, sew-in or on stuff I know of very thin and narrow LED tapes. There's room on the taping where one could put needle & thread thru (or is it through?). Might be a rather ghetto way to rig it up, but for the flexibility it might be worth a go. Halloween is soon, I might try this out on my son's costume.
Hi PoundSign2
Where could I find out more information on the very thin and narrow LED tapes?
As my photo in my previous post shows, this is a very build em as you go project.
Reasoning behind my arrow size is that my screen printing or iron on transfer technology only allows for 8x10".
I chose screen printing in that I had all of the materials on hand to screen print the mask.
I was hesitating to use iron on transfer mask because ink jet printer cost is about $25 per cartridge.
When I cut and assembled my LED strips, I used a very fine insulated wire and drilled through the traces with a #75 drill, then pushed wire through and soldered both sides.
The only reason I'm using traditional copper wire is that I know the traditional technology and am not sure how the conductive thread will work out.
I'm still planning on trying some of the Adafruit products, but would really like to use sewing machine.
example would be that I would wind a bobin with conductive thread, which would show up on the inside of the garment.
Everything I've read indicates that the conductive thread is too thick.
If you try a conductive thread project, please start a message thread concerning your experiences.