Electronics, Lighting, & Gadgets - Mans whole-body RGB LED suit uses Arduino- for bicycle visibility - check it out!

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christ0ph
12-15-11, 12:27 PM
This is a pretty neat project (http://projects.dehaan.net/2011/12/burning-man-rgb-led-suit/).

He used a widely available Arduino (http://arduino.cc) board (super-popular small Atmel-based microprocessor) and a bunch of individually addressable RGB LEDs to light up his desert night ride..

The interesting aspect technically to me was the way he extended the tiny Arduino's necessarily limited number of pins via SPI (http://code.google.com/p/fastspi/) writing the values to an array in flash (http://arduiniana.org/libraries/flash/) memory.

The board ends up being very small.
http://projects.dehaan.net/wp-uploads/projects.dehaan.net/2011/12/IMG_2813.jpg

There are also a number of videos.. Very nice.

pdlamb
12-15-11, 12:55 PM
Frankly, the guy looks like a clown.

Wonder how far down the road he can see? I'd be able to see about six inches past my front tire if I had all those lights in my face.
christ0ph
12-15-11, 01:18 PM
That's his intent.


Frankly, the guy looks like a clown.


It's an art project. He's at a huge yearly outdoor festival that revolves around various kinds of art - "Burning Man". It's held in the middle of the Black Rock Desert in Nevada, a huge dry lake bed that is similar to the Bonneville Salt Flats, its a huge completely flat surface that stretches for many many miles in all directions.

You're right. I bet all those lights create a lot of glare that reduces his ability to see. Thats why I've personally stayed away from some lights that seem to me too omnidirectional.