I wonder if it's a good idea to use like a solar sensor as a light sensor and have that rigged through a control system so when it senses car headlights a 1/4th mile behind you at night, it automatically overvolts your rear lights or switches on additional lights to catch some attention.
I mean, do you really need 50 LED's when there aren't any cars behind you (which I'm sure happens a lot out there).
Yea yea I know, don't tell me it won't work for drivers with no headlights.

I'm just wondering if this is an idea worth wasting my time at work on (otherwise i'll actually have to work) or if it's another brain fart...

Well considering that you want to switch in extra LEDs, having a sensor will help you to increase battery life and prevent hurting peoples eyes in a pitch black environment... But then you will need to power this circuit up constantly too.. so net effect, if the power consumed by the detecctio ncircuit is smaller than the power consumed by the extra LEDs, you win...

Now lets get nerdy.... I have very little experience with photo transducers so I am really talking out of my a$$ here.. If you can find photodiodes with enough sensitivity, you can probably rig it to some kinda circuit which would be non continuous and with some hysteresis maybe.. I will try to think of some circuits today...

I was thinking of rigging it up to a glock with a drum. So when a driver approaches too fast, it fires off a couple of random rounds out the back.

It's called a reflector.

Perfect answer.
A nice big reflector kicks back a TON of light. Be sure to get one that's DOT approved. I have a truck marker reflector on the back of my bike, it's about 1.5 x 3.5 inches, red.

what about one of the triangles's for slow moving traffic? they get pretty big and it will get you attention.

Glocks normally work off magazines. You would be better off rigging up a belt feed for better effect.

Oh god, it's so true... I gotta get out of engineering..
Boy do I feel like a moron lol...

OK, call me a nerd/geek/whatever but I've been toying with a similar-but-different idea which involves using a rear facing camera and a helmet mounted LCD display as a rear vision system, integrated with an image processor that works out the speed difference between me and the approaching car and displays it, along with the estimated time before impact as an overlay......

I think you're right Slvoid, we should get reflectors and rear view mirrors, then get the hell out of engineering!

But thats for slow moving veh., for veh. under 25 mph, who goes that slow anymore


Geek