I have resumed some work on my dorm's light / laser system in my free time (See last year's work here for details). I am currently writing the software and working out a few of the electrical bugs. My next step is beat detection and synchronization. I also want to redo my Android app. More pictures and videos will be uploaded soon.
Old features from last year:
Fluorescent White light
UV Black Light
Strobe Light
Laser Spirograph Projector
New features:
Crude Laser Scanner (servo based) w/ Green & Violet lasers
Laser star projector with controllable rotation speed
This thanksgiving break, I decided to complete the project of adding lights to my bike in order to increase night visibility since I do a good deal of riding after dark. Also, pedestrians could not always see my bike as I approached. Building took about 8 hours. This is the final result:
My bike features 192 individual LEDs controllable over 6 PWM channels by an ATmega microcontroller. Eight light strips are attached to the bike via superglue and zip ties. All connections are watertight. The electronics are housed within a seat pouch which is water resistant as well. The pouch contains a 4Ah Lithium Ion rechargeable battery as well as an Arduino board attached to a custom built MOSFET shield which directly connects to the lights. It is easily detachable from the Arduino, meaning that I can simply unplug the microcontroller in order to update the bike's firmware.
I can select flash patterns via a single button mounted on the handlebars. The microcontroller interprets Morse Code from this button in order to determine which flash pattern to select.
As a bonus, the black wiring I used matches the bike's existing brake lines very well and as a result looks natural.
With the microcontroller, I can create various flash patterns. In the video below, I illustrate this. I can program additional flash patterns extremely easily and will in the future.
