Sunday, July 29, 2012

Bicycle helmet complete (or, the afore-promised inconsequential blinking-light projects)

I have finally completed the bicycle helmet flasher project (that I added as an afterthought to the REM sleep mask PCB).  The design and fabrication of the controller module was outlined in a previous post; here I show the results of finally installing the lights into my existing helmet.


Additionally, the source has been slightly modified (available here); the device now has three buttons, one each for brightness of the forward and rear lights and the third setting the mode (off, both flashing, rear flashing with forward steady on).


The outside of the helmet is shown below; first from ahead, then from behind.  The LEDs are mounted within the hollows of the helmet, using folded-over staples as an initial anchor, then doused with two-part epoxy.





The helmet in action is shown below:

The helmet is shown from the inside below; the LEDs are wired in series.  The leads of the LEDs go through tough plastic strips which are anchored to the helmet with bent-up office staples; everything is further stabilized with a healthy helping of two-part epoxy.


The interface consists of three buttons adhered to the side of the helmet (visible in the video above).  Everything on the helmet should be water-proof (though the controller module and battery pack are not currently water-proofed, as they are very much prototypes).

Moving forward, I would want to optimize/shrink the controller module, and incorporate a lithium-polymer battery pack with USB charging; hopefully, this would allow the whole battery/controller module to fit within the hollows of the helmet (rather than having a tethered AA battery pack hanging off of the back, as it is currently)