ABSTRACT

In some countries , bicycles are a widely used as transport medium inside the cities, its more ecological and also can save you some time when going to some place by avoiding traffic jams.

Bikes do not need to much apparell to make its task, all accessories a user can find on stores are related to security:

1. PROTECTION : Helmet , gloves.
2. SIGNALISATION: Reflective clothes , blinking back light.

Security is an important issue , so i decided to push the blinkling light signalisation system a bit further, the reason is that current systems only provide a mechanism to make others (cars, pedestrians, bikers) see your position, but if you need to turn you still have to take your hand off your steering control and signalise using your arms.

The idea behind B.A.S.S is to automatise the signalisation completely so the biker can focus only on riding, the following features are provided:

• POSITION SIGNALISATION: Green Blinking.
• TURNING: When the bike starts to turn, the inclination is detected by the accelerometer and an orange arrow starts blinking indicating the direction of the turn, the faster the turn is the faster the light blinks.
• BRAKE: When a deceleration is detected, red light is presented to indicate the reduction of speed, the bigger the reduction the faster the light blinks.
• TEXT PRESENTING: Some text strings can be stored on the Arduino’s memory and be displayed on the run.

PARTS

DEVELOPMENT DETAILS

In this projects 3 main goals are to be archieved:

Processing Data from Accelerometer ADLX330. [DONE]

Taking the code from this tutorial at arduino playground is quite easy to start obtaining the values messured by the Accelerometer. Thanks to Ed’s work we obtain continuosly the acceleration values of each axis but also the rotation angle and its pitch.

Interfacing Two LED Matrixes with arduino using 4 MAX7219. [IN PROGRESS]

This LED Matrixes are wonderfull for this project, they consist on 64 (8×8) Two coloured leds, this colors are Red and Green, if the two of them are set at a time, an orange color is emitted, this fits our requirements perfectly. But controling them with an arduino is not easy, they have 24 pins , so the digital outputs of our arduino are not enough, there are some Sparkfun Matrixes with an spi interface that makes it really easy and minimizes the requirements, but they are like 5 times more expensive.

So what we are doing is , buiLow deceleration/inclinationlding this interface from scratch, using MAX7219 chips and following this tutorial, again at arduino playground.

At the very beginning i tried to solder all elements on a prototyping board like this but the number of wires is simply to big and making a mistake by making joints was to easy. So i decided to buy some copper clad laminate and design the PCB myself using EagleCad Layout design software.

Calibrating values from Accelerometer to obtain correct results [TO BE DONE]

Once we have all the setup done, a calibration process must be done. The idea is to search for the correct values of inclination and deceleration to make the system responsive and accurate, there would be 3 diferent intervals to measure:

• Low deceleration/inclination   —>  2 blinks/second T=0,5s
• Medium deceleration/inclination  —>  4 blinks/second T=0,25s
• High deceleration/inclination  —> 8 blinks/second T=0,125s

REFERENCE

http://gizmodo.com/367988/signal-jacket-for-cyclists

http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/news.phtml/13904/14928/reactiv-jackets-wins-dyson-award.phtml

http://www.arduino.cc/playground/Main/LEDMatrix

http://www.arduino.cc/playground/Main/ADXL330

PARTS

http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_info.php?products_id=682

http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_info.php?products_id=692