Bike Safety Features

Biking Is Awesome!

Inspiration

I love mountain biking. If you're anything like me you love going Mach 10 down a hill making sharp turns and bold jumps. If you're even more like me, you wipe out often because you go way too fast and cannot react to the trail fast enough.

When biking around campus, pedestrians, drivers, and other bikers can be aggressive. These safety features improve the blind spots of the cyclist and avoid potential crashes.

What it does

When any object comes within 3 feet of the front and rear sensors, an LED and buzzer enable. When the biker takes a turn, a tilt sensor enables an LED. (Vibration sensor and moisture sensor pending)

How we built it

I demoed two ultrasonic sensor distance measurers with an Arduino board. When an object came within 3 feet of the sensor, a light and a buzzer would sound. I tested this same method with a tilt sensor. When the sensor is tilted horizontally from the verticle position, an LED is lit. I soldered each sensor build onto a PCB and wired each build to its own Arduino board.

Challenges we ran into

I originally presented this idea to a team of 3 others. We had different creative ideas and respectfully decided to go our separate ways. This was a solo project for me. The hardest part was finding the hardware. The Hardware room did not have any ultrasonic sensors, so I had my dad drive up from Kalamazoo to bring me my Arduino kits that included two ultrasonic sensors. I used multiple boards instead of one because I ran out of programmable ports and I did not want the wiring to be messy. The original idea for this product was to be an AI that learned the trail of a mountain biker (sensors would collect data such as vibrations to detect bumpy terrain, turns, objects in front of the biker, and mud within the gear shifter) and would provide assistance to the biker on the next trail run. This would include the AI reminding the biker of a turn coming up in 5 seconds. Unfortunately, due to time constraints, I shifted the project towards a safety-orientated goal. I was unable to add the moisture and vibration sensor in time. I also was not able to test this product in the real world.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Successful sensor implementation.
Success in writing the code for 4 sensors.
One-man show!

What we learned

IDE/Java programming has an easy-to-adapt structure. sensors on bikes can improve safety for pedestrians and bikers. You can use diet coke to cool off a solder pen