Reflective clothing, flashing tails and a bright headlight are essential to riding your bike safely at night. Similarly, a pair of GIF-flashing Monkey Light Pros are essential to riding your bike at night — like a boss.
This currently-Kickstartered production utilises a quartet of LED-impregnated bars that fit along the the spokes inside of your wheel. As the wheel spins, the bars rotate and generate the 256-colour animated GIFs by exploiting the persistence of vision effect. This system also ingeniously incorporates a two-axis accelerometer and four magnetic sensors to track rotational speed and direction, keeping your GIFs moving in the right direction in time with your pedalling (16km/h-65km/h).
Each unit weighs just 500 grams and fits on a 26-inch to 29-inch rim using the standard 32-spoke or 36-spoke pattern. The system can load up to 1000 frames in a variety of media formats (JPG, GIF, PNG, AVI, MPEG, MOV, QT, FLV) onto a web-based playlist for display. Users can also download the Mac/Linux API to create custom light shows though the system comes preloaded with 10 animations. The integrated 7000mAh Li-ion battery supplies 3-8 hours of power at full brightness (up to 48 hours on lower settings).
The Kickstarter fund is $US98,000 to its $US180,000 goal with 54 days left. You can currently pick up a single light system with $US700, and a pair for $US1400. They will retail for $US895 a pop if and when the program gets funded. [Kickstarter via Obvious Win]