Now that New York has finally joined the rest of the world with a city-wide bike rental program, users are finding great ways to further improve the service. Including Adafruit’s Becky Stern, who retrofitted a run-of-the-mill bike helmet with a wicked LED light show and a handy indicator that lets riders find the nearest Citi Bike station — ensuring they always get their ride back on time.
Just like with most Adafruit projects, there’s a complete tutorial on how to build your own. Odds are, you’re not going to find what you need to build the helmet floating around your kitchen’s utility drawer, but all of the components are available through Adafruit’s catalogue, including an Arduino-compatible FLORA board, a GPS module and an accelerator/compass sensor.
When completed not only does the helmet put on an impressive light show, alerting drivers and other riders to your presence, it also uses a set of LEDs above the rider’s eyes to direct them forward, back, left or right towards the nearest Citi Bike station depending on where they’re riding in New York.
