Wearable and Out-in-the-world: Crash Helmet

By Varun Gupta (varung1) and Craig Morey (cmorey)   

The Crash Helmet is a bike helmet that marks out locations where people have been killed while cycling in Pittsburgh to the biker wearing the helmet and to the rest of the community. The helmet currently uses the location of the recent death of cyclist Susan Hicks near Forbes and Bellefield.

The Crash Helmet uses a LightBlue Bean to power four red LEDs. The LightBlue Bean connects to an iPhone over Bluetooth, and when the iPhone comes within 20 meters of a crash site, the LEDs on the helmet go dark. Additionally, the LightBlue Bean is connected to a vibrational motor in the front of the helmet, to signal the crash locations to the biker.

Below is a closeup of the Light blue bean and LEDs and the Vibration motor on the inside of the helmet.

Below is the Crash helmet in action at the site of the crash.

YouTube / Varun Gupta – via Iframely

Below is a fritzing diagram of the circuit.