1B – Arduino Project – Turnt Signals Redux

Jonathan Ortiz – Scribe, Myles Blodnick – Designer, Kaan Doğrusöz – Tutor, Jake Scherlis – Integrator

Upon completion of the Wearable Turn Signal bike gloves (http://courses.ideate.cmu.edu/physcomp/f14/16-223/1a-basic-circuits-project-wearable-turn-signals/), we came to the conclusion that there were many areas in which our design could be optimized, namely in the area of versatility, visibility, and performance.

With regards to versatility, we identified that perhaps cyclists could own and use multiple pairs of bicycle gloves, so we concluded our design could be improved by mounting the system onto a more flexible fabric mount in order to feasibly fit over existing bicycle gloves. In this manner, cyclists would not have to give up existing bicycle gloves and they can instead be used as an extra accessory. In fact, The fabric itself can be worn as a glove in it’s prototype form, but in a future iteration we’d like to explore a more minimal, permanent casing.

In terms of visibility, on this iteration we elected to use NeoPixel strips that were not only much brighter than strips we used the first time around, but also contained individual drivers for each LED in the strip which we utilized to add animation to our signal lights. The animated arrows provide more immediate information to people looking at the cyclist as they help provide context for what the lights on the cyclist’s glove left hand symbolize.

In the context of performance, we improved upon our first iteration by replacing our rudimentary analog sensor with an accelerometer. When we first started testing, we figured that x, y and z axis measurements would be sufficient to determine the position of the glove and therefore which sensor to activate, but when we started actual trials we found that accelerating and decelerating effected the ranges in which the glove would change the correct output signal ranges significantly. We had to adjust ranges in order to compensate. The current iteration of the glove is a huge leap over our analog tilt switch iteration as a result; it is unaffected by elements such as wind and is way less prone to spontaneous failure.

Video

Process