Planet Arduino

When riding a motorcycle, it’s important to be seen, and if other vehicles can see your brake lights and turn signals as well, all the better. To help with visibility, YouTuber “MechTools” outfitted his helmet with a brake light and turn indicators that activate along with the motorcycle’s built-in signals.

The video below shows off how it was built, using an Arduino Uno onboard the motorcycle, plus a Nano embedded in the helmet. A pair of nRF24L01 transceivers enable the two Arduinos to communicate wirelessly, and three TIP122 transistors controls the lighting directly for sufficient power output.

While a neat concept, be sure that you don’t compromise your helmet’s structural integrity or legality if you try something similar! Code is available in the video’s description.

If you ride a bike, you probably share the road with a lot of cars. Unfortunately, they don’t always share the road very well with you. [Mech Tools] took a helmet, a few Arduinos, and some wireless transceivers and made headgear that shows when you stop and also shows turn signals. We were a little surprised, though, that the bike in question looks like a motorcycle. In most countries, motorcycle helmets meet strict safety standards and modifying them is probably not a good idea. However, it wasn’t exactly clear how the extra gear attached to the helmet, so it is hard to say if the project is very practical or not.

In particular, it looks as though the first version had the electronics just stuck to the outside of the helmet. The final one had things mounted internally and almost certainly had cuts or holes made for the lights. We aren’t sure which of those would be more likely to be a problem in the case of an accident.

However, as a concept, we liked the idea. It made us wonder if you could do the same thing to something a little less critical like a motorcycle jacket. After all, we’ve seen a lot of wearable gear lately.

We’ve seen similar projects before. Of course, it is probably safer and easier to add lights to the bike itself.