Radar Changing the Face of Cycling

First time accepted submitter Franz Struwig writes "MAKE Magazine has a great review of a bicycle radar product — showing off some of the early prototype innards: "The latest version features a 24 GHz radar antenna — high enough to resolve more targets and small enough to fit on a bike — an ARM processor, and Bluetooth LE to communicate with the front unit. The radar creates a doppler map, and recognizes not only the vehicle, but how far away it is and how quickly it’s approaching. It communicates this to the cyclist by a system of LEDs, and to the car by increasing the rate at which the tail light blinks as the car gets closer."

Comments

Re:They avoid epileptic frequencies, right?

[AK Marc]

How often is that? I know an epileptic who was 20 years without a seizure, but still couldn't get her license back. Are they letting epileptics drive these days?

And what do you avoid? 8-70 Hz? More? Less? There isn't a single perfect flash to trigger it (the most reliable triggers are multi-color, which this is not, and the studies indicate that color of the monochromatic flashes matters, so red may not have the same "optimal" frequency as white, or other colors.

Re:Useless

[TWX]

You know what apparently does work, based on a friend's experiences?

Putting a pair of amber lights out to the sides of your red center light, and having a sufficiently bright headlamp in front that illuminates a good chunk of road.

Those work because drivers assume that you're a motorcycle, and if you're a motorcycle then you're a lot heavier, and more likely to cause damage to their car.

With modern battery technology and modern, super-efficient lighting, it should be easy to fake a bicycle to light up like a motorcycle well enough to fool drivers at night.