Night Riding

[slopster]

Yeah fair enough I'm supprised heated grips are only 2A. Anyway my alternator is rated to 27A @ 6000rpm. I don't know how much the ignition system draws but the lighting is well withen these limits.

[sAsLEX]

EDIT: I'm running halogens, not HIDs. but yes, 110 and 130 W respectivly.

HID are the bad ones for some reason from what I read about them, only in the LTSA eyes though


EDIT: was half right

from http://www.landtransport.govt.nz/veh...hts-right.html
High intensity discharge (HID) conversion kits

HID conversion kits (an HID bulb with a high voltage power unit or ‘ballast’ which fits into the original headlamp unit in place of the original bulb with no change to the headlamp lens, reflector or housing) are illegal on any vehicle being used on New Zealand roads.

However, a complete halogen headlamp unit can be replaced with a complete HID headlamp unit provided that the replacement headlamp unit complies with approved standards. If in doubt, get advice from a vehicle lighting retailer you trust.

[soundbeltfarm]

What do you do when the headlights pointing way up into the fricken sky and nowhere near the road?

You don't wanna stand up and peer over the front of the bike, I'll tell ya that.

In your case you might want to ease off the go fast handle a bit and let the front wheel come back down to earth.

What is it like when you doing a wheelstand at night?

[Zapf]

optical Recognition more than likely, small camera pointing back at your noggin from the headstock are, good thing is with a nice easyily distinguished shape such as a helmet or the stiker mention by XP is the processing would be alot easier! But now we are getting expensive....

A little micro to watch the lean angle turn etc could tell how much/rate of turn and sweep the light in front of that ie sense what your doing and predict your next move by working out the gradient of the last few measurements and following that through..... would be cheaper than cameras etc

Could use a little bluetooth sender in the helmet linked to a rate gyro thing up there to measure you head twisting and send that back down to the light and have one on the bike to isolate the rider from the bike movements to find where the head is pointing

many options!

Re helmet direction detection.. How about 1 x IR sender mounted on the bike pointed at the helmet with 2 reciever each tuned to recieve polarised IR light of a different plane. Mount 2 x IR reflective sticker that also has a polarised film at different plans on each side of helmet. Then you'll have a signal that shows which direction the helmet is pointed at.

Anyone on KB know enough about light polarisation to confirm if this has a chance of working?

[ldnz]

Re the tilting turret idea, i'd have a lash at it. Figure an accelerometer being used to measure tilt, a picaxe 08m and a servo. Shouldn't be too difficult, though I've had a barstard of a time keeping a picaxe going on my bike, despite having built the most robust powersupply I could easily do. Pity i'm outa here in 2 weeks, it could be a fun project.

[ldnz]

Stuff doing head tracking - too much processing to do. Maybe you could start with those TrackIR thingys that gamers use though. Pretty much a webcam with some IR Leds and a bit of filtering, plus some interesting image processing.

[Zapf]

Re the tilting turret idea, i'd have a lash at it. Figure an accelerometer being used to measure tilt, a picaxe 08m and a servo. Shouldn't be too difficult, though I've had a barstard of a time keeping a picaxe going on my bike, despite having built the most robust powersupply I could easily do. Pity i'm outa here in 2 weeks, it could be a fun project.

keeping in mind I don't think I know anywhere as much about electronics as you do. Re power supplies, won't something like a solid state transformer thing that they use for notebook computers be good?

[Zapf]

Re the tilting turret idea, i'd have a lash at it. Figure an accelerometer being used to measure tilt, a picaxe 08m and a servo. Shouldn't be too difficult, though I've had a barstard of a time keeping a picaxe going on my bike, despite having built the most robust powersupply I could easily do. Pity i'm outa here in 2 weeks, it could be a fun project.

FYI the servo can rotate the light source as well, instead of moving it about on its axis. when used with Hella Micro DE Fog patten lights

[ldnz]

Initial thought is too much drama. Though yes I would probably need to try a switchmode/transformer isolated supply soon.

The current theory is based around zener's on input and output, lots of large caps, 3 pin regulators, lots of tinfoil shielding and fuses on bloody everything. With this I can get my datalogger to hold up for up to 10 mins, but when I heavily brake there must be a fair bit of noise from the ignition and it packs up.

Anyway - I just fitted up my KR with a radar detector yay! Its a POS uniden, but i've already made it infinitly more useful by building a new set of lights that sit on the edge of my screen (the radar is out of sight) and logicing it so that it only displays Ka band alerts. Blasted through town an hour ago, picked up 3 cops from miles out, while I was in traffic and no false alerts yet. Not bad for $40 me thinks.

[ldnz]

You can do damn near anything with a couple of servos. That would be the (relatively) easy part. The hard parts will be mounting the lights/building the turret, and getting the accelerometer interfaced to the microcontroller and providing useful readings. I doubt that could be too difficult, but I haven't had the luxury of playing with an accelerometer yet.

Control code is easy and quick if you used something like a Picaxe, they are cheap ($6?) easy to get ahold of and very very easy to program. They would be plenty fast and powerful enough to handle a job like this.

[XP@]

Was searching for some other stuff and came up with this...
robotics programming...
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...DisplayLang=en

[XP@]

Yeah heres a photo of my helmet mounted lighting. They are 50watt halogen bulbs like you would use for interior lighting but I had to order them in with a 10 degree beam (standard bulbs ar 30 or 45 degrees). Mounted in pvc pipes with velcro to helmet. They are good for normal riding but when you start hanging off the bike in corners the wiring can get caught between you and the bike. What I really need is a curly cord like a phone cord which self retracts. It has to be able to handle about 8 amps. Anyone got any ideas where I could get a heavy duty curly cord.

Yup, along those lines.
I would be willing to give one a test ride in October (going for my 4th Grand Challenge).