Road ahead displays bicycle speed

The Raspberry Pi is a cheap and small single-board computer developed in Britain as a way to encourage children to experiment with computing, but it’s already being used to devise imaginative accessories for bicycles.

Matt Richardson has combined the £20 Raspberry Pi with a smart phone and a powerful light to create a handlebar-mounted device that projects a bicycle’s speed onto the road surface ahead.

Richardson’s design is still at a prototype stage but he hopes to add a GPS function to the display.

The Raspberry Pi is a palm-card sized computer board that plugs into a TV and a keyboard. It’s a miniature ARM-based PC which can be used for many of the things that a desktop PC does, like spreadsheets, word-processing and games. It also plays High-Definition video. The Raspberry Pi is supplied as the board only, and comes without operating system, SD card, power supply, keyboard, case or cables.

Handlebar-mounted lasers that project an image onto the road ahead to increase a cyclist’s visibility are already available to buy. Designer Emily Brooke raised £55,000 on crowd-funding website Kickstarter.com, to make her Blaze light project a reality.

The idea of using a powerful handlebar-mounted laser to keep inattentive motorists on their toes will appeal to many cyclists, but the design is not intended to leave a trail of smouldering vehicles in its wake – rather the Blaze light shines the bright green image of a bike onto the road to catch the attention of motorists.

BLAZE was a concept that founder Emily designed and patented at University in Brighton. After doing a long ride for charity, Emily got the biking bug and spent the final year of her design course looking at the challenges facing city cyclists. The laser light concept was developed with help from her local council, a bus company, road safety experts and driving psychologists.

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