Wife and I are amateur cyclists and are often drafting off of eachother to get some added speed. When drafting, it is important to stay within 0.5-3 bike lengths behind the other person otherwise you aren't really getting any benefit. As we get tired, it is not uncommon for one of us to accidentally "drop" the other and the person behind has a brutal time catching up.
While we were riding yesterday I was dreaming up a simple device that each of us would have on our handlebars that would have 3 LEDs. When the two devices are close (the person behind is right on your tail) the LED would be green, if they started to drift behind it would turn yellow, and if you dropped them and they were far away, it would be red. If the other receiver was not found, then the lights would be off.
I wanted to think about some ideas for what technology would be good for this purpose. Ideally it would be about the size of a speedometer and run on a large coin cell battery. It could be manually turned on at the beginning of the ride and only need to update maybe once per second. Minimum range would be 5' and maximum range of maybe 50'?
For the person in front, it can help them set a pace that doesn't kill the person behind them. For the person behind, it can be a little game to keep the light green.
Any thoughts on what sensor could do the range detection (thinking RF) and how to limit the power consumption so it lasts for a lot of rides?
While we were riding yesterday I was dreaming up a simple device that each of us would have on our handlebars that would have 3 LEDs. When the two devices are close (the person behind is right on your tail) the LED would be green, if they started to drift behind it would turn yellow, and if you dropped them and they were far away, it would be red. If the other receiver was not found, then the lights would be off.
I wanted to think about some ideas for what technology would be good for this purpose. Ideally it would be about the size of a speedometer and run on a large coin cell battery. It could be manually turned on at the beginning of the ride and only need to update maybe once per second. Minimum range would be 5' and maximum range of maybe 50'?
For the person in front, it can help them set a pace that doesn't kill the person behind them. For the person behind, it can be a little game to keep the light green.
Any thoughts on what sensor could do the range detection (thinking RF) and how to limit the power consumption so it lasts for a lot of rides?
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