Please do it for night time visibility sake … Put a GIF in your bike spokes

May 28, 2013 at 6:05 pm

Apart from the ability to show how cool you are, this new innovation from Monkey Light Pros (currently in Kickstarter), will make you  quite visible to motorists and other road users during the night time.. That said, I’m really not looking forward to the possibility of too many Nyan cats flooding our city streets..Hey, as long as it saves lives and gives you a reason to get on the bike, I’m all for it :)

Image via Gizmodo

Gadget/tech stuff blog Gizmodo offers the following details:

  • It utilizes a quartet of LED-impregnated bars that fit along the the spokes inside of your wheel. As the wheel spins, the bars rotate and generate the 256-color animated GIFs by exploiting the persistence of vision effect.
  • Each unit weighs just 500 grams and fits on a 26 to 29 inch rim using the standard 32 or 36 spoke pattern.
  • The system can load up to 1000 frames in a variety of media formats (JPG, GIF, PNG, AVI, MPEG, MOV, QT, FLV) onto a web-based playlist for display (think about blitzing around the town with a different GIF every day! AWESOME!)
  • Users can also download the Mac/Linux API to create custom light shows though the system comes preloaded with 10 animations.
  • The integrated 7000mAh Li-ion battery supplies 3 – 8 hours of power at full brightness (up to 48 hours on lower settings).
  • Cost: a single light system with a $700 and a pair for $1400. They’ll retail for $895 a pop if and when the program funds