Animated LED Pac-Man bicycle wheels
by Christopher Grant 
{ Mar 8th 2006 at 8:30PM }
Using LEDs and a "persistence of vision" technique, ladyada has created an animated Pac-Man scene on the spokes of her bicycle. Want your own? She directs us to her tutorial for SpokePOV, an "easy-to-make electronic kit toy that turns your bicycle wheel into a customized display." Using a free schematic, some open source software, and a kit that goes for about $37.50, you can make your own custom bicycle light show.
Pac-Man's taken, so how about Mario and a goomba? The Prince and a katamari? I'm seriously inclined to do this even though, in Philly, my bike would get stolen faster than you can say wakka wakka wakka.
[Via MAKE: Blog]
[UPDATE: Corrected the gender of ladyada to reflect that that means Lady Ada. Thanks, breath.]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
MeeKs @ Mar 8th 2006 8:40PM
so i have to ride upside down for this to look right *heh*
nice work!
C. Grant @ Mar 8th 2006 8:43PM
He actually just flipped it for the picture. You can have it anyway you want!
BPMΩ @ Mar 8th 2006 8:50PM
That is quite cool!
... If only I had a bike...
breath @ Mar 8th 2006 9:45PM
Lady Ada is a she, not a he, thank you.
striegs @ Mar 8th 2006 10:01PM
Mario and a goomba would be a little tough, because then you'd need multiple different-colored LEDs on each spoke, which might not look as cohesive, or multiple spokes with different colors on each, which would be more difficult to program. That's why single-color sprites such as Pac-Man and Inky were used to demonstrate the technology. The Atari 2600 Adventurer and Duck Dragon (Yorgle?) could work, I suppose.
Joshi @ Mar 8th 2006 11:06PM
That's so awesome.
Even if "only" Pac-Man and Inky were possible (personally, I'd choose Clyde), I'd still want to give this a go - they're perfect for it, because it would look like the ghost was chasing Pac-Man (or the other way around). I'm tempted to give this a try, and I don't even bicycle.
Tommymang @ Mar 9th 2006 2:22AM
"Pimp my bike" ;-)
Osiris @ Mar 9th 2006 2:39AM
Look on the link and youll see he's done a biohazard symbol too, it looks amazing.
I'd consider doing this if i rode my bike more often, though it'd probably make my bike even more stealable.
Oscar @ Mar 9th 2006 2:55AM
That´s so cool. I want to get a new bike just to see how it looks. I would never use it tough :P.
Gareth @ Mar 9th 2006 6:25AM
Great idea! Sadly though I sold my bike after I was old enough to drive and bought a car. :o/
#2 - he knows. He was being sarcastic.
Coyote @ Mar 20th 2006 4:56PM
Man, I wonder if I can get a nuke symbol? Might piss off cops and hippies though...