NightPack by Marianna Mezhibovskaya

I just bought my first road bike this summer and have been super stoked to ride around the city. I am still really hesitant about riding at night though, so my innovative switch is about better visibility at night.

The switch is simply  two wires hot glued onto two squares of conductive velcro that initiate the Arduino coded lights when pressed together. The velcro is conveniently placed on either end of the front chest straps. One wire runs to ground and the other runs to Digital Input pin 2.

After testing a small strand, I sewed my neopixels into the pieces of fabric loosely matching the shape of my front backpack pockets.

I had lots of issues with the Arduino code but thanks to all of the help I managed to get this bag fairly close to what I wanted. Pretty late in the game I found that the conductive fabric needs to be under substantial pressure for the code to register the switch and loop continuously. Also once the velcro is detached the lights need to finish their current cycle before they turn off. I unfortunately did not have the time, but plan to investigate adding an interrupt into the code.

I would also like to add lights to my helmet and be able to activate both with a simple switch….maybe even some sweet lights on my bike frame!