Introduction: Venco - Velocity and Control

About: Robotics Ateliers

Venco is a device designed to be fitted in a centered, high-mounted position at the rear of a vehicle. It analyses the data from the sensors - gyroscope and the accelerometer and displays the current state of the vehicle - acceleration, braking to a halt, turn direction – through distinct signals and signs on one or several stackable LED matrices, thereby alerting other traffic participants and pedestrians. Sharing information that may be relevant to other traffic participants can improve traffic flow and safety.

Step 1: LED, Arduino Leonardo, MPU 9150, Splitter

Venco is made of one or more stackable LED matrices , ATMEGA32U4
micro-controller board (Fig. 4) which controls the LED screen, reads and transmits data from the sensors and from the ESP8266 module (Fig. 3), a rechargeable battery, and a splitter which houses the wireless module and the multi-sensor MPU9150 (Fig. 2): gyroscope, accelerometer, magnetic field meter, temperature sensor.

Step 2: SD Card and ESP 8266

I have added a SD card slot which keeps all sensor data collected during the trip for further analysis and a free slot which allows plugging a wireless module to transmit data also to a LCD display or Google Glasses thus indicating the speed, the acceleration, compass, map and the traffic behind to the cyclist or to the driver.

Step 3: LCD Display on the Wheel

An additional accessory to the automatic back-light is a LCD display
connected to a micro computer. It can be fitted on the wheel to visualize the sensor data of the automatic back-light and the traffic behind.

Step 4: Secret Perk

There is a limited amount of produced prototypes which are available without profit for the instructables community as a secret perk.

Step 5: The Source Code

Latest code is available on github.

Microcontroller Contest 2017

Participated in the
Microcontroller Contest 2017