Jake Khuon's Casual Ponderings and Pontifications

Bicycle Helmet Cam (another half-baked idea)

A while back while on a bikeride with some friends, we got into a discussion about helmet improvements. This was inspired by some talk about the Reevu Helmet System. One idea that came to mind was that of a camera based system.

This would be a helmet with an integrated Bluetooth enabled CCD or other PAN (personal area networking) capability coupled with a flexible display (currently they have only B/W today but they're working on colour) in the visor. The CCD can be buried deep in the helmet to protect it and gets fed by two fibre optic cables. This way the basic shape and crash characteristics of the helmet can be more easily preserved. One optic feed is mounted facing forward and the other mounted to face the rear. This CCD assembly normally is set to use the rear optic feed and displays the image onto the flexible display in the visor to act as a rear-view mirror. Another option is to use two CCD assemblies but that gets more expensive in terms of space, power and manufacturing. Since the CCD assembly is Bluetooth enabled, it can also be made to work with a special bike computer that has the ability to send it signals to transfer the image to the computer's onboard storage media (SD, MMC, CF, MS, etc...) and to switch to the forward optic feed thus turning your helmet into a digital camera. The controls are part of the computer and integrated into the hoods or brake lever assembly like with Shimano's and Campy's computers. The helmet based system can be very low powered. It can make use of the same system as say the Citizen Eco-Drive watches to keep it powered. I'm sure there's enough movement and vibration of your head to keep power levels up and/or the helmet can have flexible solar panels embedded into the top. Other neat things could be done with this sort of setup. For instance, if the computer had built in GPS and mapping, it could be used to display navigation data onto the helmet's display. One could have a "crash-cam" feature whereby the computer stores a rolling 1-minute of video footage that can be used to analyse a crash... sort of a video "black box" for the bicycle. This is automatically saved in the event of a crash and the operator can also use this feature to record "bad incidents" that may happen to them by pushing a "memo" button of sorts which may aide in say a police report.

The thing that's neat is that all this technology is available today. I wonder if I should post this idea on Halfbakery.com.