Post Velo-city project update 2007-08-08

I've finally been able to rekindle my interest in this project since the huge effort I made to get ready for Velo-city Munich which essentially burnt me out.

I'm not sure what to say about Velo-city Munich, the conference went very well and was very enjoyable, I had almost five days off almost constant immersion in cycling related talks and discussions. I would highly recommend the event to anybody with a strong interest in cycling related issues.

Each day delegates were presented with a choice of attending a number of presentations on various cycling related topics, opportunities to talk over lunch, other presentations in the afternoon and social events in the evening. The only criticism of the event was that there was too many presentations to choose from and only one of me to attend them, I would have loved to attend them all.

As for my presentation. Over the preceding days before my poster presentation I continued to spend late nights working on trying to produce even a very basic version of the working software. In the end I failed and though the board worked to some extent I was not able to produce something visible to show the other delegates, other then the bare mainboard and modules. I was very disheartened and felt that the project was uninteresting and would be too abstract for the delegates to be able understand the benefits.

As in these situations my feelings were misplaced and I was able to talk with a number of the other delegates about the project and I believe they found the project very interesting. During the discussions a similar sensor bike in the Netherlands was mentioned but I have been unable to find out any details.

I also discussed some technical aspects of two different types of sensors. One was EEG (Electroencephalography) which could be used to measure relevant brain activity and maybe even the emotional effect of the cyclists. The other was a way to detect how close the cyclist was to the edge of the road which might be a hard kerb, soil, grass, etc., in the end we felt the best method might be to use some form of camera to visual scan and detect the difference in colour and texture be the road and the edge.

As for the future the next being event I set my sights on is September 22 Car Free Day, the local councils in Dublin do almost nothing to promote the day. So as a result the Dublin Cycling Campaign which I'm an active member of, can do activities or research which can help us get a bit of extra press.

I hope to be able to do a simple study using the CycleRecorder which can be used to highlight some of the issues facing cyclists in Dublin and Ireland.