Smart HuD - a Smart AR Helmet

With all the talk going around about everything turning smart, from your television, refrigerators to even wristbands, I thought I’d add something more to that list. Have you ever thought of having your ride to be smart? I would like to introduce a smart helmet that does more than just protect you while riding your bike.

Some of you might be thinking about Skully or a seer helmet, but they are way too expensive because of the investment made in several years of product research. Besides, their technology is also proprietary so it is not possible for developers to hack it or reanimate the device.

Most accidents happen in the city due to the distraction caused by phone calls while riding. Here’s a solution to solve that problem, the Smart HuD. It is a device that helps in delivering message notifications and it also navigates you straight through your helmet, causing less distractions thereby making it a safe ride.

As a bicycle rider, I find it really hard to use Google Maps for navigation while riding my bike. I’m forced to rely on the voice navigation, which is not audible in noisy traffic. The Smart HuD helmet helps me reach my destinations with ease by navigating me through my helmet.

Fitted with a GPS and accelerometer, both connected to the cloud, the geographical data collected helps in providing better terrain details for that the rider’s geographical location.

Now on creating a cheap version of the AR display for developers,makers, and creators to build innovative products based on my simple version of this technology!

Please that the device that I made was created from 10 hours of work, for both the hardware and software, together.

To begin with, the list of component you need to build the prototype:

A helmet

Intel edison

Groove sensor kit

Any sensor you choose to integrate

OLED display

HC 05

Thingspeak account

ADXL accelerometer

Thick polythene transparent sheet

Lots of wires

Now on creating a cheap version of the AR display for developers,makers, and creators to build innovative products based on my simple version of this technology!

So how does the HuD work? High school physics tells you that light reflects on a mirror, refracts on a semitransparent mirror, and passes through a transparent mirror. We will be using exactly that principle here.

Cut the thick polythene sheet into 7 equal square shaped pieces.

Arrange five pieces as a cube and glue it together.

Fix OLED Display to any one of the sides.

Fix the light refractor by placing the sixth piece diagonally inside the cube.

Glue it such that one surface is facing the OLED display and the other is facing the side of your eye.

Finally fix the last piece and seal it.

Tadda!! That is your HuD display. So simple!

Next comes interfacing of the hardware.

Take the groove sensor shield and fix it to the intel edison,and connect all the sensor in all your analog ports except A4 and A5.

We cannot use A4 and A5 as they are the I2C line used for the OLED display.

Then connect the LED module to any digital pin which are the indicators, that will be controlled by the accelerometer.

Now connect one axis of the adxl MEMS to one analog port consider that only one axis for indicator is being used.

If you want to add more sensors or add new features you can interface it with analog or I2C bus.

Now connect the I2C OLED Display to the A4 and A5 pin.

They are the I2C bus present on the Intel Edison.

Connect this OLED display with a long wire so that it can be fitted near your eye for easy viewing.

Now the hardware part is done. Now the whole magic is in the software.

Test the OLED with the AR glass by using the Sample code and adjust the display for the better viewing experience.

The major problem with this AR display as we are using an mirror to refract the rays the image that is needed to be displayed has to be inverted, so u need to build a library with the inverted alphabets and bitmaps to display it properly.

There are so many websites which converts bitmap into HEX code that can be used directory into the OLED library files.

Now you can also push data to the Cloud. I used ThingSpeak platform for data visualization.

Let me tell you how to push the data to the ThingSpeak Cloud.

1.Goto thingspeak.com

2.Sign Up on the page.

3.Create a new channel and enable the number of feed that you need to be visualised

4.Now in the channel page click the API key and you can see two type of key which are read and write.

5.Since the sensor data is going to be copied to the Cloud using the API key.

Note down the write key

Click on the attachment to download the code.

You need to have Arduino IDE with the intel edison compiler to compile and to push the code to the intel edison

Now let's open the arduino code and near the API key value copy your API key and paste it and in the place of SSID and Password enter your wifi router/hotspot ssid and password.

As for the Android app part, let me be honest. I am not an android app developer so I haven't implemented the navigation control to it. I just downloaded APC lite app and created a custom layout like forward, backward, message and call notification to it which sends numbers via Bluetooth to the helmet.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com....

to download the app and test it.

Video and image talks more than words.

Please do give me suggestion or a feedback after trying it out.

I would love to hear from you. Feel free to comment below!

Let’s talk!