Keep your nerd-cred on two wheels

Alright, we fully admit that we are a videogame blog, it says so right in our name. Because of that fact, our goal is to cover all aspects of the gaming culture, from the new Wolfenstein game to Sony helping out a kid who saved his father’s life. With that justification out of the way, here is a story that pushes the boundaries of relating to videogames, but it is so amazing that we would be remiss in not letting you know about its existence.

We have found a perfectly good reason to get out of the house, dust off our bicycles, and start riding them again. The SpokePOV kit transforms the wheels of a bike into mobile nerd-cred with customizable LED displays. Using 60 LEDs, 30 for each side of the wheel, the circuit mounts on the bicycle spokes, just like those clacker things we had as kids. As the wheel spins, the kit passes a magnet mounted on the frame of the bike, as the system takes note and calcuates the speed of the bike, ensuring a correctly oriented and smooth picture.

Apparently there is a huge following of this technology, and most of the users seem to be gamers like us. There is a Mario set of spoke art, Rock’em Sock’em Robots duking it out, and our favorite, the animated version of the PacMan art above. We only hope someone does not make some spoke art of Little Mac chasing behind Doc’s bicycle, lest there be an Earth ending paradox formed.