Motorcycles are hard to see at the best of times, so bikers are typically concerned with making themselves as visible as possible whatsoever times. [Josh] wanted to do this by creating a customized tail light for his Ducati 749.
The tail light is based around SMD LEDs, mounted in acrylic to diffuse the light. The construction is beautiful, using customized PCBs and thoroughly machined acrylic to match the lines of the bike.
As far as cautioning lights go, a brighter light will be much more apparent in the day time, but could actually hinder visibility at night by blinding other road users. To this end, [Josh] built the tail light around an ATtiny 45, which could be programmed with various routines to optimise the light level depending on ambient conditions. another feature is that the light’s brightness pulses at high frequency in an attempt to attract the eye. numerous automakers have experimented with similar systems. The ATtiny controls the lights through a PCA9952 LED controller over I2C. This chip has plenty of channels for controlling a bunch of LEDs at once, making the job easy.
Overall, it’s a very tidy build that lends a very futuristic edge to the bike. We’ve seen [Josh]’s work in this space before, too – with this amazing instrument display on a Suzuki GSX-R.