Cycling UK Forum

I bought myself a ultrasonic sensor a while back (jsn-sr04t), I have not tried it on the bike yet but seems to work pretty well and costs around £6 on eBay.
This is very easy to link to an Arduino (https://www.makerguides.com/jsn-sr04t-arduino-tutorial/) but I am thinking an esp32 camera module may be a good option as these are around £5 have built in sd card reader and would be able to capture a picture of the passing car as well as record the distance.
I will give it a try and report back but may have difficulty with it being 3.3v and very limited IO pins available...

Update: I now have the software working and next step is to attach it to my cycle and see if it looks like it will work. It continually reads distance and if this drops below a set threshold it takes a picture and stores it on to an sd card along with the measured distance.
BTW - Anyone interested I have posted my progress so far on github at https://github.com/alanesq/ESP32Cam-range

prototype v1.0

I was planning to build a electronic distance sensor on the side of my bike to record the distance of passing cars but never actually got round to doing it. Would there be any interest/benefit in this do you think?
I thought that whilst never going to be admissible in court or anything like that, it might be useful if a few people had these in creating some interesting data on the issue?

I was around 19stone and cycled every day for some years and found the only real issue to be the wheels. I would find that after a while a spoke would break and then if I replaced the spoke others would soon follow. The solution was when I broke a spoke either have the wheel completely rebuilt by a good wheel builder of buy some decent new hand built wheels for my bike.

I used to be around your weight and found that the only real issue with my bikes was the wheels. I found that with cheaper wheels eventually a spoke would break and then no point replacing it as the rest will soon follow.
The solution I found was to either get the wheel rebuilt by someone who knows what they are doing or just buy some decent hand built wheels for it.
So my suggestion would be to spend extra on some hand built wheels and ask them to build them for strength.

I have been a larger cyclist (well over 20 stone at one point) for many years and managed to keep the weight on no problem despite all the exercise I get

The simple fact is that if you eat more calories than your body requires you gain weight, if you eat fewer than your body requires you will lose weight. The biggest problem is that this only needs to be by a small amount if over a long period of time.
i.e. Losing weight does not necessitate taking any more exercise. Of course if you do exercise this will increase the calories your body requires but the problem is it may well make you more hungry...
Of course getting exercise is a good idea for anyone but I have not found it much help in losing weight. If you cycle 5 miles you may only need to eat an apple to replace the calories you just used.

Iast year I lost around 7 stone this I did by reducing my food intake, I did not increase the amount of exercise I was getting at all.

As a 20 stone cyclist (or at least I was until recently) I can confirm that the wheels are the issue. I usually found eventually a spoke will break and then no point replacing it as the rest will soon follow...
I usually had the wheel rebuilt by a local cycling shop and asked them to make the wheel as strong as they can but the latest ones I bought were from SJS, hand built with "Ryde Sputnik 700c, 622 Touring Rims", cost about £170 the pair and these held up no problem.

Myself being a "large chap" who also carries a lot of luggage, my experience is that the main thing is you will need good, hand built wheels otherwise you will be plagued by breaking spokes (btw - once one spoke goes there is no point replacing it as the others will soon follow).
My last ones which I am very happy with were custom built by SJS cycles for around £200.

May be of interest

https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4034

A few weeks back I read something about new laws coming in April this year about close passing cyclists although I have not seen anything since?
This set me thinking and inspired me to quickly cobble together a distance sensor to fit to my bike to see just how close cars are passing me although I never actually got round to fitting it to my bike.....

I just used an Arduino with LCD shield and a SR04t ultrasonic sensor - total cost around £15 from eBay (plus a power bank to power it).

btw - the cheaper and much more common SR04 sensors I have tried but they do not work outdoors at all well. The SR04t seems to work very well outside measuring from over 2m down to 20cm no problem (although I have not tried it fitted to a cycle sensing passing cars).

Of course this would never be much use legally (not being calibrated etc.) but an interesting/fun project and could be used to gather some useful data?

Update: There is a very good instructable on how to do this (link below). This uses the SR04 but this can just be directly swapped for a SR04t.
https://www.instructables.com/id/Ultrasonic-distance-meter-with-LCD-display-on-Ardu/

I bought three of them myself and was charged tax once

I have a THL Chinese phone which cost me about £100 (although you can get them a lot cheaper these days) I have been very pleased with (particularly like the ability to have 2 sims in it which I don't think any "regular" phones let you do)
I know of 4 other people who also bought one after seeing mine and no bad reports from any of them

Last time I was run down on my bike the phone went about flying about 20 meters down the road and survived with just a minor chip to the case, so they seem well built

I chose THL as they seem to be a very well known company in China from what I could find out although I have just ordered myself an octa cored 7" phablet from an unknown manufacturer for £115 which is a bit more of a gamble

BTW - All these phones were bought from http://www.chinavasion.com

As stated above, the cars behind you pose a very serious risk when trying to negotiate tram tracks.
This video shows what I find to be a very common event when joining the tram tracks at either end of this road in Beeston.

https://youtu.be/LMEpvxWSEmc

i.e. just as you make the final turn to go down the road you find you cycle straight in to the path of an impatient/confused car trying to pass you.

I agree, I have cycled down that road many times and the best way I have found is to cycle between the tracks. You can then cycle down the road ok but you have to keep in mind that swerving to avoid anything is not an option.
If you cycle to the left of them then you can't get through the stops and if you cycle to the right of them cars will try to under-take you.

btw - there has been a lot of discussion as you can imagine on how to tackle tram tracks, I think there is a lot of confusion because the experiences of people who tend to cycle at around 5mph will be very different to someone who tends to cycle at higher speeds. At low speed you can often get away with crossing at narrow angles etc. but once you are cycling at any kind of speed I would suggest you treat them exactly as you would treat ice (especially when wet). It is not just the gap which is the danger, do not let your tyre anywhere near the metal.

I have yet to find a way to safely tackle either end of this road where you have to cross the tracks. Any attempt to try and cross them at near right angles results in my experience with the car behind me getting confused/impatient and trying to overtake resulting in a near miss. There is the facility to go up on to the pavement but not very practical in my opinion.

How about a camera which attaches to the cycle with built in GPS (for location and speed data) and some sensor to detect how close a passing car is (ultrasonic?)
then, if a car passes too close it automatically grabs a picture with the cars number plate and this along with info on how fast the cycle was going, how fast the car passed and how close it was, this data can be uploaded later via the internet to a central database.

Then a letter could be sent to the driver explaining how their actions cause fear and danger to cyclists etc. etc. asking them to be more considerate.
if the same vehicle is flagging up on a regular basis from several cyclists then maybe the police could be asked to take action?