The majority of bikes are boring. They have two wheels, some handles, a brake or two, and a seat about as comfortable as a jagged rock. They do not have turn signals, brake lights, or GPS. But what if they could?

Enter our hero, young Collin Wentzien. Juicy hero backstory now – after suffering an injury that deprived him of the ability to enjoy his passions of cross country and soccer, Collin was restricted to exercising only with a bike. A grim fate indeed. After using an ordinary, boring bike on the road, Collin realized it was, as we all suspected, meh, and got to work using his skills for a project that can turn any mundane, run-of-the-mill bike into something far more interesting.

Referred to as the Smart Bike System by Collin in his build text, his project is designed to solve the problem of communicating with drivers while also indicating the speed and bright lighting for biking about post-sunset.

In total, the project should cost you around $120 if you already have items like a 3D printer, glue gun, and a soldering iron lying about the workshop. It uses an Arduino Mega 2560 at its heart, and 3D printed components that house the new lighting system and main controls fitted to the handlebars.

The main controls look snazzily professional, having 3 buttons on the left for turning the system on, turning the lights on and off, and activating the piezo buzzer horn. On the right-hand side, there are two 1.3-inch OLED screens. One displays the time, date, and menu options; the other gives you your current speed. There’s also a turn signal equipped to the underside of the right handlebar, so you can tell drivers which direction you’re planning on going in.

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Collin’s efforts are impressive, but he does mention that he’d like to improve the design of the system, particularly in regards to security. In his build text, he mentions wanting to experiment with NFC’s to offer a key-like way of locking and unlocking the system. He also thinks it could be a lot better with the entire thing running on a touchscreen. We think this is a cool project anyway, so a big shout out to Collin for producing it. Let’s hope he continues to make bikes interesting.

You can find a full list of materials, 3D printing files, code, project text, and necessary tools on the Arduino project page.

For more interesting, fun Arduino projects, we’ve got 50 of them waiting for you, a post that we regularly update.