Smoke signals for bikers

This is probably not about what you think it is….

If you are like me, you love having your friends with you on road trips but you enjoy being alone on your bike during the day, (sometimes even speaking to yourself) and love sharing your experience during the breaks. On the other hands, we must admit that intercoms is of great benefit when one of you want to make break (for whatever reason from biological to mechanical or photographical).

In one of those occasions, I thought that something in between nothing (old fashion) and intercom should exist : something easy to trigger, that works over medium to long distance, that is not intrusive or invasive (like intercom are imho) and allow for a limited number of messages to pass from one biker to the rest of the group (I need a break, I want to take a picture, let's talk, I have a mecanical issue, you name it).

1. Easy to manipulate could be one or two buttons (waterproof), close from the handlebars
2. Medium to long distance : that is RFM69 or Lora or BLE Mesh
3. Non intrusive or invasive : that could be a set of leds somewhere on the bike or a small OLED display
4. Limited number of messages : on 8 bits, we can configure up to 255 different pre defined messages.. taht should be enough

Let's go for the design phase :)