I was watching youtube the other day where a person turned one of the wheel lamp generators into a phone charger, and I was wondering if anybody has any ideas or comments on if this is cool, or I should make a prototype with my 3d printer, or if anybody wants to sketch out something, it would really help. I do think anker should make this into a product, as I would buy it myself.
Would anybody be interested in anker making a bicycle generator to charge phones?
You mean like these which have existed for years and many variants?
They look so cool and neat. Remember back in the day when we had Dynamo Lights. There was a hinged mechanism that went against the tyre and spun as you rode. It was like going up 2 gears too lol.
Bottle dynamo.
The 3 bikes I ride regularly all have hub dynamo and 2 of them give USB output.
Back in my day…!,
I used to do massive amounts of cycling all over Somerset, I’d be out all day.
Was so pleased when the Walkman came along, cos then for company you could play some music. Then I used an MP3 player, which was even better, as when you tired or had a hilly section, I’d play loud fast hard techno music to help give some oomph! It worked.
To be able to charge usb devices as you peddle would be great… Them good lights that shine bright but don’t last, charge n peddle, so ready for the night.
Charge ya phone, n play music at same time.
Also, the trouble we had with the old dynamo, was when you slowed or stopped, your lights dimmed or stopped. Which was a danger really… Plus it was like towing a body when you activated it.
Miss not being able to jump on a bike, disappear in your thoughts n come home starving n cold hours letter.
The two main methods now are to either
- have a light which dumps excess energy into a USB port which comes on/off with speed, or
- you parallel wire a USB port with your light.
Cheapest best I think is the B&M Luxos U, but its a big heavy light. I have a choice between trickle charge and return home mostly fully charged phone and ride with the light on all the time, or turn light off and be fully charged, its because on mild uphills or headwinds with light on there’s no spare energy for USB, but on downhills/tailwinds you get a power output, over a long day usually 95% type charged. The front wheel hub makes about 3W output so say 6 hours = 18Wh so that’s ample if you turn light off to recharge a phone and recharge a Powercore to last overnight and so in effect never go on-grid all, just add food!
Between this and solar you’re likely able to go off-grid indefinitely even on wet days you’d not ride.
When I was younger I was gifted a bike that had a speedometer on it, but it worked by friction and me and my friend converted that friction wheel into a power generator. At the time he was the genius and paired it with a battery pack from an old race car. It was the greatest thing because we would bike for all hours of testing day and our lights would dim before we made it home. So he got another generator for his bike and we plugged our lights to the battery pack which was charged via the generator. After that we always had light, and since we rode all day the pack stayed charged. I could easily see this being used to also charge a phone.
Of course this was some 20 years ago so technology obviously changed a lot, err not so much I guess seeing what’s on the market now