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Commercially Available Bike Generators Are Not Sustainable (2011)
- tocs3 21d agoSome things I would like to see are pedal controlled devices. Something like a pedal controlled wheelchair, not powered by the pedals just control the forward and back motion. My mother with sever arthritis can still pedal but has a very hard time walking. It would be a little exercise doing something that needs to be done (getting around). A pedal controlled remote control lawnmower would be nifty also.
- grebc 17d agoWhere I used to live an elderly gent rode a very low to ground bike. Looked a lot like the silly motorbikes some peeps do. I imagine they’re out there for sale.
- Tanoc 17d agoA recumbent bicycle perhaps? Often has pedals ahead of the front wheel, where you lay down in a hammock or moulded seat?
- analog31 17d agoYes, there are electric recumbent trikes out there, such as the Tadpole. A friend of mine got one after he recovered from a stroke and could no longer balance on a conventional bike. He rode it to work. It got him outdoors, with "anything is better than nothing" level of exercise.
- grebc 17d agoThat's it! Sorry I lacked the proper name, but yes they are about. And definitely look like they could help people certain health issues. Although getting down into it would be something to consider for older peeps.
- micromacrofoot 17d agomany ebikes work this way, pedaling and the chain more or less signal the motor rather than provide meaningful power... though afaik none of them do backwards for obvious reasons she might enjoy an etrike, though more for recreation than normal day to day
- Walf 17d agoHave you seen what people are doing with hoverboards + wheelchairs? Carer- & user-operated variations. Not professional solutions, but certainly fill a need.
- Zambyte 16d agoThis seems close to what you're describing: https://www.icetrikes.co/products/pers-chainless-e-assist-system https://www.icetrikes.co/products/pers-chainless-e-assist-sy...
- kelvo_ran 17d ago[dead]
- usrusr 17d agoNeeds "2011" in the title. For example the section about friction drive hasn't been true for about a decade now
- allenrb 17d agoNobody would (or should, at least) be using a lead-acid battery for this in 2026, either. Full-cycle efficiency should be higher now. And the inverter. And the generator.
- allenrb 17d agoHuh? Was I wrong about something here? If so, please educate me.
- rgmerk 17d agoNot to mention they’re talking about lead-acid batteries, which have been replaced for pretty much every application, except (for now) starter motor batteries for combustion vehicles, by the various lithium batteries.
- chihuahua 17d agoTo be fair (as a joke), it's from Low Tech Magazine. Lithium batteries are too high-tech for them. They want you to power your mechanical blender, mixer, and other machines with a drive belt. Turn the drum of your washing machine with a wood fire heating the water.
- Gibbon1 17d agoSolar panels I think are too high tech for them. I remember reading about low tech efficient cook stoves for poor countries and thinking the misses would rather have an induction burner, microwave, and an ice chest running off a solar panel.
- getpokedagain 17d ago
- scotty79 17d agoYou could attach pedals directly to motor axle and control charging power drawn precisely to ensure smooth rotation in absence of the flywheel. It could be really small.
- KennyBlanken 17d agoNo, you can't. Most generators have to be spun at a thousand or several thousand RPMs to put out any sort of amount of power. Your average inexperienced person can pedal at maybe 80rpm comfortably, but probably considers even that to be "fast." A road cyclist with a year or so under their belt will do 100rpm if they put their mind to it and are positioned well biomechanically. Above that, to do it and be smooth and efficient, especially for any sort of sustained effort, you have to have a decent amount of experience/training. That's well over 10x too slow. And there's still the issue of your average person only being able to put out 100-200W past about 1-3 minutes.
- deleted 17d ago[deleted]
- scotty79 17d agoYou can have a motor with planetary gearbox built in.
- 486sx33 17d ago[dead]
- Mugshelf 17d agoTried one at a demo; you put in a ton of work for minimal wattage. Much better off with a decent power bank, honestly.
- deleted 17d ago[deleted]
- rgmerk 17d agoThis arguably had some relevance in 2011. In 2026, cheap solar and batteries make human-powered static devices that would benefit from the extra power of a stationary cyclist completely redundant.
- xyzsparetimexyz 17d agoSo Black Mirror lied to me ?!
- erelong 17d agoMight have changed their attitude since then as they posted in 2022 about a DIY guide on making a bike generator: https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2022/03/how-to-build-a-practical-household-bike-generator/ https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2022/03/how-to-build-a-pra...
- NewsaHackO 17d agoI thought he was posting about some retro product until I saw the USB ports in the energy delivery. Weird that he edited his photos to look like that, and used retro components otherwise.
- physicalecon 17d agoThe author does all sorts of odd-looking optimizations in order to make the web page run on a single host of cheap battery/solar powered compute. It does seem a bit extreme, but the proof of the pudding is in the eating: this website has been featured on the HN front page many times and I’ve not seen it ever falter. The same cannot be said for the many run of the mill “infinite scalability” cloud based SPA’s that make the front page – even those maintained by sizable organizations with hefty cloud budgets.
- thenthenthen 16d agoIt is an experiment, over the years various people have contributed “odd-looking” optimisations, its a great project!
- schiffern 16d agoMore info: https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/about/the-solar-website/#how https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/about/the-solar-website/#h... https://github.com/lowtechmag/solar/wiki/Solar-Web-Design https://github.com/lowtechmag/solar/wiki/Solar-Web-Design https://homebrewserver.club/low-tech-website-howto.html https://homebrewserver.club/low-tech-website-howto.html IMO the only optimization they 'missed' is to pre-compress the static files and images on disk, since it's cheaper to decompress on-the-fly if the client doesn't support gzip. The could use zopfli to "extra compress" the most frequently accessed files, and use this as a solar dump load to usefully burn extra power when the batteries are full (perhaps compressing with gzip -1 when Pelican re-builds the static site, or even avoid pre-compression altogether during the build process. https://blog.llandsmeer.com/tech/2019/08/29/precompression.html https://blog.llandsmeer.com/tech/2019/08/29/precompression.h... https://github.com/google/zopfli https://github.com/google/zopfli https://github.com/kurtmckee/pelican-precompress https://github.com/kurtmckee/pelican-precompress
- mmooss 17d ago> An energy loss of 42 to 67.5 percent of naturally means that it takes 42 to 67.5 percent more effort or time to power a device (say, a blender) via electricity compared to powering the same device mechanically. Nope. If input is 100W, loss is 60%, and resulting in output of 40W, then to increase output to 100W you don't need 60% more input (which would output 64W) you need 150% more input.
- fergie 17d agoI'm suprised that the author didn't consider dynohubs which were also a thing in back in 2011, and are getting slightly better all the time.
- lostlogin 17d ago> dynohub Thanks, I learned something. I’m suprised how little drag they seem to add. https://www.cyclingabout.com/dynamo-hub-power-drag-testing-schmidt-son-shutter-precision-shimano/ https://www.cyclingabout.com/dynamo-hub-power-drag-testing-s...
- ygra 16d agoAre there options that don't limit the output power? Typically the light power is limited, so dynamos only provide around 5 W or so, which already makes them not so attractive even for charging your phone on a bike.
- fergie 14d agoI'm not totally sure about the specifics since despite being an engineer, I cannot distinguish electricity from witchcraft. That said, I do know that if you want to charge your phone from your dynohub you need to ideally have some sort of powerbank in the middle.
- Zambyte 16d agoI think the problem with having a higher wattage is that you can't have a substantial amount without introducing what would generally be an undesirable amount of drag. It would certainly be useful to be able to engage / disengage a dynamo hub at a higher wattage though.
- tempolifeapp 17d ago[dead]