Friday, November 09, 2007

Innovate or Die

I just found out about the Innovate or Die Pedal-Powered Machine Contest. It makes me wish I knew how to do things with batteries and electronics so I could design something cool. I particularly like the pedal-powered washing machine (watch the video below). The contest runs September 19 - December 15, and I'm rather surprised there haven't been more entries so far. It would be awesome if this could become something as well-known and popular as solar car competitions. But this is only the first one, so hopefully it will catch on quickly. :)

If I could build a pedal-powered machine, it would probably be a small oven so I could bake cookies by pedal power. :) What would you build?

~~~ The "Green Machine" pedal-powered washing machine:

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

It would be cool to build a small, compact device that would allow you quickly to turn a normal bike into a pedal powerer and back again. It would work as follows: Assemble the bike stand. Take the quick-release rear wheel off the bike. Put the bike on the stand. Insert an axle and gear where the wheel goes. Put one end of a pulley on the axle and connect the other end to the device to be powered.

Then I would build:

1. A battery charger so I could charge my bicycle light batteries without plugging the charger into the wall.

2. A water purification system consisting of an optional large, collapsible reservoir for holding the contaminated water and an outlet for the clean water. Pedaling would pump the water through the filter. (This application would be useful only for situations where one needs to purify a lot of water at once.)

3. An air pump that could, for example, inflate a mattress or be used to blow debris off or help dry camp gear such as the tarp, tent, and so on. The latter function would require a second person to aim the air hose.

Lacey said...

Ooh, I like the conversion kit idea! That would be really handy, especially if you could design it so that you could hook up your bike to any number of different things to power. I'm guessing you're a camper as well as a bike commuter -- am I right? :) I have yet to go camping with my bike, but it would be kind of fun if I had all the right gear (and a way to carry it all!).

As for recharging your bike lights by bike power... you can get lights that don't even need batteries (as I'm sure you know). There is a woman at work who has the lights featured here: http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/gadgets/reelight-the-motion+powered-bike-light-200685.php. The article warns you to be careful at stop lights because the lights aren't on when you're not moving, but this woman's stay on for about 3 minutes after she stops riding -- just about exactly the duration of the tram ride up the hill to work. :) They're pretty cool.

Lacey said...

Hmm, it looks like that link got cut off. Apparently the comments box doesn't want to let me put in a URL that long.

If you want to see the blurb on the magnet-powered bike lights, you can go to http://gizmodo.com/ and search for "Reelight" (or probably just do a Google search on it, now that I know what it's called). Sorry! :{

Anonymous said...

Yep, I like to backpack and bike camp. It doesn't take much to bike camp, though it's best to have a friend to go along with you. The supplies are less than when backpacking because you're generally around civilization, so you can get food as you go along (especially quarts of ice cream in the afternoon -- yummy :))

Thanks for pointing out the light. I actually didn't know there are good ones now. I figured they suffer from the usual problem of illumination varying with pedal speed, stopping when you stop, and so on. But LEDs with a capacitor probably are really good. For now, I use rechargeable batteries, so at least I don't go through batteries with nasty heavy metals and chemicals.

Anonymous said...

By the way, when I was writing about the tent and mattress and stuff, I was imagining camping with a friend who might demand comfort. When I camp by myself, I use a tarp and sleeping bag. To bike camp, all you really need is a tarp, sleeping bag, bike repair stuff, a few efficient layers of clothing, a map, and calorie-dense food and a gallon or so of water-storage capacity for when you're between towns overnight.