Batteries can store power, they can't generate it... The crank can.This isn't useful in a survival situations it is infinitely more useful in a third world country where such power generation isn't available at all. Unfortunately due to the cost of the units and their availability they aren't gonna do anyone in the third world any good, where they're not afraid of hard work..
60W, 4kg. You need a tree or whatever to support it or it'll be really awkward to crank.
I'm bettin that thing takes some major work to get 60W out of.
You're not kidding - considering 60W is normally considered the sustainable output from a cycle driven generator, from a fairly fit man. I would have thought hand cranked you're only talking seconds of output, not even minutes?.
I remember radio sets that uses hand cranked generators for powering it up. It'll work for one or two hours continuously for an initial crank of something 5mins IIRC. It works by winding up a geared spring mechanism connected to a dynamo.
So the idea may work for low current drain applications like mp3 walkmans up to a mobile phone at emergency purposes. Hand cranking is pretty difficult to work with a laptop in my humble opinion. The thing is, we need to concentrate on cranking it up rather than enjoying the device operation whatever it is supposed to do
Also I can't get who mentioned here about the bicycling..
I just thought about a solar powered carD) and searched and found the idea is already established.
GM's Cadillac Provoq concept features a rooftop solar panel that provides power for the vehicle's accessories. No doubt, solar will be the energy for tomorrow!
That's about 100W of solar panels, maybe 120w? Not even 1/5th of a horsepower. And a gasoline engine running about 35% efficiency making maybe 80 hp when you drive it (consuming 200+ hp worth of fuel).
I hate gimmicky "green" ideas that are just really poor ideas that con people into thinking they are doing something right. Just buy a smaller car, or a motorcycle, or ride the bus. But please don't stick ugly solar panels all over the front of your Cadillac and pretend it's gone "green".
Since some of you guys seem to underestimate the usefullness of this hand/foot cranking device I would like to inform you about its potential.
I live in kathmandu (capital of Nepal, country with Mt. Everest) and its a nice modern city with respect to peoples lifestyles like listening to Ipods, mobiles etc. But, our bad fate, there is atleast 12hrs of Load shedding each day. Can you believe it, last year it was nearly 18 Hrs per day. So, young guys here are desperately looking for some means of charging their laptops, mobiles and ipods. They are I think happily ready to spend an hour or so of heavy exercise in the morning to charge their I pod so that they can enjoy whole day!
What Nigel told is correct. 12hours is more than enough to re-charge a 100ah UPS battery. That will give you all these entertainment goodies charging + emergency lighting of one or two 40W fluorescent tubes.
Actually I can't imagine pedal power/crank generator to charge iPods and all. We'd like to enjoy music when we feel lazy,moody and tired...mostly
What Nigel told is correct. 12hours is more than enough to re-charge a 100ah UPS battery. That will give you all these entertainment goodies charging + emergency lighting of one or two 40W fluorescent tubes.
Actually I can't imagine pedal power/crank generator to charge iPods and all. We'd like to enjoy music when we feel lazy,moody and tired...mostly
I don't mean there isn't enough time for charging.
I simply thought that hand/foot cranking would be much cheaper and portable. Also, such devices would be immediately consumed in some rural places here where there is no power at all. They foot travel a whole day to a nearby city just to recharge their mobile!
I don't mean there isn't enough time for charging.
I simply thought that hand/foot cranking would be much cheaper and portable. Also, such devices would be immediately consumed in some rural places here where there is no power at all. They foot travel a whole day to a nearby city just to recharge their mobile!
You could get a cheap Laptop similar to the sort given to children in developing countries you should be able to easily charge using hand power or a solar panel.
That's called One Laptop Per Child- OLPC- and you can buy them on eBay.
There was talk of a hand-crank charger, but I don't know if it panned out.
Basically, in general it made more sense to use a bigger battery. Because if the power consumption was so low that 20 min of cranking did create a useful runtime, then it wouldn't even HAVE battery limitations. The cranking power is so low that there's just not a lot of potential there, unless you have absolutely no other way to charge a batt, ever.