MyPowerbank hacks Santander bikes so London's homeless can charge their phones
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Silicon Valley nailed it.[1]
These tech people thinking they're "saving Africa" with crankable laptops are just like the former Crypto pundits you'd see roaming around here in the comments preaching how crypto will save Africa from poverty.
this was the point of olpc?
You see a lot of interesting projects like this come from art colleges - technically quite neat, with a “social message” or theme, but usually not going to translate well to the real world.
That being said. I could see myself actually using something like this in a pinch.
Are any of those actually effective for charging a phone? I used to have a hand cranked radio, but radios built for this only need a minuscule amount of power. Does anybody have real experience using one of these to charge a phone? How long does it take?
Internet seems to think most hand cranks can output somewhere between 5-15W, which would mean you'd only take 1.3-4 hours to fully charge said pack. Plenty of juice in an emergency situation, and certainly plenty for a phone call or something. Maybe that's a big giant crank thing though, and the tiny plastic crap ones only put out the wattage you're talking about though.
https://www.amazon.ca/Powerhouse-Watt-Hand-Crank-Generator-Q...
Edit: weeeelll. I'm either thinking of a different one or completely messed up the numbers and duration: https://youtu.be/S4O5voOCqAQ
Not at all, according to the article text. The expectation is that you will pedal backwards for 25 minutes on a stationary bike, without paying to remove it from the docking station. And slightly further down it says the colour is chosen to match the bike "so as not to attract attention". Doesn't really add up.
I dunno… this “idea” feels so ignorant that it’s basically offensive.
* Drug/alcohol problems * Domestic abuse * Prison * Mental problems * Financial disaster
Obviously there is overlap between these, and some can cause the others. Also note that being 'homeless' does not just include literally sleeping on the streets (as many do) but also staying in temporary hostels, couch-surfing, and so on.
London is not the sort of climate that it is comfortable to sleep outside, even in a tent. It is difficult to imagine many people that would be 'transient' on the street given any alternative options. Of course it is possible, and there are long-term homeless people who might even plausibly enjoy some of the benefits of the 'freedom to live under a bridge', but I _suspect_ the majority are in a very bad place and want to get out of it.
1: https://californiahealthline.org/news/article/california-hom...
2: http://www.olpcnews.com/hardware/power_supply/two_awesome_ex...
From article: > Talbot's product takes advantage of the fact that, without having to pay to take out one of these bikes, their chain will still move when pedalling backwards.
There is no mobility boost. It warms my heart someone is trying to think of ways for the homeless to recharge any portable electronics, but I think buying a solar panel, battery, charge management electronics would be of more immediate help.
Regarding the issue of theft, a sort of exoskeleton with styrofoam panels to stay warm during winter, and a heat exchanger to keep not just temperature but also inside humidity under control would be very welcome. But it seems not much research is going into housing in the shape of a suit, nor in clothes designed to be worn for very long durations at a time.
This is a nicer town than London, generally; at least, it is in the centre, where the homeless people concentrate. The police seem very tolerant of homeless tent-dwellers. There was a small encampment around the corner from where I live, camped directly outside the courthouse and opposite the police station (!), for about two months. I found them rather intimidating - they were very shouty.
I would invite you to do a ride along with your local police, local EMS / Fire Rescue if allowed, to develop a more informed opinion, as they spend a significant amount of time interacting with the homeless population.
No one's perception of the homeless in these discussions seem to take into account the person that died last week, I guess is what I'm getting at.
Most people do not know how easy it is to access a power source in most towns and cities.
Turns out that to transfer any significant torque (and therefore energy), you need either a larger gear, or a larger subtended angle, or a higher chain tension - and ideally all three.
Since this device has none of those, I can be pretty confident that even after hours of pedalling, you won't have a charged phone. In fact, the video even shows the chain jumping showing that the generator gear isn't turning.
I do like the base idea of "why not just use the machines that are already idle everywhere" though.
BTW, I respect your project at https://omattos.com/2022/06/19/gym-power.html
I have also worked with human-powered generators (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huYJa2Du57g) and made a quick feasibility spreadsheet on the MyPowerbank at: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1X39ZgL86tmemdYv0r1Jg...
From my spreadsheet, this project looks plausible, but please feel free to add comments to it as you see fit.
My spreadsheet's calcs indicate an average power of about 25 Watts to reach the 25 minute charging time claim. Note that average humans can easily sustain 100 Watts. I have assumed an iPhone 12 battery as that's the first that came up when I searched: https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=ihpone+...
As far as the shaking chain, note also that the device base is shaking so we can not directly infer the cog idler pulley-cum-prime-mover is not also moving.
In my experience with human-powered generators, the real obstacle was getting people to relax and focus and do nothing for longer than 2 minutes.
Simple: The chain won't grip the gear.
Gears must be designed such that the chain never intersects the gear (two things can't be in the same place at the same time). That precludes 'hooks' on the teeth of the gear, and means that the face of the gear tooth must be perpendicular to the chain link. However, that means that at any other angle, the angle of the tooth is providing a small component in a direction that pushes the chain off the tooth.
When your chain is contacting many teeth, this force gets smaller by 1-cos(angle between teeth) per tooth - so after about 6 teeth or so, the force is so tiny as to be irrelevant. However, in OP's design there is minimal tension and only 1 tooth touching at a time, so the chain will jump off the teeth.
There is a huge and very old field of chain and sprocket design, the details of which I am not very familiar, but I do know the basic rules of "some non-zero tension", "bigger subtended angle=better" and "engage as many teeth as possible".
(other interesting chain facts: the invention of the bicycle was enabled by the invention of sufficiently good chains. chains are better lubricated by grease not oil. chain wear gets exponentially worse, not linearly. centripetal force limits fast moving chains. )
Also, most will have access to some kind of facility where they can also do stuff such as charge phones, have a shower and do laundry.
If you present to the local authority as homeless you will usually be directed to a local charity that has these facilities. You will, likely, stay homeless but there is some basic help out there.
You describe a different universe from US homelessness. Here there might be a tiny bit of religious outreach but the public (therefor public services) tends to lean toward hostility.
I've been interacting with the local homeless community for over a decade. My ex is one.
The only thing most of them are is homeless.
Most have cell phones for a little while - until it gets lost or stolen or broken. Most are fed regularly sometimes and not other times. They have varying degrees of shelter on an irregular basis.
Few are well clothed in a way that wouldn't be a concern in a job interview (or going inside a market or library). Few have a reliably usable address.
In short, they fairly well represent unhoused Americans all over.
Generally speaking, only housed folks are getting to the library.
For unhoused that do make it to the library, must run a strong risk of having the police called on them.
Does that apply here? If you're homeless... You don't need to travel from home. You can live in walking distance?
> For unhoused that do make it to the library, must run a strong risk of having the police called on them.
For what? Using the library while undesirable?
This seems more like an art project than a practical solution.
I also would expect charging at the gym or work for those who have access would be a problem.
Also yes, it’s an art project by an art student at CSM (an art college).
There’s nowhere near enough drop in daytime places to charge a phone or access internet or get help with paperwork, etc.
there also a shortage of places that will let you open a mailbox/use the address to get postage.
You would be amazed at how much difference it makes being able to receive a letter at an address - it’s vital for a lot of services still.
This is neat. This may not be The Most Practical Solution, but the idea of having a thing that you can carry around and turn local bikes into power generation seems like a perfectly-reasonable invention for me.
We're talking about helping the homeless. They don't need the minmaxxed optimal solution. Not every homeless person may have access to a power outlet-- I don't know who wouldn't be able to move enough to pedal a bike but not enough to get to a public library, but that's really /not the point/. There are a lot of reasons that people end up homeless, and they can cause some really spotty/unreliable behavior.
There's nothing wrong with adding ideas/solutions to the mix. There's no need for a concept like this to replace other solutions. We can use all the viable solutions at the same time.
If phone charging is really something that's been overlooked by the many organisations trying to help the homeless already, it's just a matter of providing a space with mains power and a few chargers - maybe homeless shelters, churches, or community centres, and letting people know where+when this is available.
But I'd imagine that this is already a thing, and there's not really a need for silly contraptions?
(Then try to draw attention to the problem of phones with non-user-replaceable batteries, as the world has a vast supply of inexpensive older phones, but they're no use to anybody if the battery doesn't hold a charge...)
Yet on a single hand crank, even 20 watts and you'll get tired pretty quick.
Part of that is that leg muscles are bigger. Part of it is that you're used to walking or standing for long periods of time. Part of it is that with a dual crank you aren't putting useless effort into holding the device up and holding the weight of your own arms up.
End result: Hand cranks are useless unless you only need tiny amounts of energy out of a human.
This is definitely more about the message, but actually, if a person could pedal pretty hard for like a half hour and get a couple charges out of it, that doesn’t see too impractical (ignoring the obvious objections, like usually coffee shops will let you get a little charge).
It could be a nice camping accessory. I bet a product already exists.
The buffer battery is needed because phones generally don't like having variable voltage/current to charge from. They normally choose what speed they wish to charge at (depending on charger type), and if they can't draw their desired current and the voltage drops then they stop charging entirely.
Also, humans generally expect a crank to have constant torque. Whereas if you wanted constant charge power, then the faster you crank the easier it gets, and conversely the slower you go the stiffer it gets, which is very unintuitive.
By using a buffer battery, you can solve both problems. And users can choose to crank faster to charge the buffer quicker, which is what humans expect.
Plus, it gives the bikes utility when they're not being rented, since the rental bays often take up space in areas accessible to the homeless, its also quite convenient for the target users.
I'm quite surprised it can be built for £3, unless the battery is incredibly small.
But the market for something like that is not limited to the exact specific population of homeless in London. A thing like that could be produced in the volume necessary to get economy of scale, simply by not being limited to one city and a single particular model of bike, or even limited to the homeless for that matter.
If you don't understand that, then you are in a poor position from which to call anyone else dumb.
I have often wondered what sort of conversion it would take to use an AK47 and a box of ammo to drill a well/pump water, instead of suppress human beings.. transformative technology is highly interesting, don't you agree?
>I'm quite surprised it can be built for £3, unless the battery is incredibly small.
Herein lies the rub - can the homeless build these things for £1 a piece, somewhere in London?
Because if the answer is more oil-based traffic across the worlds oceans to get these things made, I'm afraid the irony of the builder/user distinction is rather unfortunate...
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/06/bt-ad... (old article, they're in a lot of major cities now and have been for a long time)
https://www.link.nyc/home.html
It's not just USB charging, it's also pretty fast wifi.
> Talbot's product takes advantage of the fact that, without having to pay to take out one of these bikes, their chain will still move when pedalling backwards. This can power up the tiny pedal-powered generator contained in the portable charger.
The electricity generated in the process is then stored in MyPowerbank's internal batteries, with around 25 minutes of pedalling equating to one full phone charge.
If by some miracle this actually took off and all the bikes were now in use by homeless, non-paying customers, bike rental companies would implement blocking measures so they could actually get revenue.
If the author used his resources and energy deliberately to get even a single homeless person back on track through conventional means, it would have a better impact on the world than this which is probably a net negative, all things considered.
And yet homeless people do labor. In fact routine living often requires much, much, much more labor when homeless, than when housed.
They even have jobs. I worked when I was homeless (but was fired when they found out). That was long ago. Since then it's more difficult to find work; job portals erased most job opportunities. Of the few folks willing to give you work, you have a segment who take advantage and act in bad faith.
When I started working there I was still living in the home I was born into. One day my mom, sister and I were suddenly given 2 weeks to vacate (it's complicated).
"While most homeless people own a phone, Talbot conducted interviews with people sleeping rough across London and found that many struggle with finding a place where they can actually charge the device."
So apparently at least part of the homeless disagree with you.
It might be a niche thing (it's a gradschool project after all), but it's pretty cool way to exploit things that are not supposed to be available for use.
“I was charging my phone :(“
It does not help homeless people or anyone to suggest they should break the law.
This device that uses bike chains is a bit cheeky but it is a smart idea and it should be legal, or at least not a crime (ianal). So nice, clever hack.
In my major Northeast US city, there are wall sockets on the outside of most buildings (if you know where to look), on every car of the subway/bus, in public concourses, etc.
This device seems a bit.. daft. Renting a Santander cycle costs 1.65 GBP. Add the high energy food required to supplement your diet after a 30 minute ride and this is looking closer to 3 or 4 quid for a phone charge, and that's before considering where the homeless person is going to securely stow their belongings while cycling. Luggage storage in Victoria is 5 GBP for 3 hours..
Just because you become homeless, doesn’t mean you lose every single item you own.
A phone is one of the more useful/valuable possessions for a homeless person - you need some kind of internet/telephone device to engage with the services that can help you, for navigation, etc etc
How do they not affect you?
Homelessness could become a good thing, if we get our tech right.
(Disclaimer: Tree-hugging hippy who believes we should be dropping Kelly Kettles, not bombs..)