Engineering Commons^™

Veloelectric: Creating A Device That Harvests Energy From Bicycles, Austin Hall, Daniel Stohr, Tj Fox

Mechanical Engineering

Long distance mountain bikers, bike-packers, and many bikers in developing countries rely on electrical devices for safety and communication. These specific groups of people operate in areas with little to no electricity, and often times have no power to sustain their devices. The purpose of this Cal Poly senior project, VeloElectric, was to design, build, and test a kinetic energy harvester for bicycles that can be used to charge common mobile devices via USB. This senior project team created a device that attaches directly to a bicycle and uses vibrations to generate energy, which in turn powers a variety of …

Sole Power: Pedal Phone Charger Final Report, Nicole Hensley, Anthony Ruh, Krista Schmidt, Joseph Garcia

Mechanical Engineering

The device design was conceived to meet the energy needs of rural populations in India. These communities have cell phones but lack access to reliable grid power, especially during monsoon season. The charger is designed to be affordable, durable, and easily repairable for each owner family. It uses off-the-shelf components and is intended to be replicated by backyard manufacturing startups in developing countries.

Its purpose is to efficiently transfer human foot motion via a treadle, four-bar-linkage, and sprocket-chain step-up to drive a rotor & stator generator from a common gas scooter. The single-phase alternating current from the generator is passed …