/diy/ - Do It Yourself

[Anonymous No.50902]

Hey, /diy/.

So I live in new england, and like many others this weekend, I lost power for 5 days.

This is highly inconvenient to anyone, and it understandably pissed me off having to spend hundreds of bucks on firewood and having to walk miles to get warm food because my daughter killed our car battery charging her phone.

Anyway, the logical idea is to buy a generator. However, due to safety / legal concerns, this is not an option for me.

However, I happily discovered that we have an old excersize bike in our basement. I have heard, or perhaps imagined, that these can be used to charge a battery which can in turn charge phones/run heaters etc.

I'm kind of useless at electrical crap, though, and I have no idea how to do this. Can anyone point me to a resource on how to accomplish this/tell me how to do this?

I have money and time and the bike, but no technical knowledge.

Also, to clarify, I don't need to power my entire house, just maybe a space heater and a laptop and a phone charger.

[Anonymous No.50919]

Uk here , using a dynamo to power 12volts , to a car battery, from that a 12-240v converter, should power at least a phone charger , u can by wind up ones for phone anyway.

[Anonymous No.50933]

http://www.google.com/search?source=ig&hl=en&rlz=1G1GGLQ_ENUS336&q=can+excercise+bike+ge
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There are a ton of sites that can walk you through it. Some things to know: it would probably NOT pay for itself (though neither would a generator), so don't start thinking free electricity, why hasn't anyone else thought of this! Don't plug it into an outlet trying to tie it into other setups, you'd probably burn your house down.

[Anonymous No.50935]

Your not going to be able to run a space heater off anything like that. Its a high draw device and will suck the life out of a car battery in no time flat. Otherwise, what the other guy says is fine. A small radio, phone/cell phone charger and some lights will run easily off of a car battery being charged off your little bike. Just remember, you're going to be peddling like a mofo for quite awhile to do this. A human at peak output can only manage about a quarter of a horsepower (1/4 hp) and not for very long either.

[Anonymous No.50936]

>>50919
Like I said, I have no idea when it comes to electrical stuff.

Could you explain in more detail/point me to a guide?

[Anonymous No.50944]

>>50902
>the logical idea is to buy a generator.
Yeah, a backup generator would be handy.

>However, due to safety / legal concerns, this is not an option for me.
...what?

>I happily discovered that we have an old excersize bike in our basement. I have heard, or perhaps imagined, that these can be used to charge a battery which can in turn charge phones
Yes, charge phones, run emergency radios, and even possibly charge a car battery.

>run heaters
No. The power output of a human body is not going to be nearly enough to provide power for a heater for a reasonable length of time. Supposedly, a person can deliver about 0.1 horsepower for a long time (you may have heard that a healthy person should be able to walk 40 miles in a day). That's a whopping 75 watts. The peak that a person can deliver for short periods is less than 1000 watts.

In contrast, it isn't uncommon for an electric space heater to require 1500 watts for hours on end.

[Anonymous No.50965]

Here are your blueprints, OP, get building. Haha, but seriously, there are a couple of ways to do it. If all of the devices require a different voltage, that will make things quite tricky.

It's hard to explain much if you don't have technical knowledge. If you take my picture, and add an inverter (DC-back-to-120-AC), that will make it so that you could plug a laptop in which can power other things through its USB ports, but a laptop may take like 85 watts to break even, and guy before me just explained that it's pretty exhausting to produce even a little power.

[Anonymous No.51268]

And for the Occupy people looking for idea's, check this out

[Anonymous No.51285]

>>50944
Bullshit. How the fuck are you converting miles walked into watts? A healthy adult can actually do about 1 horsepower. That's about 745w. Granted, you'd be pedaling your ass off, but a small heater could work.

[Anonymous No.51295]

>>50944
>>51285

I once visited a science museum that had an exercise bike connected to a generator. The generator was connected in turn to a 100 Watt light bulb. It was all I could do to light the bulb for a few seconds. I thought that it would be easy to generate enough power to light up that stupid bulb, but it wasn't easy at all.

[Anonymous No.51298]

If you can hook a belt from the wheel of an excercise bike to a standard, internally regulated automotive alternator, then your job is mostly done.

The typical car alternator has 3 connectors - 12v +, field+, and sense. The negative side is the body of the alternator itself.

12v + is the big bolt, it is the main power output. In a car, this hooks to both the positive terminal of the battery and the main fusebox.

Sense will be one of the small connectors, and it's important. That's what the internal voltage uses to measure voltage; in a car this often runs back to a point past the fusebox, so that any voltage drop in the wiring or from charging the battery will be automatically compensated for. In a project you can just jumper this to the 12v+ for quick and dirty self regulation.

The field connector is used for dashboard instrumentation (malfunction light or voltmeter), and can usually be left disconnected.

Some alternators may have other connectors - often they will have one that goes to switched battery power, so the alternator can shut down when you switch the engine off, or multiple plugs for instrumentation. I've seen some with 5 total. But you can always make them work with the right combination of jumpering to 12v and leaving open.

Honestly, DIY electricity generation is getting less relevant now, thanks to the widespread availability of $120 Chinese 2-stroke gasoline generators. It's hard to build something, even out of scavenged parts, for less than that.

[Capt B'Tardo No.51300]

> excersize bike
>car alternator
>battery
>power inverter
>incandescent bulbs up the the wattage of the power inverter.
the bulbs give off a lot of heat in a small area

[Anonymous No.51331]

>>51298

The hardest part of DIY electrical power generation is coming up with something to spin the generator. If you hook one up to a bike, you are going to get a lot warmer from pedaling the bike than from the tiny amount of power that you can generate.

[Anonymous No.51338]

>>51285
no. Just no. You can't sustain 500w worth of output for even 5 minutes.

For heat, it's more effective to just take your food, throw it in a pile, and burn it, rather than eating it and using your body to generate electricity for a resistive heater.

If you are generating electricity on-site to run an electric heater, you are doing it wrong. Convert your fuel directly into heat, or wear a sweater.

self contained propane or kerosene heaters are the best way to go, and manufactured kerosene heaters generally burn clean enough to be run indoors. I'd love to see a DIY kerosene heater plan.

[Anonymous No.51359]

why don't you just use propane and propane accessories to cook with if you don't have nearby firewood?