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Ride your bike.. put power on the grid.. track your (and your friends') progress.. save the planet. It's pretty easy to use sexy one-liners that grab attention. But can we really do that? If it's as simple as it sounds, why hasn't it been done before?
What is the Bionic Energy Project really all about? It's a research project undertaken by energetic and opinionated students at Southern Oregon University, backed by faculty mentors and funded by Katalyst Energy. It's a work in progress, but in the mean time, enjoy some of the research goings-on at our blog or our twitter. The research students have free reign here to share, and so do you.
The website is now open, but it's still growing. And as the project grows, everyday people will have an opportunity to generate power using their own bodies - real electrons, flowing onto the grid. It may seem small relative to coal or natural gas, but it's efficient, real and growing.
Stay tuned..Robert Coffan, Founder
how it works
Start with a bicycle. Any type will do, mountain, road, or stationary. Your bike clips into the platform. We started the platform by buying an over the counter bicycle trainer, and stripped it down to bare bones. Then came the fun. Motors, bearings, drawings, retooling, grinding, sparks, shredded wires, coffee, more sparks, head-scratching, and the Prototype came into being.
Before the user even steps on the bike, the system knows how to identify them. For a public bike with multiple users, such as the prototype at the SOU research lab, each user is given a fob that is connected to their user account on our website. Before they start riding, they swipe the fob on our ‘black box’.. The next step is simple: ride the bike!
The energy produced by the bicycle generator is processed so it can be plugged into any standard 120 volt wall jack. In other words, if you have an electrical outlet, you can send your human-powered electricity out onto the power grid!
Since the energy produced flows out to the grid, it is very important that it is tracked accurately. Once the power is flowing, it is monitored by a series of hardware and software implementations. These data are received by a microcontroller near the bike, pushed to a mini webserver in the room, and then logged on a virtual machine database.
These data can be aggregated to show some very interesting metrics: how fast do you ride? Who's the fastest? Who's generated the most electricity? How much power has the project generated overall? If we know the user's weight, we can approximate how many calories they are burning when they ride. The possibilities are almost endless. (See our stats page for some ideas, or browse through the users.)
What does all of this add up to? We aren't the first ones to worry about energy, but we have brought some new ideas to the table. And we have proven that it can be done. Sustainable energy of any impact is a necessary part of a future here on Earth. If we can all make a small difference and have fun doing it, then projects like this are a success. ... Stay Tuned...
Fun facts about Bionic Energy:Total number of programming languages used: 7 (php, javascript, xhtml, SQL, shell, pBASIC, C#)
Number of inverters set on fire: 1 (accidentally)
Meters of shredded wire: 3.5 (lesson learned: no loose wires during sprint trials!)
Quantity of coffee and VISO consumed during production: incalculable
Velocicopter.
