Bicycle Powered PC

There’s nothing like getting your friends to earn their beer when they pay a visit, is there? This guy had a deadline to meet but hadn’t paid his utility bills. Solution: rig up a few bikes with dynamos in the loft, connect up the PC and hey presto, free power. Or at least free as in here’s a couple of tinnies to keep you going, mate!

Well, actually it looks more like some kind of publicity stunt, and if he hadn’t paid his electricity bill how come he’s got power to run the photographic lighting? Oh, his wife’s in the next room pounding away on a treadmill! I hadn’t realized.

So, how does this little setup work? Could you power a PC using pedal power alone? It’s possible, you’d need some decent dynamos or another way of converting the rotational kinetic energy of the pedaling into electricity. Most important of all though, you’d want some kind of conditioner and a way of storing the charge to provide a nice clean power input and a buffer for when the bikers begin to flag.