What?
The video is no longer available? :(

It looks interesting.
I wonder if one could use a small gen like the ones in other crank-gen type devices more efficiently?

Its available for me, looks pretty cool and simple.

what if he hung it from the back pocket, and attached the cord to that same ankle, so potentially each leg could have a separate generator. also, the flywheels should happen.

That’s pretty cool. I could see someone attaching these to your arms too. Not like it is there, but like, between your shoulder and wrist. You could then wind it up like doing bicep curls. And then for storage, just put a ring on the elbow so that it would stay still, and allow the free movement of your arm.

actually, it might even be more comfortable to attach it to the shoes instead of the ankle, like a tiny caribeener attached to the loop on the back of some shoes.

He doesn’t say where he got the hueg capacitor, old power supply?

what if you geared it so the motor spun faster?

this is my version of the tapemeasure generator thingy…

the Junklight

my only difference was I added a “joule thief” to the smoothing capacitor.

To make it really simple he could just use a battery. ;)
-Taylor

It is a really cool idea, I honestly would have never thought to use a stepper motor.

I’m picturing having this rigged up to doors and stuff so that when people walk in they will produce a little jolt of power.

And just now I got another idea! The forced air heater came on in my office, so with a mini-windmill type of thing and some good bearings, you could put it in front of the heat vent and get some power whenever your furnace or a/c comes on.

would be cool retrofitted to be put on one of those knee braces with the gears on them like this pic “http://renz.co.za/catalog/images/PODMX_08028.jpg” or somehow use a series of pulleys up to his knee then to hip and back down to allow the bending of the knee to pull and release tension of the cord.

@trev

Energy can neither be produced nor consumed, only converted between different forms (heat, light, sound, vibration, electricity, etc, etc,…). This is a fairly basic high school chemistry/physics topic. You can never “save” energy, you only save certain forms of energy by utilizing forms of energy that have less environmental impact. You’re not truly “conserving” energy at all!

trev, you may not end up eating more. perhaps by expending those extra calories you could become thinner or stronger…

basic human-powered generators have been around for a while – they don’t create energy out of thin air, but they do make use of what people do anyway, thus providing a little extra exercise and producing a little extra electricity.

Any little dc motor can be used instead stepper one,for demo purpose.And schottky diode is better.

Four diode bridge eats a lot of voltage. Full wave voltage doubler could be used to increase the efficiency like the one on this picture http://www.play-hookey.com/ac_theory/images/rectifier_doubler_full_wave.gif

Looks like the wind could do the work if the rope could be tied to the branch of an tree. This is just one buck converter away form really cool tiny portable generator.

Interesting project, and might I say nice choice of music, Crystal Castles is a fav

This could be something built into the underside of a hiking rucksack maybe. A cord going to the heel each foot, driving two generators to charge a central battery which, it turn, would provide power for for cellphone, GPS, flashlights etc. Attaching at rear of foot and legs would keep it ou the way (i think)and wouldn’t cross across legs making a trip hazard… HMMM

I’m with trev on this one. The ‘energy’ comes from an increased effort in doing walking, or in other cases, open doors, drawers, etc.. The idea is interesting, but I fail to see how it is practical beyond something to go oooo at.

In my opinion, you have to be really desperate to generate energy from walking, opening/closing drawers/doors, and other common task and be thinking much to hard. I think it is better to be more aware of your own energy consumption and make changes to that, like driving habits, electricity usage, heating of home/apartment/buildings, and so on.

I know you meant this to be taken lightly and all, but even with the remote possibility of being useful here have you measured the power output of these generators like in a per step scenario with your ankle-to-ankle setup?

@CalcProgrammer1

If you put up a solar panel, and run that, and therefore can turn off your diesel generator, you have conserved diesel.

Thanks, drive through.

It’s a good idea SolemnDusk, except instead of tripping, you run the risk of rolling your ankle. :)