bewarendeavor

Bicycles have used dynamo generators to power headlights and taillights for a long time. We wondered if you could use such a generator to power something else.

A lot of people have experimented with led-embedded clothing, and we were fascinated withLeah Beuchley’s led jacket. You can see her insructable for it here.  The thing is that this and other designs require a battery to work, so we thought combining these two technologies might be interesting.

The Dynamo would generate power as it usually does, but will send the power to contact points on the handlebars of the bike.  The jacket, in turn, will have contact points on the palm of gloves that are sewn to the sleeve but can be folded away when not in use, similar to the Loki LokiMitt.  These contacts will be connected to LEDs in the jacket by conductive thread.  When the glove meets the handlebar, the circuit is completed and the dynamo powers the lights in the jacket!  

In addition to the consistent or blinking light, when the rider touches the brake lever with his/her hand, a second set of lights turns on, just like a car brake light.  Other light effects, such as a turn signals, could be achieved with other points on the handlebar that the rider need only reach out and touch.

The other day I dropped my Sigg coffee mug while riding my bike and it was dented beyond use, so I’ve been looking around for different quick-fixes until I buckle and get a new one.  I have a lot of these old mason jars at my apartment, reclaimed drinking glasses that used to house pasta sauce or pickles or jam.  

       I also have a bottle of Plasti-Dip , the magical/deadly liquid that you dip tool handles in to rubberize the handles.  I had tried using this stuff on various other objects, most successfully bike handlebars, and so I decided to coat both the jar and its lid in this dip in hopes of creating a “de-teched” travel mug.  The number of parts and amount of material that go into something like a Sigg is significant.  the problem with my solution, though, is that Plasti-Dip requires all kinds of synthetic and dangerous materials to be produced.  An easier solution for the mason jar mug might be a fabric wrap, or leftover packing material, but I’m interested in Plasti-Dip’s possibilities, such as imprinting patterns or mixing in other colors or materials.

Pure Magic

Our assignment to detechnologize a product was difficult for me because I’m not terribly “tech-savvy”.  But Rich’s talk last class, specifically his statement on making things ‘human-sized’, really inspired me.  I thought immediately about a book of essays I read recently entitled The Mexico City Reader.  The Book is full of both written and photographic essays that together give the reader a portrait of the city.  One series of photographs focuses on Ambulantes, or ambulatory sellers, that travel the city collecting and selling various goods.

 Going beyond the usual hot dog stands and t-shirt carts, these sellers collect materials like cardboard, wood and steel that they can sell to the state.  There are also hundreds of street performers that carry their equipment with them as they travel throughout the city.  Similar to the can collectors we see on trash day, only on a much larger scale.

Mexico City is the Richest and Poorest city in the world, with most of the wealth concentrated in one area near the center of the city.  Flanking this zone are two extremely large barrios that were developed informally as the lake Texcoco was further drained.  At first these areas were populated by squatters, but soon private developers started selling parcels of land to people for construction.  Now they are the two most populated areas in the city.  Connecting these informal developments to the state infrastructure has proven to be a great challenge because so many of the buildings there were built without plumbing or electricity.

My idea is very similar to that of the wifi scooters Rich showed in his presentation, but with a slightly less charitable perspective. I would also want to design the cart in its entirety.  These hundreds if not thousands of ambulatory sellers could spread wireless access to these large developments by pirating bandwidth from the richer communities.  One major challenge trying to implement something like this would be the security of the electronic devices on the carts.  When thinking about the design of the carts and the devices they would carry, I was reminded of the homeless vehicles designed by Krzystof Wodiscko.  There ‘mobile homes’ could expand and change to suit the user’s needs, and were made from common and inexpensive materials.  But the wireless ambulante would be made with a low profile, whereas the homeless carts were made to attract attention.