Stupid idea?

Simon430

Hi,
I was thinking would it be possible to have a brake that doesn't have any cables. This would be a good idea for street/park riders who like to do bar spins but don't want to run brakeless or have really long cables.

My idea would be to use some sort of electric piston that pushes onto the pad then onto the disc, and have this controlled at the lever and the transmission sent wirelessly, maybe bluetooth, still haven't thought this through properly.

Modulation i hear you say, well, if you set up a potential divider so the harder you pull the more resistance therefore the piston increases pressure.

Anyone even tried this? Or another way of using no cables?

Thanks,
Simon

nicklouse

what is wrong with a gyro if you want brakes?

The Northern Monkey

yup... think i've seen hydraulic gyro's too!

alfablue

wireless brakes could be scary if the signal drops out! :shock:

The Northern Monkey

or if you get interference lol!

Simon430

Gyro's don't look that good on 24" or 26" wheeled bikes.

alfablue, would be scary admit, but would need a breaksafe or something fitting in so when the signal is lost, the brake automatically stops the bike.

The Northern Monkey

Simon430 wrote:

Gyro's don't look that good on 24" or 26" wheeled bikes.

alfablue, would be scary admit, but would need a breaksafe or something fitting in so when the signal is lost, the brake automatically stops the bike. and throws you over the bars.

That would be dangerous.

biff55

alfablue wrote:

wireless brakes could be scary if the signal drops out! :shock:

or your bike receives a signal from another source , like a joker of a mate who activates
your brakes with his iphone just as you tee- up a high speed jump.

Simon430

Like I said, me and my mate were talking about it and came up with this.

Maybe not bluetooth then, maybe a locked bandwidth like what radio controlled cars use.

The Northern Monkey

What if the batteries shorted/ran out? you could be stuck with your brakes stuck on/off!

Also, street/park is quite weight concious. A battery + electronics will weigh a whole lot more than a set of cable disks.

biff55

Simon430 wrote:

Like I said, me and my mate were talking about it and came up with this.

Maybe not bluetooth then, maybe a locked bandwidth like what radio controlled cars use.

aside from the joking , i appriciate your inventiveness and pioneering even if no-one else
does.
i've come up with many a OTT idea , very few work , but thats no reason to stop.

alfablue

biff55 wrote:

Simon430 wrote:

Like I said, me and my mate were talking about it and came up with this.

Maybe not bluetooth then, maybe a locked bandwidth like what radio controlled cars use.

aside from the joking , i appriciate your inventiveness and pioneering even if no-one else
does.
i've come up with many a OTT idea , very few work , but thats no reason to stop.

I agree, don't let the problems we point out deter you - if you have 1 brilliant idea out of 1000 dud's you will be doing better than most, and that could be a killer idea!

Matt N

you'd need a poweful battery if you wanted it to last more than a couple of minutes, this would be very heavy. Look at cannondale's concept fork 'simon' it has a laptop battery and only last about 8 hours, imagine two of these!

Simon430

biff55 wrote:

aside from the joking , i appriciate your inventiveness and pioneering even if no-one else
does.
i've come up with many a OTT idea , very few work , but thats no reason to stop.

If the batteries did shorted/ran out then maybe implement a switch to turn off the piston being jammed againt the rotor. Wouldn't be that much heavier?

Thanks biff, doesn't trying to think of different ways the biking industry could move forward.

biff55

the issues with batteries to power anything on a bike will subside very quickly in the near
future.
lithium cells in the next 5 years or so will be alot more powerful and lighter than those available today , especially with car makers investing in electric car technology , which
will trickle down to other applications.

biff55

our grandkids could be arguing about hydrogen power packs on their bikes give or
take 50 years.

Matt N

biff55 wrote:

our grandkids could be arguing about hydrogen power packs on their bikes give or
take 50 years.

I can't wait till we wake up and realise that hydrogen is the way to go...so a few of us may die in nasty explosions but its better than the whole world! No there's forward planning for you!

chris_sw

Matt N wrote:

biff55 wrote:

our grandkids could be arguing about hydrogen power packs on their bikes give or
take 50 years.

I can't wait till we wake up and realise that hydrogen is the way to go...so a few of us may die in nasty explosions but its better than the whole world! No there's forward planning for you!

So, where do you get the hydrogen? Oh yes that's right, you make it using very large amounts of electricity.

Nuclear power is the way forward for now, although hydrogen fuel cells do have a possible use for vehicles, since you can fill up like petrol, rather than waiting ages for batteries to charge and carrying the extra weight. Depends how battery technology improves over the next few years.

Sorry for the off topic! About electronic brakes, I think there's two big problems to overcome, first would be the size and weight of the motor required in the calliper, since it's going to need to be pretty powerful to apply the braking force, much more so than the motors used in Shimanos electric derailleurs. Secondly the weight/lifetime of the battery pack would likely hold people back, especially with the limited gains on offer.

As for interference, I'm sure that'd be pretty easy to solve, take the remote central locking on cars for example, uniquely paired signal that will take some significant effort to clone. And for when they run out, should be pretty easy to give a warning light/sound when the battery is running low.

tjwood

You can already get shift-by-wire gears, so this isn't that crazy an idea. Sure there'd be problems to overcome but I shouldn't think it would be impossible.
http://www.wired.com/gadgets/miscellane ... 07/shimano

bomberesque

I think you have an idea there, and the application is considerably wider than jump bikes, the problem is I don't think there's a need.

what you could be onto here is some sort of variation on servo-actuated braking, which is now all but ubiquitous in cars. If the servo is applying the pressure to the pad then it could be wired or wirelessly connected to a lever (it would be easy to keep it wired and let the bars spin with sliding contacts)

you're only real problem as far as I can see, is powering the servo itself. Perhaps you could take another cue from car technology; regenerative braking. power from a capacitor and have the brake recharge it's own battery. not sure how the numbers would work out on this but I'd be willing to bet that there's enough energy shed in momentum braking the bike to power the piston and then some. Then it could be light-as, although the required size and weight of the servo itself I'm less sure of.

is servo actuated braking used in motorbikes, or do they still rely on hand pressure? I suspect at the end of the day that the servo isn't really needed (hand pressure is enough) so you'd be feeding a need that's not there, except for the wireless thing but then how many jump bikers are out there ready to make you rich?

I think it could be done, but I think you'd find it's overly complex and really not needed, at least on today's bikes. Nice thinking though

Instead, how about designing an integrated headset/stem with a concealed gyro style setup inside the steerer so you manage the same but not ugly and avoiding batteries, wireless and all the issues and complexities that go with that? I bet it'd be cheaper too

stunter ant

bigbenj_08 wrote:

yup... think i've seen hydraulic gyro's too!

Yeah those hydraulic gyro's look awesome!! As for cable free brakes....well in my opinion thats just a silly idea :roll:

stunter ant

http://www.chainreactioncycles.com/Mode ... elID=36983

http://www.chainreactioncycles.com/Mode ... elID=29568

IF i could tail whip id have one lol

touchy

I dont think a normal piston style brake would work well in an electric system - it would need too much power.
Maybe some sort of hub brake that works with electromagnets might be better? (Same sort of way that turbo trainers with magnetic resistance work) You could probably even fit a dynamo in it to charge a battery when braking.

Also, i dont think interference would be an issue at all. For example, i'm sitting here putting my credit card details into CRC over a wireless network and it would be very difficult for anybody to intercept the data. Obviously a brake system wouldnt need to be as complex as 802.11 but it just shows what is possible.

In fact, the more i think about this the more it seems like a good idea
You could have a completely sealed hub brake that is totally unaffected by weather conditions, needs no cables and would never need new brake pads.

Will Snow

sounds like a pretty good idea to me. Having felt the weight of bluetooth headsets, etc I dont think weight would be too much of an issue, and incorporating the battery into the hub might make sense.