Recommendations for bike generators?

Bikergurl101

Hey guys, I recently started commuting at my uni and my phone has a really bad battery so it always dies on me.

I'm heard that there are bike generators out on the market that can charge your phone and I think they're really cool. Only thing is that I don't know whether or not they're worth the investment, how much harder they make the daily commute (I'm biking to try and get more fit), how durable they are, and how easy the installation of these products are.

If anyone could give me recommendations on which bike generators to try and why they like it or something like that, I would really appreciate it. Thank you!

DrLex

Welcome to the forum.
Unless you already have a dynamo hub on your bike, you'd be better off buying a mains charger to leave at college/in book bag or a spare battery.
Otherwise, you're looking at around £100 for a dynamo hub & wheel and the same again for a front light with USB socket. On the upside, you'll have sorted your bike lighting requirement too.

phy2sll2

There was a kickstarter project one which looked really good but I can't remember the name now.

EDIT: found it... http://sivacycle.com/

davis

They're generally called "dynamos", and if you're purely looking to extend your phone's life, why not get a replacement battery, or leave a charger at uni? Assuming you take 30 minutes to get in, would 30 minutes' charging actually make any difference?

davmaggs

I hate it when someone doesn't the question you actually asked, but I am now going to do that.

I looked into this a while back and found that the costs, effort of set-up and the output don't make it worth doing for commuting and I really wanted the excuse to go for it too. Touring and very long distance could be different, but even then using the phone for navigation (as I wanted to do) would drain more power than a dynamo would put in.

All Dynamos suffer from being partially efficient. To get anything decent you are into hub dynamos, the other ones (especially cheap attachments) don't seem to live up to their claims. Others here might be able to correct me of course, but in short I think they are only good for trickle charging.

So, I'd chuck a spare battery in my pocket or a wall socket charger, and get an app that turns off power draining things like wifi. Mates will no doubt have old charges that you can have for free or eBay is super cheap. top tip; label you charger with your name as you will leave it in the wall or someone will 'borrow' it and plug it in elsewhere and you'll walk off leaving it behind.