Power on tour (and generally)

The most popular source of mobile power is the dynamo. However, using it for anything other than lighting is only recently starting to catch on.
You would be best off with a decent hub dynamo.
Power sources range from the cheap to the expensive.
There are also options that have internal batteries that charge from the dynamo so you can charge other devices later, like you would with a powermonkey (Zzing, Pedalpower).

Note that a GPS has a comparatively heavy use of power (3Wh per day), which will take about 2 hours worth of USB output.

http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/lh/photo/yMAaacFfVJy7G81gp7wHTw?feat=directlink

I use one of these when I am camping at sites- takes away all the worries of leaving your stuff in exposed places - I am more than happy to pay for the electricity - has cost me a lot less than what I have wasted buying solar panels etc - though my next move will be a SON and a B&M thingy

I found this a few weeks ago it looks interesting
http://www.bumm.de/index-e.html?docu/361e.htm

ralex wrote:

Dahon are producing this, it says available from March 2010 but I couldn't find it anywhere so I emailed them and they said it will be available in the UK around end of May 2010.

A couple of places (Fudges, DiscountCyclesDirect) are taking pre-orders at about £75.

Everything except the E-Werk seems to be based around the USB specification (5V, 0.5A). This is plenty for keeping phones and MP3s going, and will cope with a GPS, but a laptop/netbook would probably be too much (as may be an over generous combination of devices).

ralex wrote:

Dahon are producing this, it says available from March 2010 but I couldn't find it anywhere so I emailed them and they said it will be available in the UK around end of May 2010. Same sort of idea as the Zzing by the looks of it. They didn't say what the price would be though.[/url]

I really like the look of this product. I am leaving on a tour on 4th June and would like to get hold of one before I go if possible. I have emailed Dahon to find out if I will be able to get one in time.

Am I right in thinking all I need to acompany the Dahon unit would be a Dynamo hub? How do I connect that to the unit it's self? Does a wire come out of the wheel somehow?

If so what Hub would people reccomend?

Thanks

Thanks Ralex. I will have a look at that. Is the power output of the Zzing and the Dahon Reecharge likely to be enough to charge my Garmin 705, Camcorder and Iphone? I appreciate it depends how much I ride and need to recharge etc but in principle should it be sufficient to do one every day when off the bike?

Hi, I bought a zzing a week or so ago, the German seller is great, I got it without paying for it first and when it arrived I tested it before deciding to buy it using pay pal. It does exactly what I expected and a little more.

You connect it to your hub dynamo which takes about 5 minutes to figure out, it comes with SON connectors but I have a shimano so just followed the instructions as best I could but it worked and was very straight forward in the end using the leads supplied. You plug the lead supplied into the hub and the other end into the zzing. when you spin the wheel the little led light turns on so you know you are charging the zzing. to turn on the output from the zzing to the device you want to charge you just flick the on switch and it starts to charge your device.

The best thing is that even if the zzing doesnt have any charge in it, it will control the feed from the hub and allow you to power your device directly from the hub.

I am pretty sure all the others(e-werk,dahon) will work exactly the same as this but this was pretty cheap and I am really impressed with the build quality so far.


Hope this helps

PV