Three years ago, when I spoke with Jock Brandis of the Full Belly Project about his Universal Peanut Sheller, he had recently fine-tuned the pedal-powered (or hand-cranked) device and delivered it to agricultural villages in six countries. A recent NPR piece reports that the sheller is now changing lives in 17 countries. “Villagers with their [...]
Author Archives: tamara
Would the Amish Use a Hand-Cranked Laptop?
November 21, 2010 – 9:42 pm
In this article in The Atlantic (November 1, 2010) author Rebecca Greenfield wonders whether the Amish would use the One Laptop Per Child hand-cranked computer (featured in The Human-Powered Home), since it doesn’t rely on the grid for electricity.
DIY Help from Working Bikes
August 30, 2010 – 7:00 pm
I’ve had the pleasure of working with the volunteers at Chicago’s Working Bikes Cooperative (WBC), an organization that collects cast-off bikes and repairs or refashions them for use in the city or in far-off countries. They also make bike machines, such as pedal generators and water pumps, for education, fun, and practical use. (And they’re [...]
Green Gym in Detroit
July 5, 2010 – 2:28 pm
In January, Treehugger profiled a gym in Detroit that’s available for use by the homeless and has electricity-generating equipment. According to Cass Community Social Services, “The gym will be open daily for homeless people living in the CCSS’s transitional housing and permanent supportive housing programs, as well as staff members and volunteers.” The gym uses [...]
Electricity-Generating Shoe
July 5, 2010 – 2:12 pm
In The Human-Powered Home I wrote about the heel-strike generator, the boot heel embedded with a material that issued current when compressed–current that could be harnessed to power batteries for portable electronics. The U.S. Military (DARPA) chose not to pursue the technology after testing showed that wearing it and generating electricity all day taxed test [...]
Power from Clothing
May 25, 2010 – 5:29 am
Scientists are getting closer to making fashion that harvests human energy. This article in the Chicago Tribune describes UC-Berkeley professor Luwei Lin’s project to develop nanofibers that can be woven into clothing and generate electricity from the wearer’s smallest movements. These nanofibers, which make use of piezoelectricity, can be washed multiple times and not lose [...]
Pedal for Dinner
April 22, 2010 – 6:34 pm
Recently a few articles (here and here) have described a scheme being rolled out by one Danish hotel to allow diners to pedal for dinner. The Crowne Plaza Copenhagen Towers will offer anyone who produces at least 10 watt-hours of electricity on one of its stationary bike generators a voucher for a free meal. Crowne [...]
Rustic Pedal Powered Generator
April 15, 2010 – 1:20 pm
This post about a homemade bicycle generator begins: “Living in the woods there are no convenient plug sockets.” And yet laptops are still necessary tools. Authors of the blog A Walk Around Britain have created a simple bicycle-powered electrical generator using the same parts as those described in The Human-Powered Home’s plan for a homemade [...]
Inmates Pedal Power TVs
April 15, 2010 – 1:08 pm
According to an article in The Arizona Republic, inmates at one AZ correctional facility can pedal power TVs to view additional channels. Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio said he hopes to encourage more exercise with this setup, in which one hour of pedaling allows for one hour of viewing. Oddly, the program is only available [...]
The Latest Example of Passively Harvesting Human Power
March 8, 2010 – 11:41 am
A new development in passively harvesting human power was featured in a recent NY Times article. Using piezoelectric crystals to generate electricity from human movement isn’t a novel idea. Its varied applications are described in Chapter 1 of The Human-Powered Home. But now scientists at Princeton have printed the crystals onto a flexible rubberlike material [...]