(no subject)

posted by [identity profile] jonobie.livejournal.com at 12:34am on 02/05/2006
Yikes, that wheel hub generator has a ton of warnings on it about not touching the hub!

It's always annoying when something that works perfectly well goes off the market. Hopefully you'll find something that suits. I like the look of the solar ones, myself. It mentions something about not charging on rainy days, which surprises me, though -- my little solar powered calculator works okay even when the light is rather dim. What's different?
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hub and solar

posted by [identity profile] rfunk.livejournal.com at 12:56am on 02/05/2006
At least the warnings are about not treating it as a normal hub when doing maintenance, rather than about electrocution or something like that. (Unless I missed something.) But there's certainly a disadvantage to swapping out key parts for something nonstandard. Swapping out a wheel hub feels a bit like swapping out a knee.

Where are you seeing the solar stuff?

I'm sure the big difference between the calculator and the light is the amount of power involved (both current and voltage). I guess the rainy day would be sort of like running your car with a bad alternator, damaging the battery. But that's one of those areas of EE (not to mention ChemE) that I'm not so good on. From a totally theoretical point of view, I'd expect that a zener diode could be used to keep the voltage from going below a certain point (other than off).

The solar stuff I've seen talks about charging for 2-3 hours in sunlight, and (for now at least) it's rare for me to ride that long or park that long outside.
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Re: hub and solar

posted by [identity profile] jonobie.livejournal.com at 02:20pm on 02/05/2006
I was seeing the solar stuff in the comparison chart; it was more that the .idea. appealed to me rather than the specifics. ;-) It never occured to me that running when it was low might hurt something. If you've got to be out in the sunlight for 2-3 hours, that definitely a downside. I definitely was never out that much, especially since I parked inside a parking garage.
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