On Wed, 24 Jun 2009 17:40:42 +0200, Simon Lewis
wrote:

Stephen Bauman writes:

On Wed, 24 Jun 2009 13:10:35 +0200, Simon Lewis wrote:

Ive seen mention for pedal & power and something from motorola, but I
cant find anywhere to purchase such things. I want to trickle
feed/charge my mobile from the hub dynamo when touring. Surely such a
thing exists and works? Most links I find are dead ends or defunct
companies.

Anyone got anything concrete that they have used and can recommend?

I mean, if I can recharge my mobile from a USB port I surely can from a
hub dynamo?

Does your mobile have a charger for an automobile? If so, then you need
to find a suitable way of converting the output from your hub dynamo to
something like the 12-14 volt dc output from a car battery to feed it
into your automobile charger.

If your hub dynamo is already 12 volt then a simple rectifier is all that
is needed. If your hub is the more common 6 volt variety, then a simple
voltage doubler will be required.

Stephen Bauman

Yes. But where is the product I can buy? What is a simple rectifier?

The electronic design aspect of this is pretty trivial. Designing something that
is convenient and absolutely, positively guaranteed to not **** up your cell
phone or charger regardless of what generator you use or how you hook it up and
then have enough of a market to make manufacture worthwhile is difficult.

It might be worthwhile to design for some particular dynamo with reasonably
standard connectors and a large installed base of tourists. Charging notebook
computers and GPS devices would be other applications.

Just what hub dynamo do you have? Got specs? How does it connect? Might be worth
an experiment.