Question for you engineers:

[garote]

How would I go about building a bicycle-powered usb-charger? The online resources look pretty sparse so far...

Edit: This project looks like almost exactly what I'd want, but I don't really have the electrical engineering talent to build it...

Comments

[thegoodreverend.livejournal.com]

MAKE had a similar project a while back, available here.

[garote]

Yeah, I ran into that earlier, but I didn't like his design... I was/am hoping to find some kind of generator unit that's a little more customized to a bike. Driving the generator by a wheel leaning onto the inside rim of a bike wheel could get complicated if the wheel is even slightly bent, and would also generate additional friction. The belt-drive approach gets around those issues, but it requires that the generator be at a horizontal angle - and that seems harder to place on a bike.

Recently I saw some interesting looking bikes in a bike shop - each had a generator built into a housing on the axle of the front wheel. But those were wired directly to little headlamps, and looked waaay underpowered compared to what I could get with a different design...