Siva Cycle Atom - A bicycle pedal power generator for charging your phone, and other Battery powered

[froggyboy604]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcnY-mcw4zc

A lightweight generator to charge your phone, lights, and removable battery pack as you ride. Pedal power by you, for now or later.

Introducing The Siva Cycle Atom 

The Atom is a lightweight, highly efficient bicycle generator and rechargeable battery pack designed to power virtually any of your electronic or mobile devices via USB. Our generators mount on most standard bicycle frames in minutes, and the battery packs detach easily to quickly extend your battery life.

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Cool, now people will never run out of power for their MP3 player, or phone while they are peddling, and charging their batteries with power.

Using this bicycle battery charger looks like a good way to earn a few extra dollars by selling people power from your battery from this bicycle powered generator to charge their empty phone battery when they need power, but a power outlet is no where to be found like at a park, the beach, or outdoors.

 

[VirusZero]

Looks like something pretty useful for those who are doing a lot of cycling.  I'm sort of surprised that someone hasn't tried/created something like this before. I mean bicycles have been around for quite a few years now and I'd have thought someone would have tried doing this before. (Especially earlier when mobile device usage really started to rise.)

I'm a bit more interested though in how long you'd have to ride in order to fully charge a device. They say 5 minutes from red to green in their video... But that doesn't mean much since there are a ton of variables... Things like:
- How low your battery is... (Like if it turns red at 15% and you're only just at that point then yes I could see 5 minutes boosting the power out of the red. But if the battery is at 2% I'd have a harder time believing it could get it out of the red that fast... Without damaging the battery in the process.)

- How much charge is actually in the power pack (if there isn't much charge in it, it might not be able to boost a device from say 3% to 15% power.)

- How long the power pack takes to charge itself. (How long/far/fast do you have to pedal to get any amount of charge?)

- How much power your battery actually can contain. (If your battery is a larger capacity one then it might take longer/more to charge than a comparatively lower capacity one. So 5 minutes on a 1500 mAh wouldn't be the same % as 5 minutes on a 2100 mAh battery.)

So yes, interesting idea and I think it could be a great success for those who cycle a lot.