Controlling Display by Bicycle Power????

[urthegman]

Since I have started this hobby 6 years ago I have been looking for a way to combine my two favorite hobbies, bicycle riding and Christmas lighting and at the same time make my display interactive while promoting the need for exercise. It is something I have wanted to do but I have never taken it on as a project. What I would like to do is have either my stationary bike or one of my road bikes set up so that based on the speed that someone was pedaling, either the Christmas lights would blink and flash slower or faster or lets say you used a flexible strip, slow would get you to 40 LEDs, moderate would get you to 80 LEDs and fast would get all 120 LEDs to light up. Or if I could hook it up where the amount of output would dictate how many elements of the display light up that would be my ideal set up. I would also need to have my sequences play while no one was pedaling or I would set it up so that the pedaling part could be done before the show started or after it was done. And also would like to take the stationary bike or bicycle in at night.  Any ideas?
P.S. I was going to post this in the Persistence of Vision thread but didn't want to hijack it.

[mms]

Last year I was looking at a site that suggested how to convert a lawn mower into a generator.  The way this generator was made was that a fan belt was used to connect the lawn mower engine to a car alternator.  The alternator was hooked to a series of car batteries.  The battery was hooked to an inverter to produce AC power.

I imagine you could use similar principles to light a portion of your display.  I also wonder if you could make a controller that interfaces with an electronic speedometer: if speed = 0-5 mph, then light section 1, if speed = 6-12 mph then light section 2, etc. 

Interesting idea for sure!

[taybrynn]

Cool idea.

I'm getting a smile on my face thinking about kids riding a bike out front in December.

LOL

[Dennis Cherry]

Put a 10 foot mega tree in the yard and add enough channels to make the tree spin, then the bicycle will control the spin of the tree, the faster they pedal the faster it spins.

[kgustafson]

Most of the spinner apps I have seen for bicycles use a rare earth magnet to determine rate of rotation.  Magnet is on the wheel and the reader is on the fork.

[rimist]

I really like this idea as well. I am interested in the original concept of the bike as a controller, not a generator, because I would like for my five year old to be able to ride as well. I wish I was much further along in electronics. Conceptually, I would think a tachometer could be used to drive the input, which then either changes the dimming level or the channel count or some combination via Dmx

-Rimist (via Tapatalk)

[urthegman]

I really like this idea as well. I am interested in the original concept of the bike as a controller, not a generator, because I would like for my five year old to be able to ride as well. I wish I was much further along in electronics. Conceptually, I would think a tachometer could be used to drive the input, which then either changes the dimming level or the channel count or some combination via Dmx

-Rimist (via Tapatalk)

YES! This would lend itself to having different elements of the display lighting up as the wheels or wheel spun. If you had an attachment of some kind to two, three or 4 spokes control a different channel, every time that section rotated past some kind of signal sending device it would send a signal to the wireless in a Lynx Express turn that channel on and control one element of the display!!!!!

[tbone321]

I think that the only real issue that you would have here is finding the correct software to run your show that can accept inputs and allow you to use them to override the or add to the existing show.  You would also need seperate cabeling from the bike adapter to the PC controlling the show.  I believe that this would also stop you from using the Conductor unless RJ has plans for it to accept inputs from other devices.  Either that or have whatever the bike is controlling be seperate items from the rest of the show where none of this woulld be an issue.

[urthegman]

I am leaning toward having it before and after the show, this way I can get even with the earlybirds who show up before it is even dark out and ask "how come the lights aren't on yet?" Usually my response is "um, because it's two hours before the sun goes down!" now I can say "hop on the bike and pedal, that will make the lights go on!". LOL Hmmm, I used the Wii to control my lights using LSP two years ago, I wonder if THAT would do the trick somehow?

[taybrynn]

I could see this being a totally standalone display item with the bike as the controller ...

I know LOR controllers have some kind of input capability ...

[urthegman]

If I used flexible strips it might save me a lot of sequencing!!!!

[taybrynn]

Maybe the biker just invokes (a signal or something) to generate an event to generate a random number which then copies a sequence to be played into a folder and you just play whatever "song.lms" sequence file is in that directory.  If nothing is input, the daemon process copies in an empty.lms file which does nothing.  Then it gives the appearance that the bike problem control, but it really is just an elaborate triggering device?