The sLEDgehammer can be purchased as a single-player challenge or a dual:

 

Above: Get multiple sLEDgehammers to add a competitive element and a larger presence at your event.

Rules of the game:

Pedalers must overcome the challenge phase in order to see the reward sequence. The faster they pedal, the more lights turn on, making it harder and harder to keep increasing the system voltage. If they push the lights all the way to the top of the tower, and keep them on for 3 seconds, they beat the challenge and win the game. Their stored energy is then used up in a dazzling display of light.  A difficulty knob makes the game easier or harder. The peak effort required to win is about 200W for the Easiest setting and 600W for the Hardest. In the Dual sLEDgehammer, everything is the same. To decide the winner, you start the two riders at the same time and give the win to the one who pushes the lights higher in the tower or gets the victory sequence to display first.

Watch this video to see pedalers compete for sLEDgehammer victory at the 2016 Democratic National Convention!

The elements of a sLEDgehammer:

• An efficient bicycle generator, such as the Generator Pro.
• The sLEDgehammer circuit, which comes complete in a strain-reliefed enclosure with an Ultra Capacitor and all power cables.
• 5 colored LED panels standing to a height of 11 feet tall.
• Halogen lights at the top to win the game.
• A wide base untippable tripod stand.
• User manual Here.

The Bike: Any of our hub generators will do. But more than our other activities, pedalers on a sLEDgehammer tend to use their whole body to try to beat the game. You may benefit from the additional stabilization of your generator. The Electric Fender Blender Pro, with its 3′ wide stance, is particularly well-suited to this application.

The Circuit: The sLEDgehammer circuit is the brains of the operation, calculating watts as you pedal. The sLEDgehammer comes in an enclosed, strain-relieved circuit capable of handling 1500-Watt surges in power. Depending on how many LEDs you connect, you may need all that power handling. People will try to break this machine. The sLEDgehammer circuit runs cool, calm and collected even when your participants pedal their hardest.

The sLEDgehammer runs on an Arduino Pedal Power microcomputer, using the open-source Arduino platform. What this means is that you can optimize or change certain parameters to improve the activity.

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Custom Installations:

The sLEDgehammer can be installed in several ways. Our favorite method is doing large custom installs like the ones shown on this page. They can either be done for a single event or on a semi-permanent basis. Custom installations use the same components: bike, lights, and circuit; and can be tailored to your event, activity, or facility. We work with you to design and implement the sLEDgehammer. We then provide either full installation and crew at your location or help and guidance for your crew prior to the event.

Recommendations for output devices, i.e. Light:

Please see above about “rules of the game”. There are two lighting segments of a sLEDgehammer — the Challenge Phase and the Reward Sequence. To make the Challenge Phase truly challenging, you need to connect at least 200 Watts of lighting, perhaps as much as 500 for the fittest riders.  The most impressive way to achieve this and the best option for a large space is to use LEDs for both the challenge phase and the Reward Sequence. This makes the Challenge Phase visible to much larger groups of people, which increases the crowd interaction. A lower-cost substitution is to use incandescent bulbs for the Challenge Phase, which has the benefit of highlighting the comparative energy efficiency of newer lighting technologies. With incandescents, you can make the Challenge Phase truly challenging. Incandescents will cost less* because you need far fewer of them to achieve the Wattage goals of the Challenge Phase. (* That’s also the reason they are worse for the environment.)

Costs:

11 Foot Tall Tower, Tripod Stand, and Circuit: $3,600.00

Assembled dimensions:  

The Generator Pro is 56″ long, 39″ tall, 31″ wide.

Rentable: Yes! Find out more.

Custom Installation: Contact us for options and pricing.

Build Time: Made to order. Please give us 4 weeks to build the sLEDgehammer, 6 weeks for a Dual sLEDgehammer and 2 weeks for the sLEDgehammer circuitry only.

Junk Raft.

The name alone arouses curiosity. A Junk is a type of Chinese sailing vessel that dates back to the Han Dynasty. And they were used for extensive ocean voyages.

But what is a Junk Raft? In the case of eco-mariners Dr. Marcus Eriksen and Joel Paschal, The Junk Raft is an ocean vessel crafted from junk plastic bottles, a Cessna 310 airplane fueselage and various other ‘junk’ materials.

The Junk Raft recently sailed from California to Hawaii to protest the growing pile of trash in our oceans. These plastics end up in the bellies of Albatrosses – things that really shouldn’t be floating out there, like lighters and toys. They don’t break down, not in the albatrosses and not in the ocean itself.

And it’s that very durability of plastic that has made the Junk Raft’s courageous voyage possible. Marcus and Joel literally netted up 15000 bottles from the waste stream of Los Angeles, forming two pontoons that floated them all the way to Hawaii. And what a journey it was.

Now Marcus and Anna Cummins, another plastics crusader, are teaming up, in more ways than one, and hitting the road, biking from Vancouver to Baja on the Junk Ride. To help them tell their story, we created Bike Speak.

Marcus and Anna wanted a small, self-contained thing they could carry with them on their tour, that would allow them to host cruiser rides, and do pedal powered slideshows and presentations at schools and parks. At the same time it had to pack enough punch to address a reasonable size crowd both indoors and out. They already had a Fender Blender X, so they we made an Xtracycle-compatible cabinet and a generator attachment that can be used with the Fender Blender base, without requiring tools to switch back and forth to smoothie mode.

With the human power module, a volunteer can pedal the system to run the amplification while Marcus and Anna give their talk. And with the Fender Blender bike blender system, they can serve up fresh smoothies to the crowd after the talk while enjoying great sounding music pumped out by the system’s internal rechargeable NiMH battery, good for an estimated 14 hours of light and music.

With each custom Soul Cycle that comes out of Rock The Bike, we try to push the envelope a little further. A few of us had been sketching hinged cabinets with two modes: stereo for cruising, and unidirectional for public address. Hence the flip-up action. We followed the snapdeck aesthetic, following the curves at the head and tail. The curve at the tail is functional. It matches the Fender Blender base. We used an ultra efficient amplifier for amplification and four Pro Audio full-range speakers. These speakers are small and extremely lightweight with alloy housings and neodymium magnets, weighing only 1 lb each! A crossover protects the tweeters. The entire finished cabinet, with speakers, amplifier, battery, mixer, voltage regulation system, microphone, and integrated lighting weighs in at a only 12 lbs! By far our lightest Soul Cycle to date.

A two-channel mixer is built into the controls. This stereo mixer will enable Marcus and Anna to play background music from their laptop’s slideshow program, while speaking through a lightweight microphone we provided.

We came up with a custom voltage regulation circuit to protect the internal battery, mixer, and amp from the motor. The circuit also taps a little power to trickle charge the battery. We also added a separate noise suppression circuit to mute static from the generator.

When the cabinet is flipped up, the user has access to a small “cubby” door. Inside the door is a small storage compartment where the microphone, cords, and handlebar mount can be stored when not in use.

The handlebar mount will accommodate an iPod or other mp3 player and features a battery fuel/voltage gauge. This gauge will tell the user the current charge state of the battery while also giving the human power pedalers an indication of how their pedal power is affecting the system.

Be sure to check the Junk Ride schedule for news about Marcus and Anna’s latest educational adventure and the Bike Speak system. During the Spring and Summer of 2009 Marcus and Anna will be touring the West coast. SF-Cruisers can expect a Junk Ride social ride with Anna and Marcus when they come through San Francisco. Like the Junk Raft’s epic sail to Hawaii, the Junk Ride mission is not easy. At last check Marcus was mentioning that he intended to tow a raft so that the pair could ford rivers. Rock on! Send them fanmail on their blog, and please stay tuned for more on that social ride.