A fresh look at bicycle dynamos

A guy called Nick Zamora, from Florida, has created an open design called CydeKick.

By the looks of it, a ring of magnets is mounted on the centre of the wheel and coils are mounted on the frame.

An awful lot of power (in bicycle terms, standard dynamos are 3W) would be possible if the gap was narrow enough I suspect, but it is going to be tricky to control that gap. I hope he has got some electronics that can handle vastly varying outputs.

If it is iron-less, it would avoid the (slightly) annoying cogging that you get with standard hub dynamos. If it has iron, output will be higher, but there is a risk the moving part will try to stick to the stationary part if things are not stiff enough.

And will random iron stuff jump up onto the magnets?

Slightly naughtily, he describes his design as ‘zero-friction’ – although maybe someone is splitting hairs between friction and drag?

With it comes a USB phone charger circuit, and an LED headlight by the looks of things.

Good luck to Nick of Spinetics, the company he has started, which has a Kickstarter campaign. And please make it a non-dazzle headlamp.