Saddle up for the Tour de Firmware Lots of techies ride bicycles and it is not hard to see why: both pursuits involve the creation of heavily customised and finely-tuned machines coaxed to peak performance after arcane preparations and exhaustive effort, often at odd hours of the day or night. The overlap looks even more likely of late, because bikes now pack …
I was on a group ride last year when we got to a light going from yellow to red. We stopped. A driver on the side street (now with a green light) wouldn't budge, and waved us across. It took some seconds for us to make it clear that we were staying put before she would enter the intersection.
Sad.
How about magnesium?
One of my mates races a couple of old RG 500s the engines are almost pure magnesium, not difficult to pick up single handed so very light but a total bitch to weld unless you are a magician
(by my welding standards anyway) it is also prone to corrosion but I imagine some of the protective coatings available now would mitigate that.
Personally I have a thing about Titanium, if I could afford a titanium bike I would buy one in a heartbeat.
As for gears has anyone tried modernising the old Sturmey Archer system with an electronic changer, if you wanted to get really clever you could have the system 'cassetted' like GP bikes so that you simply pull out one set of ratios to be replaced with another to suit a given race route changing gear would need a relatively simple solenoid or possibly piezo system.
If it has not been done I claim the idea for bicycles as my intellectual property!
Where technology needs some real improvements though is on saddles, wearing a pair of gel filled shorts is not my thing and sitting for any time on a leather bound razor blade for any amount of time is not helpful for anyone hoping to add to the gene pool, my cycling nowadays is limited to casual and leisure trips so I use a gel cover on a slightly wider saddle but a few hours on that feels like a kick in the crutch by the time I get home.
Gel filled shorts? Urggh! The gel would migrate from the area of highest pressure anyway. A little padding is all that's required.
The answer for most people is to get fit. Once you can pedal hard all the time, you'll find you're putting very little weight on the saddle. If you need to freewheel, up to a traffic light, down a mountain, etc., then lift your bum off the saddle.
Mine's the one with the spare Selle Italia Flight in the pocket.
Take a look at the Shimano Nexus and Alfine range of hub gears available in 7 and 8 speed versions. They are aimed at commuter bikes however, their big selling point being the much lower maintenance and the possibility of using full chain guards to reduce chain maintenance. They introduced an electronic shifting model last year. There are also 8 speed Sunrace Sturmey Archer hubs these days.
Modernising the old Sturmey Archer? Shimano have done it.
Their Alfine 8 and Alfine 11 internally geared hubs have Di2 variants. There are even production bikes available to purchase with the system already fitted: http://www.genesisbikes.co.uk/bikes/adventure/urban-cross/day-one-alfine-di2
If you think the stem cap holds your forks on, you're gonna have a bad time.
The stemp cap and bolt are there to preload the headset bearings. The two bolts either side of your stem attached to the fork steerer is what keeps the forks from dropping out completely.
Older style fork/steerer combos use a bolt in the same position as newer a-head arrangements to perform the necessary "link the bars to the forks" function, which is the source of confusion for some folk of a certain age.
Electronic gearing a la Di2 or EPS is almost old-hat, these days. With Shimano having already trickled it down to the higher-end of the commuting market, it's practically affordable.
Where is the discussion of electronically controlled rear suspension for mountain bikes? That's the new 'hot' topic and bleeding edge of development.
Steve Roberts, an engineer who wanted to work from home (for a very broad definition of ``home'') built a series of three recumbent bicycles, culminating in BEHEMOTH (Big Electronic Human-Energized Machine ...Only Too Heavy). (The link is to a Youtube video showing a teaser.) For the gory details, see his specs page for all three bikes.
Since then, he's moved from over-gadgeted bikes to similarly-equiped boats, but that's another story.
...For reminding me that bicycles will remain largely in my memory since my hips have worn out. I have a couple of years of grinding my natural one till it's replaced.
Worst of all, you can't get hi-tech canes. The carbon fibre canes available now are merely cosmetic in nature, and not actually light at all. Yep, the zenith of walking cane development is wood. Sad really.
Back on topic, I didn't bother with the fancy shifting, I felt it was a lot of money and weight for albiet nice shifting cabability. That said, I have a fair bit of tech attached my old bikes, most of it customised because it didn't exist off the shelf in the day... Oh well.
Surprised (not much) how quickly this thread turned into a cyclists are w@nkers debate but anyway, back onto the topic of the article.
I ride every day and quite like the look of the USB plug adaptor. Obviously it'd take a bit of adaptation to get it working on most bikes but I wasn't quite prepared for the total:
The Plug: €160
Hub dynamo to power it: €190
Build a wheel onto the hub: lets say another €150 including parts (rim, spokes) and labour.
So a total of €500 so that you can charge your phone whilst out and about? I think not. Maybe just carry a spare battery charge thing, €20 all in.
Nuts.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
