BioCHUD

Take the gear and sprocket assembly from a mountain bike, remove the cranks and shorten the chain until you can lay the thing down horizontally and fit it into a sturdy metal housing the size and shape of a cigar box. Instead of cranks, attach 2 mechanisms that function like the pull-start of a lawn mower so that pulling on either or both cords applies an amount of torque to the sprocket that varied according to what gear it was in. Attach a generator to the sprocket so the faster it turned the more power was generated. Attach the output of the generator to a battery so the electricity generated was used to charge the battery. Attach the output of the battery to a retractable power cord that would stick out of the side of the device. Choose the appropriate interchangeable adapter and attach it to the tip of the retractable power chord.

To use, set the gear to whatever is most comfortable for you, then grab the handles of the pull chords and manually start pulling them away from each other in a repetitive stretching motion. A gauge on the side displays how full the battery is. When the battery reaches the desired level, pull out the retractable power chord and plug it into whatever device you need to charge: cell phone, iPod, GPS, digital camera, etc., and the device will behave just like it does when you plug it into any other charger. Voila! You’ve just used the Biokinetic Charge Holding Universal Device (BioCHUD).

Now I know what you’re probably thinking at this point, and the answer is no, I wouldn’t be opposed to calling it something other than BioCHUD, I just came up with that name because it makes me laugh. That’s not the point though. The point is that I think this thing would be pretty damned useful. It would make an excellent emergency backup for times when the power is out, or you’re out camping in the wilderness, or you just happened to forget to charge your phone or camera or whatever. BioCHUD would provide a potentially limitless source of electricity so you would never have to be without power for your personal devices. Also, BioCHUD is the ultimate source of ‘green’ electricity. There are no by-products, harmful or otherwise, and not only is the source of the energy non-polluting, but it’s the only energy source who’s operation is actually GOOD for you. Conservationists, environmentalists, and physical fitness buffs could all be content in knowing that their daily morning exercises not only kept them physically fit, but also provided all the perfectly clean energy they needed to power their personal devices.

Ideally, the BioCHUD would integrate with another invention idea I had that’s kind of like a personal energy network so all your devices would intelligently share their power as if it all came from a single battery. If you then attached these personal energy networks into a sort of energy internet, then you could create a sort of digital energy based currency. Power could be routed to your personal network wirelessly if you needed it and you would be charged according to your personal energy deficit each month. If you worked out all the time and had an energy surplus, you’d get the value of the surplus credited to your account. Each supplier and/or consumer of energy would have a unique address on the network like IP addresses on the world wide web. Energy would be transfered to wherever it was needed like packets on the internet, and would be tagged with various information like IP packets as well. An adjustable tax system would apply a tax rate to energy suppliers based on how much it costs to offset the environmental impact that creating the energy had. Really dirty methods, either in their production or consumption, would be heavily taxed and very expensive, while totally clean sources like the BioCHUD would be the most valuable since it would have no tax applied to it.

The end result of the BioCHUD/energy internet combination would be to encourage exercise and conservation; while simultaneously providing potentially huge financial incentives to people who come up with innovative new sources of clean and renewable energy.

Now I’m well aware that the energy internet is, at the moment at least, science fiction. Nevertheless, it won’t be too long before we have the ability to implement it. The BioCHUD however, could probably be made into a working prototype right now by somebody tinkering in their garage. I’d buy one, if they were reasonably priced, and I think whoever sold them could make a killing.

So if there are any engineers out there who are in the know with regards to how efficient a BioCHUD would be, or could give rough estimates on how many pound/feet of force it would take to us a BioCHUD to charge a typical device for a given amount of time, feel free to chime in either here or on my blog at jneuhaus.wordpress.com