http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2008/05/16/f-health-vitamin-d.html

here is the optical encoder post:

http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/pmitros/encoder/

Other articles on electric bikes by Gizmag; ErockIT, Elmoto, Mosquito.

While a great looking bike, the Grace basic model is about ten grand Canadian ($8700 USD).. which is about double what something like this should cost.

Currently their exists many companies that make 3D printers, but they are expensive, and not worth the space to mention. Luckily the open design community has been hard at work making open source 3D printers that cost less then $1000 USD to build, and are very cheap to operate.

My favorite is the repRap project. This is a 3D printer that can make a copy of its self. Of course the stepper motors and circuits are not able to be made. As well, you need to buy metal screws, bolts, and treaded post. These are all reasonably easy to find, but the ideal is the ability to make its self completely; when this happens we can send one to mars and it will copy its self, and then start building our cities for us to move into!

I’m considering making a makerbot. This looks a little less expensive, and from it I could make the parts for a reprap. The reprap people have also begun a project for a simpler printer for the purpose of making the parts for the full reprap called repStrap.

Finally there is the fab@home project. This was actually the first one I heard of, and seems well documented. I’ll need to compare all the projects and see which suits us best here.

In a article with Lawrence Lessig about copyfight there is mention of Architecture for Humanity and how they are building a framework for open source design collaboration through the Developing Nations license.
***
Sites to check
open+pario

free hardware design definition which goes on to say; “Free Design Practice
Designs are owned by the people who create them. Ownership is protected by copyright law only. The intention is to make designs as widely available as possible.
There is every incentive to build on older designs, to collaborate with as wide a spread of people as possible, and to make the designs widely known. NGOs in developing countries are not locked out, but encouraged to reuse designs.
Design software is free software, so that anyone who wishes to can participate.
Designs are driven by the wishes of their creators. The end goal can be whatever they wish.
Users of the end product can not only know how it works, but are encouraged to create improvements or modify it for their own purposes.”

There is a group called the Open Design Alliance. They seem to have what I am looking for, a series of standardized programs and formats to use in an open design project. But it costs $250 USD to join, and that is too high for me. I sent them the message below;

hi, I’m a scientist in a Mexican research lab working on renewable energy. I’d like to make all my designs open, and am looking for a platform to work under. Currently the majority of my designs are in Sketchup (I work on a mac, and linux), where for the electronics we are using mainly the Arduino microcontroller and C++. I was looking at your group, but the price to join is out of my range; our lab has very little funding, and ideally I would like the designs to be externally hosted/supported to not run into problems with the center’s I.P. patent office (if it is produced internally they will want control, but if we are part of an external project, then there is no problem.) I’m writing to ask for advice about how to start. Thank you.

From the Peer to Peer foundation

Product hacking

Open Innovations Project

Jaldi Battery Charger

A list of projects that currently exist.

which has these projects related to renewable energy;

absorberroof

Canuckle

Concentrated Solar Power Open Source Initiative, doesn’t seem to have anything posted yet.

Global Village Construction Set, to make tools for open design community construction; looks to be all proposals so far.

To make a roof that is a solar collector at SolaRoof, again they don’t have any prototype made.

An open source weather monitor at wxmonitor.

Check ‘Open Design organizations’ on wikipedia’s Open Design entry.

From what I can tell, to make an open design project you just need to host the project with the appropiate licence attached. I found a site called open+pario that has an install of Redmine installed, and is set up for people to install their own open design projects. It is by Oregon state university, so I’m not sure if I should be using it. I’m considering paying to host my own version of the softwore.

I have started a project in open+pario called Calenton de agua domestico solar. I went through the Creative commons I have the following license;

Calenton de agua domestico solar by Rodger Evans is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Mexico License.

Another software for hosting projects could be Open Goo. Hopefully today I’ll look into that.

Tambien tengo el pagena de el proyecto hecho. Puedas encontrarla aqui.

Calenton de agua domestico solar by Rodger Evans is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Mexico License.

Corte de las aspas son aqui:
making pvc wind turbine blades

Este pagina tiene todo el proceso para usted; Pasar a todo la grupo!! Leer Todo!!
DIY_Wind_Turbine

furling
furling protect your diy wind turbine

brief outline on DIY DC motor turbine
diy-wind-turbine-dc-motor-generator

http://www-spof.gsfc.nasa.gov/stargaze/Secliptc.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_path

http://www.dur.ac.uk/john.lucey/users/solar_year.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_tracker

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_time

http://www.usc.edu/dept/architecture/mbs/tools/vrsolar/Help/solar_concepts.html

http://www.redrok.com/main.htm

http://www.practicalsolar.com/technology.html

http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/eclip.html

http://www.rossen.ch/solar/miniheliostatfaq.html

http://www.barli.org/solar-storage.html

http://www.heliotrack.com/Products.html

http://www.rossen.ch/solar/

http://www.solbot.at/

http://www.inspira.es/newsroom/981130.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecliptic

http://www.solardiy.info/?p=50

http://www.builditsolar.com/Projects/Concentrating/concentrating.htm

http://www.aquaflector.com/technology.html

http://www.redrok.com/analemma.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_daylighting

Pedal Power plans has bike generator plans on line.

A booring video showing a mechanical bike blender here

I would rather do an electrical blender; it makes the device more useful for other application in the end. Ideally, making a sistem similar to the generator for a wind turbine, but on a bike wheel. This can also lead to electric engine for a bike.

So the choices are:

wheel turns mechanical connection to blender
wheel turns generator
wheel is the generator (we need to construct an alternator)

Información abajo…

Sites:

Hugh Piggott’s Homepage, Scoraig Wind Electric

OtherPower.com; http://otherpower.com/The Cutting Edge of Low Technology (a great slogan!)

Main other sources; Instructibles How I built an electricity producing wind turbine, DIY 1000 watt wind turbine (with more in depth images at green trust.org), and 7 Foot Axial Flux Wind Turbine.

To stop over speed protuction of a 6.8 ft diameter system a 6 inch furling was used

Parts:
{24 Magnets
9 copper rolls}
or DC motor. The DC motor is simplier because it takes care of the generator and axle bearings in one shot; but it is not 3-phase and thus not as efficient.

The blades here; they should be 1/5 in diameter of the length.

Electrical charge control circuit (for the DC motor)

cambined with solar panels