STRASBOURG “Le paradiet”

One more summer the Ecotopia Biketour is again on route. On the 28th of June the five of us met in a field at the end of a muddy road, to me it felt like a night like any other one,we were just some travellers gathering around the food and sharing stories. The next morning we moved to a little and cozy terrain called ‘Le parediet’, which was the official meeting point. Once there, people slowly started to arrive and things somehow started to get done: thanks to the materials and tools from our host and the people in Maison…

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Picking a circuit for the dynamo-powered USB port, part 2

Ecotopia Biketour 2017 is already under way and updates about how our first days of cycling went will follow soon. One thing that we want to achieve this year is not rely on the electrical sockets of our hosts anymore when it comes to charging the numerous electronic devices that people are bringing on the tour these days. One way to do that is to build a circuit that converts the power coming out of the dynamo of a bike to power that is needed to run a USB port. We have tried to find the best way to build…

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Collaborative map tool FacilMap & How we chose the region

Collaborative opensource map tool For the planning of the Biketour, we have an online tool, an interactive, editable map where we can all work together. Anybody who’s been organising this tour can add projects, nice places, interesting events and other relevant things. You can switch on and off marker types and routes you want to look at on the right side of the map. If you click on a marker or a line, it shows you more information like descriptions, contact-details and for routes the elevation profile. Because it’s openly published, this map is a non-editable version of the map. For the…

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Traffic

In this short film the Biketour cycles through Minsk in Belarus, where it is forbidden to ride your bike on the road! Mixed up with the different curiosities that crossed our way, such as a youth-brass-band on the beach or a bison in the polish forest.

Spring meeting 2017

Eleven of us (plus two dogs) met on the week-end from the 14th to the 16th of April in Freiburg, Germany, to work on the preparation of the upcoming Biketour. The venue was the public café of the housing cooperative SUSI. SUSI is several former military barracks that were bought by a collective using the Mietshäusersyndikat, and association that makes it easier to get a loan for buying houses collectively, while at the same time making sure that these houses can never enter the capitalist real estate market again. The complex is huge, with space for 285 people to live and…

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ACROBATICS

In this video the participants try the freakbikes of Radi Vidi Pats in Latvia. Different varieties of tallbikes or a tandem where you cycle face to face are pretty strange cycling-expieriences. Or other balance and body control challenges such as pushing another cyclist with the fully loaded trailer up a super steep hill. Or just turnig in circles.

Music by: AWOTT(the beaty one, awott.com/ ) and Trio EMM (the traditional one, facebook.com/TrioEmm/ )

Picking a circuit for the dynamo-powered USB port

On the Spring Meeting, we did some experiments with different types of dynamo-powered USB ports: Once with a high-dropout DC-DC convertor, once with a low-dropout DC-DC convertor, once with a Zener diode, once with a step-down convertor (an old one, I don’t know which model it is, it cost around 10 €) Once with a double 3300 µF capacitor for boost (as described here), once without Once with a silicon rectifier, once with one made of Schottky diodes We connected these regulators to a Shimano DH-3N30 hub dynamo, and connected a 10 Ω resistor that should simulate the charging device (500 mA at…

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Things out of trash and DIY stuff on my bike

The light When I cycle with luggage, I usually have a box on my rack that I can use for stuff that needs to stay dry but easy to access. I particularly use it for electronic devices, there is a small solar panel on it and it is connected to the dynamo charger (more about that below). On the box, there is also an old high-vis that I cut up and wrapped around it for more visibility in the night or in tunnels. On my rack, I have a back light that is powered by the dynamo, but when I pull…

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