Ever get out for a ride and your shifting failed because of a dead battery?
Worse yet, ever drive to the start of your ride and realize you left your battery at home on the charger?
Ever have to put in your Strava title that your GPS died?
I’ve done them all.
Early adopters will say that it’s easy enough to carry a spare battery or to switch batteries between components to regain function.
But that’s not good enough for me.
So, I’m in the process of launching a product (http://www.AGNCYInnovation.com) to solve this problem. We’re exploring a few technologies and ways to solve this problem - nothing is commercially ready yet.
Our goal is keep your batteries constantly ready for action with essentially no input from you. No plugging in chargers, no swapping or taking batteries off your bike. Just get on and go (like the good old days of mechanical shifting!).
At times this has been a difficult process - two steps forward and three steps back.
When the going has been tough, I’ve been motivated by the enthusiasm that my friends share because it solves one of their problems.
I’d love to hear your stories for my inspiration and motivation, your feature requests, and even why you think it’s a silly idea (so that I can solve for that too).
I’d also love if you could visit my very basic website at http://www.AGNCYInnovation.com to sign up for our mailing list. I won’t sell or spam, but it gives me insight into how many are interested in this product and a leg-up if and when we make it to kickstarter.
Also, if you want to be involved in the project, we’re always looking for cofounders, investors, and smart-people who can make things happen! Send me a message through the contact form and I’ll reach out.
I’d be interested in this; I’ve worked in comp. sci. R&D my whole adult career (40+ years now), so I’m inclined to support these kinds of efforts. My particular pain points are garmin bike computers, garmin vector pedals, Di2 shifting, various bluetooth headsets / earbuds (I still have a few pairs of wired earbuds around because I can never remember to keep the wireless ones charged). I’ve accumulated a large number of cables, connectors and adapters of all sorts that are around the house, but somehow the exact cable I need at the moment is rarely one I can find quickly. Wireless power / recharging that just works when I get back home (kind of like auto-upload of workouts to TrainingPeaks ) would be awesome.
SRAM fixed the problem, mostly, with removable batteries fully external to the system. Barring you lose a throwaway battery in your shifter versus the ones on the FD/RD. As you can stow a charged spare in your saddle bag or whatever.
Shimano went “hold my beer” and went 12 speed and half assed the situation, again.
Largely, I think you could probably charge on the go if you had some kind of solar stickers you put on the bike somewhere that integrated to the system.
Issue with wireless charging between rides is you’d still have to manage moving the bike to where the wireless charger is, at that point might as well just unplug a SRAM battery or plug in a Shimano one.
It would be easy someday if people ever trusted electronic braking like you have on EV cars. Maybe 50% of bike braking is electronic (and thus also anti lock) and the last 50% of lever grab is “true contact braking”. Then that power could power the shifting batteries. But good luck selling that to the safety hats (despite folks driving cars like this already daily).
So, I say solution is: electronic ABS bike brakes that charge the shift batteries. Maybe when I’m 70 years old it will be out. (ABS exists already on hydro disc brake e-bikes).
Minor point of terminology… It’s inductive or eddy current braking that can return energy…not electronic branking.
Electronic braking just means computer controlled (ie, the brake handle is a sensor rather than directly connected to the master cylinder) …electronic braking systems can control either hydraulic/friction systems or eddy current systems.
100% Eddy current braking systems for a bike might be prohibitively heavy since they would have to be sized for worse case maximum braking forces. However, a primarily friction based system that is supplemented by some eddy current for charging could be manageable. But, that’s a LOT of complexity for a bicycle in order to charge a couple of batteries.
Broadly speaking, I’m interested. As a tech lover, I have a whole shelf dedicated to charging with a giant USB octopus, and after every ride I have a ritual of taking every removable device off my bike to the appropriate charger. Or for the ones that aren’t removable, attaching them to their respective USB-C/micro-USB cables at reasonable intervals.
As for a solution, the devil, details. Having some kind of common charging bus on the bike introduces a wiring complexity that defeats some of the benefits of distributed, independent systems. If your solution means that every device can be independently charged, that’d be great. But I struggle to envision like something very lightweight thing that goes in between, say, a SRAM rear derailleur and the SRAM battery that could receive a wireless charge. For mechanical, electrical, and inductive field reasons.
Definitely interested. For me it’s more about reducing the amount of cables, power banks, chargers, foreign adaptors etc to have to take on multi-day bike packing trips, for the lights, phone, and GPS computer + watch (that’ll be 6 different connectors for me - micro USB, mini USB, USB-C, garmin watch, and 2 different light charger cables !).
What I’d like to know is how it differs and/or improves on the current (no pun intended) solution used by tourers etc, of a combination of
What power ‘losses’ when in use and ‘dormant’, for those who are racing (see how much people spend on wheels to save 3 Watts when racing).
Or are you using some form or ‘energy harvesting’ from vibration, or dynamic braking, both of which are essentially free).
(The TT, road and mtbs are all pure mechanical shifting btw ðŸ˜)
I’d be interested in it if it’s a wireless power bank that could charge everything. My thinking is it’d be about the size of a Snickers Bar and it can charge everything, including my Garmin, Shimano battery, etc. Is this what you mean?
I want to keep an open minded about it and not come from a “place of no”, but I’m not sure how you’d do this if the target battery doesn’t have wireless Qi or whatever built in though…
I’d be interested in it if it’s a wireless power bank that could charge everything. My thinking is it’d be about the size of a Snickers Bar and it can charge everything, including my Garmin, Shimano battery, etc. Is this what you mean?
I want to keep an open minded about it and not come from a “place of no”, but I’m not sure how you’d do this if the target battery doesn’t have wireless Qi or whatever built in though…
SRAM battery would need a charging coil + an RX Qi chip + external PCB components. in terms of weight it would be nothing, lets say 10grams extra. The issue is that the coil needs area…I cannot imagine a useful coil inside the small box of the SRAM battery.
I dont have Shimano system so I dont know how is the energy stored there.
In theory I do like the idea, but I’m wondering how practically it could work. We have bikes built with Campy EPS, SRAM eTap and Shimano Di2, plus Garmin computers. No idea how it would even be possible to get one platform to charge all of them