I have til Monday to come up with something if I want to propose an individual project. I will have around £100-£200 budget, and about 4-5 months total project time. Any ideas? I’m a fourth year electrical and mechanical masters student.

I was thinking about a wirelessly controlled dropper post, but that might be a little out of budget in terms of time and funds. Plus, uni tends to get a little shirty whenever home-made pressurised stuff is mentioned. Could use traditional springs instead, but if I’m honest it wouldn’t be that impressive a project as it exists already and the coding side would be stupendously simple. Made a robot wars style bot as part of a group project last year if that gives any idea of rough scope.

Any better ideas? Don’t have to be bike related, but preferably something cool/exciting as it helps with the motivation when I need to get an academic on-board/ pull out another 24hr shift next March.

Cheers

Automagic mech that senses cadence and chain tension then changes gear to maintain optimum cadence.

Sensing chain tension will be the hard bit – changing gear is moving the gear cable – see https://www.archercomponents.com/ or you could invent your own mechanism around a particular mech?

<edit>strain gauge in the freehub or pedals instead of directly measuring chain tension</edit>

I suspect any prototype you build would be a bit clunky but sounds like a fun project.

Adaptive suspension. First the rider would map the preferred damping (and ideally air pressure) settings for each section of the trail. The system would record these, then detect where on the trail you are (using distance, speed, and accelerometer data), then automatically adjust the suspension settings.

A braked bike trailer for carrying heavy loads? Maybe some sort of regenerative braking or dynamo hubs for generating power for off-grid if touring?

Oops, just re-read the OP, not cool or exiting 😛

Automagic mech that senses cadence and chain tension then changes gear to maintain optimum cadence.

What is optimum cadence?

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-jh-5TYAtJI[/video]

Urán won that Tour sprint on a singlespeed

Interview: Harry Tanfield

electricity adjusted damping? ie mechanical widget on the damping adjusters and electrickery bit on the bars. touch a button – cycle between modes ie peddaling, cruising, gnarly, rad etc

Cheers for suggestions so far. With the adaptive suspension ideas, would that not just ruin the predictability of the ride feel? If the suspension is constantly changing its characteristics to suit the terrain it believes it is on, it might actually make things more difficult I’d have thought..

Could of course look in to integrating a dynamo hub and supercapacitor storage on an ebike to extend range/provide a boost function 😆

Regenerative braking for ebikes?

Or even just for charging lights / Di2 batteries.

Might have to be secondary / additional braking as I doubt the charge rate of an 18650 would slow you down much.

If the suspension is constantly changing its characteristics to suit the terrain it believes it is on, it might actually make things more difficult I’d have thought..

The idea is that the rider sets it up for each section and the system just adjusts to the rider’s preferences, so there shouldn’t be any surprises. Was thinking more in terms of racing on circuits with big contrasts between different sections, smooth sprints and rough descents, for example, where setting it up for one section will always mean a compromise for another. Whether it would be worth the complexity is another question.

secret motor that can’t be detected

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbQu_IVUURA[/video]

Hahaha that bike lock is brilliant

Adaptive bike lights for bars, like cars have, shine toward steering direction.

I only say this, as I forgot my helmet on a night ride last week, and rode with a bar light only. It was shite.

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cn_Pi2GpBMs[/video]

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjDnDhJboRo[/video]

Go Pro mount for the handle bars that always points at the ame pitch so we can see how up or down hill the trail is. (the bike goes down hill the camera points up to keep the horizon at the same place in the frame)

Retro fit wireless mech’ controller. So you make a bar leaver and transmitter and then a receiver and actuator that operate the mech’. The system should be able to work 7 speed to 12 speed and any pull ratio, with a bit of programing Yes it’s been done before

Rider mounted accelerometer linked to smart phone or records to internal memory and then you down load later. I think rider mounted makes more sense than the silly fork mounted shred mate.

Or get involved in something useful
https://3duniverse.org/2014/06/13/1000-volunteers-making-free-prosthetic-limbs-for-those-who-need-them/
This is one of a number of similar organisations

Curses – the Germans have already done the auto gear change thing.

Some sort of fancy bike stand that you could raise and pivot the bike on with a remote/app (probably not much use though)? If you could add a mechanism that would turn the cranks (or at least rear wheel forwards) for you it would help a bit when indexing/truing/lubing

ABS hydraulic caliper using the rotor for sensing?

Electromagnetic SPD

Cycle lane/road margin surface surveyor/scanner