Thanks to the 350.org Bay Area and System Change Not Climate Change organizers, volunteers, and attendeeds, and Rock The Bike crewmembers who came together for the People’s Climate Rally this past September 21 on the shores of Lake Merritt in Oakland. A major highlight of the event was Boots Riley’s spoken word and song during the peak of the event when at least 2500 people were in attendance. Skip ahead to 5:15 to hear the poem (warning, language!) Check out the awesome dance moves of the pedaler on the Tree during the song Ghetto Blaster (at 3:12). It’s inspiring to hear an activist talk about people power while using a people-powered PA system.

In this second video, Rock The Bike’s Fossil Fool induces an outage in order to reinforce the message of people power:

It was our largest audience size to date by more than double,  the previous being the 2013 San Francisco Bicycle Music Festival in Golden Gate Park at about 1000.

The crowd size meant lots of new information to take in about live sound.

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We are offering a free upgrade to anyone whose Fender Blender Pro seatpost looks like the one on the left and is experiencing seat slippage:

Old seatpost on left doesn’t hold angles well.

The issue is that the older style, sold in 2012 and 2013, can lose the knurling that holds the seat angle you set. Once it has slipped a couple times, the problem gets worse. Even if you tighten its bolt with good torque, your seat may slip back and up, looking like this:

The seat should be flat, not pointing up like this.

The new seatpost has better clamping force and more pronounced ridges that hold angles better. Check it out:

The new seatpost (on right) has better grip on angles.

To take advantage of this offer, call us at 888-354-BIKE (2453) or email us through the contact page.

From our vantage point the events world seems to be ever growing, and out of passion for spreading our bike message and in the interest of providing the best gear we can to our customers, we continue to test our activities with larger crowds. In this post we’ll share some of what we’ve learned about bringing Bike Blending and Pedal Powered music to larger events.

When we work at this scale we now go through a complete process that includes applying for a temporary health permit (ideally 2-3 weeks ahead of time to avoid late fees). The Health Permit process will vary in different cities, but in Oakland, it involves bringing a 3-bin wash station, a hot water insulated jug, enough cooler space to separate servable ice (ice that goes in smoothies) from the ice used to keep other ingredients cold. The enclosed tent shown above is also required. It also helps draw attention and support the beautiful hand-sewn sign.

Above: we set up our smoothie booth at the Maker Faire in San Mateo. Our crew of 3 served about 400 smoothies in 7 hours. Above: Carolina gives the ‘countdown’ to a teenager, encouraging him to crank out 5 more seconds of high energy pedaling.

Across the Bay, our crew of 4 entertained thousands of runners at the finish line of the SF Half Marathon, with a 5-bike, 4-speaker sound system.

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Ryan Carpenter gets the Sharks pedaling healthy smoothies as he pitches his Pedal Powered smoothie carts on National TV.

Well said!

Having produced large smoothie booths at events ourselves, we know that Bike Blending doesn’t hold you back from quenching the thirst of a crowd. You just need to have an efficient system, a good team, and plenty of spare pitchers. Although Ryan didn’t lure the Sharks into making an investment, he successfully defended Pedal Power!

Wonder what those smoothies taste like? Visit Moberi in Portland OR. Or use our map to find a Fender Blender in daily use closer to you.

With viewcounts racking up, Chobani’s Team USA Experience is officially going viral. 30 everyday athletes are introduced into a new environment and invited to pedal to power an incredible spin class that unfolds before them with live music, interactive LED art, and a huge hillside projection.  Rock The Bike produced the Pedal Power Spin Class system and the interactive lighting: per-bike LED strips that  responded to individual pedaling effort, and a 16′ LED mandala. The 4-speaker sound system was the same we use at our Pedal Powered DJ events and medium-sized concerts. You can see the all important Pedalometer (the light tube that shows pedalers how hard to pedal) and two of our generators: the Generator Pro and the Generator Wheel and stand combo.

Here’s a Behind-the-Scenes look that shows our experience of producing the Spin Class. You can follow the captions and dialogue to see how we recognized and overcame one of our main technical challenges: too much power. Read More

We’re stoked to be joining the Open-Source movement with our Arbduino Pedal Power computer.  The Arbduino and its source code gives you the tools you need to develop your own safe, interesting, motivating, and dependable Pedal Power activities.

We have used the Arbduino for over 5 years in our own Pedal Power Utility Boxes. These rugged Pedal Power hubs contain ultracapacitors, pure sine wave inverters, LED Pedalometers, and clearly labeled input / output jacks. If you can afford a Pedal Power Utility Box, we highly recommend them. They are tried and tested, and will save you time, so you can focus on producing your event. You won’t have to mess with wiring and circuitry or waft solder fumes.

But if our Utility Boxes are out of your budget, or if you’re going for something slightly different from what we offer, or if you just like doing projects like this, we now offer the key component as a standalone offering: the Brain.

With the Arbduino you’ll not only get a circuit board, you’ll get access to the newly open source code. The code will show you how to monitor system conditions (voltage and wattage), turn on and off devices and lights. This means you can connect or disconnect pedalers to a voltage sink, and you can turn on and off a load. Please seen the video in the upper right to see a real live example.

Our Open Source approach:

Open hardware? Not yet. We have not chosen to publish our parts list yet. However, the parts list and schematic will come with an Arbduino. You can get access to our parts list by purchasing an Arbduino in built or kit form. We do not plan to publish the schematic or board layout files of the Arbduino.

Open Source? Yes. As promised, we have published the code for our Arbduino, which is what we use to run our Pedal Power Utility Box. We also use the Arbduino in other products: the sLEDgehammer, the 48-Volt Utility Box with MegaDivida, and other custom projects. The only code we have published is for the most common of our Utility Boxes: the AC Power Pedal Power Utility Box.

Free? No. It has taken 7 years of development to get to the point of offering a reliable platform for Pedal Power developers. We have supported this process through the sale of our Pedal Power Utility Boxes and related gear (generators, Pedalometers, Etc.).  We accept donations from those who appreciate the value of our code to their project, and we charge money for the Arbduino. Prices below. We also do custom coding and consulting for Pedal Power projects at rates posted below.

Prices:

– 265 as shown fully soldered.
– 150 in kit form. You solder. Takes about 30-60 minutes.
– 95 for relay & LED kit — allows you to protect your system and turn up to 2 devices on and off AND allows you to use our Pedalometer system (LED light sequence that tells pedalers how hard to pedal) or make your own Pedalometer, just like our Pedal Power Utility Boxes.
– Consulting and custom coding: $120 / hour. Nonprofit and education discount: 25% or  $90/hour.

Demolding wave guides. Each of the slots is at a slightly different angle, allowing the 6 tweeters to reach different parts of the crowd.  Photo: Mike Cobb.

1/9/15 Update! The Russian Dolls / BRX system is in use! Check out the photos and blog post about the 9/21/14 People’s Climate Rally in Oakland.

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It’s always exciting when you move from the brainstorming and drawing phases of a custom project into the hands-on, smelly, goopy, dusty build phase. That’s happening right now for a project that could hopefully have a big impact on how we do our largest Pedal Powered concerts. It doesn’t have a concise name at the moment, so I’ll call it the 3000-person Pedal Powered Concert System that Fits into a Briefcase. Another name I’m considering is “America’s Concert” in honor of the AC72 America’s Cup boats that partially inspired it. It’s also inspired by Fukishima & Global Warming, Bike Party, James Bond, and Rube Goldberg.

It’s a new way to reduce the volume and weight of our 12-speaker concert PA system, using ultralight materials and a stacking / nesting / Russian Dolls redesign of the loudspeaker cabinets.

Loudspeakers contain lots of air. Air is what allows them to reproduce low frequencies like bass notes and the beat of dance music.  But it means that they take up lots of space.

Pamela Parker’s pedalboard at the Peace Day SF rally. Photo: Nio.

OK, so you have a device or set of devices in mind (like a laptop and projector) and you want to know whether it’s possible to power them with people on bike generators. Here are the steps to figure it out:

First, you need to measure the power consumption of the device you want to power. There are two ways to do this. You can read the writing on the product OR you can actually measure it using a device like the Kill A Watt. The second way is better for two reasons: It’s more educational and fun, and some product ratings are approximate. Some products use different amounts of power in different settings. For example, a loudspeaker will use way less power than its rating if you’re listening to music at moderate levels. So get yourself a Kill A Watt and get scientific!

Above: A Kill A Watt in use. Connect it to the wall, then connect your device(s) to it, and read the Wattage number. Careful to switch to Watt mode. The device may default to showing Volts. If the reading is very close to 110, then you are probably reading Volts (USA AC power voltage is 110). Look carefully and the Watt mode will have the units “Watt” next to the reading.

Next: Visualize what types of pedalers you are expecting at your event.  The Wattage you can expect per person will change depending on what types of people are pedaling! This is common sense: a competitive cyclist can generate more power than a 3rd grader. Read More

What’s unique about the speaker is that it’s the only Pro Sound loudspeaker that can take DC power, i.e. bike power, as an input. Most Pro Sound loudspeakers require AC power. For the Pedal Power world this means you have to use an inverter to turn DC power into AC. But it only gets turned back into DC inside the speaker. Those two conversions aren’t needed with our system, so it runs considerably louder for the same amount of pedaling. Very impressive!

When we heard 350.org was gathering 500 climate justice activists in Istanbul for the Global Power Shift conference in June, we offered to loan them our latest and simplest yet Pedal Power system, “One Bike / One Speaker” .  Since several of the organizers were coming from the Bay Area, we reduced our smallest system to two boxes, both within airline regulations for checked baggage, bringing the shipping cost to 0. We met up with two of the organizers to hand off the two boxes, one at a BART station and one at our shop. 350.org would have to supply a bike in Istanbul and swap the rear wheel for the lightweight generator wheel we provided. We supplied detailed setup info to ensure the system would get good use.  Next: wait for update. 

Update from Kevin a few days into GPS:  “Hey! Just saying it’s rocking. We did a 500 person plenary outside which was great, and its become a staple for our daily announcements. Next up, the Open Mic…”

The photos show that this One Bike system was able to amplify music and speech for the entire conference. 

June 22nd marked the 7th and largest San Francisco Bicycle Music Festival. Please click “more” to see an album of photos from BMF. Many thanks to photographer Volker Neumann.

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We co-produce and Pedal Power this annual community-powered music festival which always falls on the Saturday closest to the Solstice. This year, our 7th, is going to be our best ever. Please say you’ll join us 🙂

Check out this amazing video from last year’s event:

After a recent Bicycle Music Festival volunteer meeting one of our best cargo bikes, a Mundo 500, was stolen. It was locked to itself. This electric cargo bike was heavy, immobilized and impossible to push. The thieves must have had to lift it into a truck. I realized it the next morning and felt dejected and ashamed.

I gathered some resolve to ask around for my bike. I remembered my friend Kipchoge’s story of recovering his stolen laptop by spending 3 days lurking in the underworld of San Francisco’s seediest Tenderloin and Mission neighborhoods. When he finally found himself face to face with the man who’d stolen it, in the hallway of a dingy hotel, the man admitted he hadn’t yet wiped the hard drive or sold it yet because he liked a video on the desktop. The video showed Kipchoge and his friends riding into the woods on Xtracycles carrying chainsaws, in order to do trail maintenance.

I printed out the photo below and headed out to talk to people in the nooks and crannies under highway overpasses and in the Plaza at Civic Center.

I also reached out to crewmembers and friends on facebook for help. I posted it everywhere, in all the group pages for which I was a member. RTB’s Nio connected me with Jenny Oh, who has built a bike theft recovery network that is remarkably effective at getting stolen bikes back to their owners. She reposted my photo and shared her tips for getting bikes back. Following the advice I filed an online Police Report.

I found that friends and even the people on the street were overwhelmingly sympathetic with my cause.  Alas, they weren’t giving me any leads. Read More

When I heard Bill McKibben was going to be in San Francisco to announce a recent success in Supervisor Avalos’s initiative for San Francisco to divest from Oil giants, I jumped at the chance to Pedal Power the speech. Avalos’ office put me in touch with the organizers who were excited to make it happen. 

On the day of the rally, Nio and I transported two of our Modified JBL Loudspeakers and towed one electric Fender Blender Pro to use as the generator. We used our newest Pedal Powered Stage system for small events, called One Bike / One Speaker, in which the ultracapacitor (storage tank) and protection circuitry are inside one of the speakers. There’s no red customized toolbox as there usually has been in Rock The Bike’s Pedal Power setups. This makes it fast to set up, and easier to transport.

The first thing Bill did when taking the stage was fist-bump the pedaler. His message on the mic is very inclusive and echoes previous giants of social movements: “We may not beat this challenge, but I so look forward to fighting alongside all of you.

I love that in the AP’s entire article about divestment, the only mention of bicycling is in the lead photo. Rock The Bike!

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This morning on Bike To Work Day I was racing to drop off a Bike Blender to UCSF for their Health Fair. In classic fashion I’d double-booked the drop off with a really important meeting, the ISCOTT commission meeting where Bicycle Music Festival was to present our Nighttime street closure plan. I didn’t check the bike routes and ended up climbing this WALL of a hill. Switchbacking too tight I flipped the blender and pushed it up the second half. Happy Bike To Work Day!

Drop complete, ready to sprint to ISCOTT. Only problem is I have no lock, and they’re NOT going to let me bring it in.  Read More