Exercise Bike Generator 2015 Simplifications

Six years ago, I modified a cheap "airdyne" exercise bike to adapt a car alternator. This proved to be difficult, and I struggled with various automatic circuits that didn't work well. Here I'm simplifying, to a manually operated energizing switch.

The problem is that a car alternator requires a battery to *start* generating power, but will drain the battery if left connected. So in a "batteryless" configuration, you need to temporarily switch the alternator between a small excitation battery and the load. See the original 2009 project here:

http://www.dansworkshop.com/exercise-bike-generator/