Steve Jackson Games - Site Navigation
Home General Info Follow Us Search Illuminator Store Forums What's New Other Games Ogre GURPS Munchkin Our Games: Home

Go Back   Steve Jackson Games Forums > Roleplaying > GURPS

Reply
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
Old 10-09-2016, 06:28 AM   #1
DingoSoulEater
 
Join Date: Sep 2016
Default [AtE] Hand-Held Power Generator / Hand Crank

Hi all!

First post; tried my google skills and couldn't find this brought up elsewhere, so I apologise if someone has enquired about this before.

I'm currently running a heavily Metro 2033 themed campaign, and while almost everything is covered quite well in AtE; there's one piece of technology I couldn't determined either the viability of - or how you would put it to use in the world.


For context; the campaign style is very much a cinematic, survival horror. Close calls, harsh time-constraints, and a perpetual struggle to survive. The sheer time outlay of sitting down to charge something you desperately need powered to escape, survive, or simply progress I think will be useful for this.

In Metro 2033; our main protagonist has a 'Universal Charger'. Insofar as I can find - it's a simple machine for converting muscle power to electrical power.

How would you implement this into a campaign as a piece of equipment? What limits would you put on it? Would those limits be relative to the user, or to time, or to both? How much would it weigh / cost? Would it require skills or calibration?

Any help on this would be wonderfully appreciated!

-Dingo.
DingoSoulEater is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 10-09-2016, 09:08 AM   #2
Purple Haze
 
Join Date: Jul 2006
Default Re: [AtE] Hand-Held Power Generator / Hand Crank

I have a hand-cranked LED flashlight+AM/FM radio. It will manage two or three minutes of use of one of its functions from one minute's cranking. It saved me once when I got caught in ten day blackout. But I still walked the mile up to the main street to sit in the library and charge my cell phone. One would have to be very desperate to crank out a significant amount of power.
Purple Haze is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 10-09-2016, 09:46 AM   #3
whswhs
 
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
Default Re: [AtE] Hand-Held Power Generator / Hand Crank

The book The Mechanics of Pre-industrial Technology has a table of power output for human muscular effort in various forms, including treadmills (horrid drudgery!). You could probably get a close estimate of power output from a suitably geared generator from that; generators aren't 100% efficient, of course, but their power losses in operation are small. I think that sustained human work output runs around 20 watts, but I would have to research that to verify.
__________________
Bill Stoddard

I don't think we're in Oz any more.
whswhs is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 10-09-2016, 10:24 AM   #4
tshiggins
 
tshiggins's Avatar
 
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Denver, Colorado
Default Re: [AtE] Hand-Held Power Generator / Hand Crank

Quote:
Originally Posted by whswhs View Post
The book The Mechanics of Pre-industrial Technology has a table of power output for human muscular effort in various forms, including treadmills (horrid drudgery!). You could probably get a close estimate of power output from a suitably geared generator from that; generators aren't 100% efficient, of course, but their power losses in operation are small. I think that sustained human work output runs around 20 watts, but I would have to research that to verify.
Pedal-powered generators actually get used a lot in poor nations in sub-Saharan Africa. I'd just use something like that:

http://pedalpowergenerator.com/
__________________
--
MXLP:9 [JD=1, DK=1, DM-M=1, M(FAW)=1, SS=2, Nym=1 (nose coffee), sj=1 (nose cocoa), Maz=1]
"Some days, I just don't know what to think." -Daryl Dixon.
tshiggins is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 10-09-2016, 10:55 AM   #5
johndallman
Night Watchman
 
Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: Cambridge, UK
Default Re: [AtE] Hand-Held Power Generator / Hand Crank

Quote:
Originally Posted by tshiggins View Post
Pedal-powered generators actually get used a lot in poor nations in sub-Saharan Africa.
Yup, you can get a lot more power out of a human with pedals than a hand-crank. Those pedalpower.com figures look optimistic, though. A trained cyclist can apparently sustain 400W of mechanical power, less conversion inefficiency.

I have a catalogue of espionage equipment produced by the Special Operations Executive during WWII, with a few generators, which are probably TL6. The hand-cranked one, which needs clamping to a rigid support, is good for 15-20W electrical power (We), the pedal one is good for 18-42We, depending on how hard you work, and one that adds onto a bicycle claims it's good for 18-60We. It seems to have a somewhat larger generator and exploits the bicycle's drivetrain.
johndallman is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 10-09-2016, 11:51 AM   #6
Varyon
 
Join Date: Jun 2013
Default Re: [AtE] Hand-Held Power Generator / Hand Crank

For my Vehicles conversion, I have muscle powered generators produce BL/60 kW, costing the character 1 FP every 15 minutes. That's probably appropriate for a pedal system; BL/75 may be more appropriate for a hand crank (80% of leg power). Weight depends on the TL of the design and its maximum output - TL 4 is 100 lb/kW, TL 5 is 50 lb/kW, TL 6 is 20 lb/kW, and TL 7+ is 10 lb/kW. Nominal cost is $5/lb, but expect that to be much higher in an AtE setting. I'll also note that the normal rule for increasing price by TL doesn't quite work out here, as a 1 kW TL 7 hand crank would cost $400 (x8) and weigh 10 lb, while a TL 4 one would cost $500 and weigh 100 lb. It might be better to price it by kW instead - $100 per kW ($0.10 per W) at TL 4 might work (making the 100 lb generator cost $100, and the 10 lb one cost $800).

If you need a hand crank that's fully usable by an ST 16 (BL 51.2) character, that calls for 680 W. A TL 4 design is $68 and 68 lb, while a TL 7 one (left over from before the End) is $544 and 6.8 lb. If an ST 10 character tries to use it, it'll work*, but will only produce around 267 W.


*This assumes the thing is designed to be able to shift gears or similar so that a weaker character can use it. You might be able to drop that part of the design to shave off some cost and weight, but I'd suggest against it.
Varyon is online now   Reply With Quote
Old 10-09-2016, 12:03 PM   #7
Bruno
 
Bruno's Avatar
 
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Canada
Default Re: [AtE] Hand-Held Power Generator / Hand Crank

You can put some dogs on a treadmill and as long as you stay there and keep them company like a nice person, they'll be happy to keep jogging. The bigger and leggier the dog, the more effective this is[1], but overall canines are well built for endurance. Dogs, donkeys, and horses have all been used for treadmill power for direct drive milling equipment when people don't want to - hooking them up to a generator is really just the TL 6 version of the same idea.

[1] running a dog on a powered treadmill to get them exercise is another equation - it works better with small dogs simply because you need big treadmills for big dogs :P
__________________
All about Size Modifier; Unified Hit Location Table
A Wiki for my F2F Group
A neglected GURPS blog
Bruno is offline   Reply With Quote
Reply

Tags
after the end, gadgeteering

Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Fnords are Off
[IMG] code is Off
HTML code is Off

Forum Jump


All times are GMT -6. The time now is 06:38 AM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.9
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.