Dirk Strothmann has already held a successful Kickstarter campaign for his Magnic Light bike lights, and he's back with another level of innovation. The Magnic Light iC will contain a microprocessor for a steady light beam, intelligent control of the energy and non-blinding light technology.
The Magnic Light was born one night while Dirk and friends were experimenting with magnets trying to devise a magnetic braking system for bicycles. The mechanisms use eddy currents and the idea that aluminum is conductive but not magnetic to make the bicycle dynamo possible. When the wheel spins magnets inside the generator create eddy currents that react with the magnetic fields in the wheel.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/dynamodirk/magnic-light-ic-intelligent-contactless-bicycle-dy
Electricity generated in this way creates power for the lights without batteries or cables. Most importantly for a cyclist the power is generated without friction on the wheels, so that the bike doesn't lose any efficiency. As a non-biker I can only assume this addresses the problem that Bart Simpson had when using the generator and riding his bike to school to search for comets.
This round of Kickstarter funding is meant to purchase production tooling for several of the new Magnic components, mainly plastic housing pieces. The generator is expected to work between speeds of 3 and 30 km/hour and use high quality LED lights that deliver 160 lumen per Watt. The other main improvement was a reconfiguration of the lenses so that oncoming traffic wouldn't be blinded by the bright LEDs.
Strothmann and his funding campaign have already met and exceeded their $40,000 goal, and the project feels heavily engineered. The Magnic Light itself is incredible, using eddy currents and simple concepts to create a high efficiency product. The possibility of transferring this technology to other energy generation methods or even human-powered battery charging is very exciting.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/dynamodirk/magnic-light-ic-intelligent-contactless-bicycle-dy