I've seen these guys (Wintergatan) live a couple of times, though it was before he built this thing... there's something pleasant but infuriatingly twee about seeing them crank these kinds of machines live. Still, an amazing device, regardless of how much of the actual output is aided by video editing.

I saw this at TIFF last year. So damn fun. It kind of felt like an insane amalgam of Crank, Hotline Miami, Mirror's Edge, and John Woo. It's almost certainly not for everyone (there were several walkouts when I saw it), but if you can go with its special brand of insanity, it's pretty great. I can't wait to see it again.

I absolutely don't understand what benefit this would be. Seems soooo time consuming and tedious. I assume there is a simple kitchen hand crank or electric machine that would do this as well if not better. Is it just the romance of it all, as i do get that?

Nice idea, although LEDs have an extremely low power draw. Not sure if the gravity plus gearing would generate enough watts for the Pi.

USB is 5 volts at usually under 1 amp (.5 amps for USB 2 and .9 for USB 3). So I think that suggests about a 2.5-5 watt draw for USB, although I could be wrong -- long time since I took any EE classes. With very quick googling, I'm not getting a concrete number on the wattage of the (single?) LED in the Gravity Light, but one result suggested in the milliWatt range (60-80mW). Same post says that a cheap hand crank generates about 1 watt with vigorous cranking that will wear out your arm/hand quickly.

So, I'm thinking that 2.5-5 watts would require a much more heavy-duty and less portable gravity-fed system. Very much doable (bicycle pedaling can generate 50 watts fairly easily), but probably only with more bulk than what can power LED lighting.

Is the right track pad really 1 to 1? I noticed settings for sensitivity and track ball setting in the video. I would think to turn off track ball and crank up the sensitivity for FPS...

But if the guy doesn't even know he's actually forcing her to drink tea, how much responsibility can the guy be reasonably expected to take on? She says yes, perhaps even emphatically so and then gives no indication that she has changed her mind all throughout the act and only changes her mind the morning after.
According to this video he did everything he should have and yet he may still wind up being accused of forcing tea on someone.
As for the mentally disturbed, there are many people with mental conditions that can seem perfectly normal on the outside. You have to crank the handle a good number of times before the song ends and the Jack pops out of the box.

A generation or two ago I doubt that poor Guatemalans could get fat, regardless of culture, because they simply didn't have access to the surplus energy required. This surplus energy shows up in nitrate fertilizers used for agriculture, powered tools of all sorts, and manufactured goods, like used bicycles.

It comes, of course, from fossil fuels.

A bicycle may seem a simple and primitive device, but just try to build a bicycle chain in your home workshop and you will see that making safety bicycles is possible only in a modern industrial state. It's not surprising that the development of the safety bicycle only barely preceded that of the automobile and the airplane.

The bicimaquina raw material is discarded bicycles from richer people -- nothing wrong with that, it's good, frugal engineering. But it should be borne in mind when plotting the future that hardly used bicycles are not a renewable resource, and require energy and infrastructure to produce.

Bicycling does give one a good appreciation of the value of energy. For example, 125 Watts is a respectable output for a touring cyclist; keep that up for 8 solid hours, and you have one kilowatt-hour. One kW-hr is a day at hard labor. A typical household in the developed world uses the equivalent of the labor of three or four hard-laboring slaves every day.

Of course, those slaves aren't the most efficient. You'll notice that the machines shown all use a direct mechanical drive. They could generate electricity, but that would cost -- multiply a few 90% efficiencies together and pretty soon you're getting nothing done by leg power.

Bicycle drive does allow good power production from human beings, and multi-geared bicycles are adaptable to people of differing strength. Not as much fun as flipping a switch, but easier than turning a crank.

It's plain that cheap fossil fuels won't last forever, indeed they may not last for much longer, and probably will never be available to much of the world at the same level as we currently enjoy in the US or Australia. Will we find ourselves scouring garages and cellars for disused bicycles?

Funny how we all say that this kind of behavior is going too far and that it's creating a toxic atmosphere on the Internet.
But then give these douchenozzles a national audience, and even have them read by the people they are insulting, pretty much guarantying that they will continue and maybe even crank it up a notch. Mixed messages anyone?

Looks like the movie Crank 2 should've been.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

*blocked darn it - made me crank up the VPN.

I have a friend who worked at Arby's -- it's amazing how far spite and crank will get you at that company.

I prefer her original material, to be honest.

I got to see one of her performances last year. I was incredibly hyped over it, and ended up being -so- disappointed. It was a very small venue, and yet the volume was cranked up so high that it was physically painful. Second loudest concert I've ever seen, and utterly distracting. I could barely recognize the songs, and could understand none of the words. Might as well have gone to the airport and stood beside jets winding up for takeoff.

I wonder how this might work on a whole crop of apples.
I only ask because the hand crank press I use now is labor intensive and boring, this looks like tons more fun!

OK, I had to re-watch because of your stance here, because I didn't hear anyone laughing....and I'm glad to say I think you're wrong this time.
No one (that I could hear) laughed, and if you crank it up at 10-11 seconds you CAN hear someone ask "are you alright?". Also, he obviously didn't need help, he got up quickly and seemed uninjured (beyond his pride). Had he lay there bleeding in his Slurpee, I would be with you, though.
I'm not saying it doesn't happen all too often (see above post), just not this time, as I see it.
Also, thinking about it, I'm guessing this is totally staged, otherwise why is it being filmed to start with?

He would have a better demonstration if he used a cordless drill in place of the crank handle. It would lose the wobbly-ness of the action