Hello guys and girls,

Long time no see. I hope you're all doing well and that some of you still remember me. Since my son was born 5 years ago (and my daughter 2 years later), I haven't really been able to enter any contests here, but I still check in from time to time and you'll see the occasional "Hello" from me in the chat room.

Anyway, I wanted to let you know I managed to win a design award for a bicycle brake design I did. I never would've been able to do this without all the things I learned here at photoshopcontest, so thank you so much.

You can see it on this page:
http://www.liteonaward.com/en/special_7.aspx

Unfortunately the web designers don't appear to have taken readability into consideration, but anyway, if you click on "BATTLE", you well see my design. If you click on the picture, you will see a bigger version of it (though not big enough, sadly). You can also click through all 3 presentation boards.

I've already won one of the Special Awards, but there's also a chance to win the popular vote, so if any of you thought it worthy of your vote, I really would appreciate if you took the time to do so. You can also win an eBook reader if you vote, not that that would sway you of course.

OK folks, thanks for your time and if you have any questions about the design, please feel free to ask.

Cheers,
Stu

Whow... looks awesome. Congrats

Cool stuff Stu! Congrats mate!

That is very clever. Hope you own some sort of patent. Lights and such are mandatory by law in NV after dark. Your idea is a huge step up.

The sooner they start making that invention of yours available for bicycles the better Irishstu - great idea!

Congratulations on the win, and nice to hear from you again.

PS, now sink your teeth into this problem,

what if the bicycle is not using the handbrakes that you had in your concept, but simply pushing the peddles back, like my trusty old iron steed is having. This uses the whole chain system to slow down and stop - how to generate energy from that to get the brake lights working....??

Congrats! Although as a mountain biker myself using hydraulic disk brakes, could you design something for that system?

more and more regular bikes are being made with disk brakes on so i would put that into the think tank.

Congrats again.

Hi Stu,
Very nice work! Nice to hear about your family and life.
All the best,
Patre

Great idea, design and well executed. I voted because yours was the best.

Good luck to you, Stu!

STUman!!!!

Great idea and greatly presented! Bon Chance!!!

Wow! Thanks, all! I was half expecting you to tell me to feck off, ha!

Good to know I've still got some friends around here.

Regarding the question about this working with other types of brakes, well, I chose V-brakes because (IMO) they're still the most commonly used by the general public, who are the most likely users of this.

The concept could still work with most sorts of mechanical brake systems, including disk brakes (although hydraulic ones would be more of a challenge). The back-pedaling thing - well - I might just have to give that one a miss.


Now the bad news - for some reason that site doesn't seem to be registering votes made from the English side of it. Never mind though - I've already won an award - this was just for the popular vote. I still wanted to come on here, say hello, and let you see.

If any of you still want to vote, please go ahead! Maybe they'll find the English votes later on.

hey congratulations

big gratz!

Can you check the link again? I don't see it on the page? Would love to check it out.

Wouldn't disk brakes be better suited for generating energy? I'm not sure what mechanism hybrid cars actually use to turn braking power into stored energy, so I can't visualize how this can work on these clamp style brakes. The rubber pads clamp on the wheel to slow the bike down, and eventually wear down.... so you can't put a conductor on the rubber. So how do you collect the energy?
Would they work when you skid? The tires aren't moving when you skid, so nothing is generating a brake light, so cars behind you don't know you are stopping suddenly and then run you over.

Perhaps it'd be better to collect energy as you pedal, store this energy in a battery, and have brake lights activate whenever the hand brakes are squeezed.