Contender: One bottle for two drinks

A little while back I wrapped up a personal project to add to my portfolio. With a strong interest in sporting equipment, I wanted to add a project or two to really show that. This concept came as a result of the long hours of training I completed for my last half-ironman. It's an insulated water bottle that can hold both a sports drink and water; to switch between the two simply turn a valve to open the straw to the desired compartment. One of the challenges I faced was sealing the two compartments separately so that no spillage occurs. I approached this by drawing inspiration from a mason jar lid; the result can be seen below. I got some great feedback from designers at both Camelbak and Hydrapak which may lead to some changes soon. I don't think my conscious will leave this project alone until it is production ready. You can view more details on the project at my website here: Contender

Sketch Club @ Georgia Tech

With a little inspiration from Spencer Nuggent and a personal desire to improve our own sketching, Win Collier and I have started a "sketch club" for industrial design students at Georgia Tech. The basis of the club is having an outlet to go to everyday with directed sketching that is not school project related. We've gotten off to a slow start, but hopefully it will pick up soon. Some plans for the club are to post activities like sketching through the alphabet, prompting a certain material or medium, purposeful sketching to show form, function, or emotion, and creating an open forum for comments and critique. The beauty of something like sketch club is that it is directed, but still leaves plenty of freedom for exploration and mistakes. At Georgia Tech, I've noticed many students lack the desire to sketch outside of class due to little desire, boredom, or no motivation/encouragement. We hope sketch club can serve as that extra oomph to get people sketching. Visit the new page here: Sketch Club

The world's greenest mode of transportation

This bike: photosynthesis bike. It has long been common knowledge that bicycles can reduce the number of cars on the road, reducing traffic, and thus reducing pollution, but to my knowledge I've never seen a bike that proactively benefits the environment. I'm not overly green or a tree hugger by any means, but this concept is pretty cool and makes me wonder, "could a car do this too?" The design doesn't show any details whatsoever about how it would work, but I'm interested to see how it develops.

The Invisible Helmet

This project has been in woodwork for a while, seven years actually. Two design students from Sweden, Anna and Terese, have developed a bike helmet that is not much of a helmet at all. It provides the security and protection that a regular helmet provides plus some, but without the look feel. It is more like a side-curtain airbag that deploys in a crash scenario. In fact, they call it Hovding, Airbag of Cyclists; click the link to view their site which shows how it works. Plus check out the crazy crash test video below! (Or should I say krocktest?)

Flying in Style

Just wanted to update the blog with some cool posts I've seen recently. Personal transportation is beginning to get exciting. To quote Henry Ford, "Mark my word: a combination of airplane and motor car is coming. You may smile, but it will come." He said that almost 75 years ago and it may be finally coming to fruition.

The Aeromobil 2.5 flying car is just that; follow the link to the write-up on Core77 for more details. Some things that impressed me were it's ability to fill up at regular gas station and fit in a normal parking spot.

Along the same line, Mercedes has put out a pretty impressive video featuring their driverless car. It's amazing to see the on-board computer identifying objects and people as it drives itself. Now if we could only combine the two concept we'd be flying in style, literally.

Garmin Forerunner 410 Watch Mount

Until just recently, I had no way to easily monitor my speed, cadence, and heart rate during triathlons. I've had this Garmin 410 for a while now, which is synced with a speed/cadence sensor on my bike, but it is just too hard to look at my wrist while riding and I'm not ready to purchase a bike computer. The watch is kinda okay in aero position and even more difficult on the hoods. Garmin offers this universal mount kit, but how do I squeeze that on my handlebars with clip-on aero bars? After seeing the out-front mounts offered for bike computer, I agreed that out-front is the ideal location. Still, I didn't have any room on my handlebars. After a little bit of ideation, I came up with this solution: an aero bar watch mount.

Some details about the design. The two pieces snap together tightly via a male-female connection shown in the main part of the mount. It attaches via two 6M socket head cap screws on either side. Aka it works with a bike tool. The profile is tailored to the Garmin Forerunner 410 meaning it is not a perfect ellipse. The profile is also rotated 10 degrees toward the user which is a comfortable viewing angle. Lastly, a lip running around the edge of the mount, but tapering for the large face of the watch, keeps the band secure while riding. 

Above is a picture of it secured to my aero bars with the watch mounted. I have gone on several training rides and rode my first half-ironman with it. So far, I am very happy with the design and have even had a few inquiries about it. I found that with so many people coming from one or two sport background, this is a challenge that others face as well. There are many runners out there doing triathlons with GPS watches, road bikes, and clip-on aero bars. Maybe I'll put the design up on Shapeways.

Icedot Crash Sensor

Check it out. The Icedot crash sensor is like an evolution of Road ID which is a band that you wear with all your personal and medical information. The cool thing Icedot does is allow you to create an online profile with all your details so that in case of an emergency, first responders can quickly access it by texting the PIN number on your sensor. What I think is the cooler part though, is when paired with a smartphone via bluetooth, the crash sensor can notify emergency contacts in the event of a crash and even records forces of impact.