Docking Port

In this example a Lifter has been equipped with a docking port. Using this docking port, one can use the Lifter to turn the crank on a hand powered device. A Eaton FR1 hand crank radio was chosen for this demonstration. In the carriage of the Lifter there are 14 x 30 pound blocks. This equals around 500 pounds, including the weight of the Carriage, to apply to cranking the radio. I tilted the Carriage up to 8 feet four times and allowed the radios to be cranked for two hours each. It took 10-15 minutes to tilt the carriage up to the 8 foot mark. I did the tilting by myself. Two people could have done it in half of the time. So, the 40-60 minutes spent tilting resulted in 2 hours of crank time for each FR1. The lights lasted for about 15 hours. This was a pretty good return on the effort applied to them.

Four Hour Drill Crank One FR1

Four Hour Drill Crank One FR1.wmv

Light Test Results

Two Fr1s Light Test.wmv

Lifter with a Docking Port

Two FR1s Cranked Two Hours.wmv

After the four hour cranking test ended, I decided that it would be nice to see how one FR1 would perform if all of the four hours of cranking was applied to just one FR1. Even though it was very easy to tilt up the carriage the needed four times for a four hour crank session, I decided I would cheat a little and let my hand drill do it. Either way is much preferable to doing it manually for four hours. You can see from the results of this test that even with a four hour crank session the FR1 still did not reach the charge level that a two hour USB charge provided. I would guess that it would require at least 6 hours cranking for the radio to charge to that level.


One additional type of device that might benefit from being docked to a Lifter would be one like a Gravity Light.


And least we forget, Trevor Baylis and his Clockwork Radio. See his radio invention powered by a falling weight.