Bicycles Make Everything Better.
No, they really do! As a weird example, I've been "researching" Arduino-based, robotic drum machines - Heath-Robinson affairs that allow a drum machine to play a real drum kit, instead of stored sounds. How do bicycles make this better? Bowden tubes. "Bowden tube" is the engineering name for the outer sheath of a bicycle's mechanical brake cable. You might call it "the hose" or just the "outer." The whole mechanical brake cable has not been used on one, single robotic drum system I've seen, yet, for the hi-hat, the upper and lower cymbals that a drummer operates with a pedal, as well as hitting with sticks, all have these complex linkages and gadgets and firmware code that gives the effect of half-pedal, rather than an actual half pedal. They using car door lock actuators (solenoids) to do this, these things are on or off, they don't have a half position. Or do they? Spoiler alert, they do, but the solution is mechanical. The...