New York’s food carts are going electric in clean air trial
Street food is getting an upgrade, and your ears will thank you.
For decades, the soundtrack of New York City's streets has included the constant hum of gasoline generators powering thousands of food carts. The noise has become so familiar that most people barely notice it. Now, the city wants to find out whether rechargeable batteries can do the same job without the pollution, noise and fuel costs.
According to Techxplore, New York has launched a six-month pilot that equips 10 licensed street food vendors with battery-powered energy systems, replacing the gasoline generators that typically run cooking equipment, refrigerators and ventilation systems. The trial is designed to reduce air pollution, cut noise levels and improve working conditions for vendors who spend long hours beside the generators.
Cyclists, listen up — there’s a new app for your smartphone that claims to record your cycling power. Meet Fitif Power!, a power meter app developed by the Madrid-based Capitán Nugget team. The app purports to help you estimate your bike’s effective power while you’re in motion, all without the need for any extra gadgetry or software. Now available for Android as well as iOS, the app may just be one of the cheapest ways to monitor your power while cycling.
The app claims to gather data from sensors built into your smartphone, like your GPS, barometer, and accelerometer. You can also connect the app to a third-party heart rate monitor via Bluetooth, and the Capitán Nugget team recommends that folks also link a Bluetooth cadence meter to the app. The addition of these two tools (which you’re likely already using during your ride), should give you a more accurate power data reading.
Using all these data inputs, Fitif Power! promises to estimate your average power every 15 seconds. This, the team says, should reflect the work that you’re actually doing during your workout. And while most cycling computers give users the option of seeing power results every 3, 10, or 15 seconds, Capitán Nugget provides a single, straightforward estimate. That said, the team is also working to offer shorter time interval readings as well.
In order to truly take advantage of the app, you’ll have to do a bit of setup. Before your ride, cyclists are asked to manually input certain parameters, including the surface they will be riding on, the type of bike they’re riding, crank length, type of tires, tire pressure, type of pedals, and the total weight of the cyclist and bike. The more accurate these inputs, the more accurate Fitif Power!’s output.
The app, originally launched in October 2017 for just the iPhone, has come quite a long way in making power metering more affordable and accessible for folks in the cycling world. You can now download the app for free from the Play Store. Your Android device must be running Android 5.0 or later in order to make use of the app.