Would you buy these lights?

steveofshrops3478

Ok, so the winter had come and the evenings are now longer. The gap between the end of work and darkness setting in has overlapped, and unless you have a decent set of lights, you're destined to ride at weekends only!

I wanted to get some lights, but wasn't happy with either the features of the cheap ones or the price of the good ones.

This gave me 1 final option. Develop my own.

Ok, so I now have a set of lights which out perform the 450 quid light and motions that you can get, with about 3 hours run time giving out 1300 lumens (stunning performance) and I am planning to add some more light level settings for increased burn time.

My question is, would the following be useful in a light?

It will monitor your speed, and brighten / dim depending on your speed. I.e, so if you're going up a climb at walking pace, you'll get say 40% light output, but if you're really going for it you get 100% light. Also, after you'd been stopped for, say 5 seconds, it would drop to about 125-20%. All in an effort to make the brightness settings autonomous.

Would this be a useful feature, or is it a case of over engineering which addresses a problem which doesn't exist?

Any thoughts would be much appreciated.

Also, if you're interested in the lights, I could probablly make a few extra units to sell on. I think they would end up costing around the £100 mark.

Anonymous

is it a case of over engineering which addresses a problem which doesn't exist?

IMO yes. Got any pics of these wonder lights?

BorisSpencer

I think you may be over engineering a bit with the speed related brightness idea. Make the various brightness modes as easy to access as possible, a bar mounted slide switch maybe, not a push switch that cycles through all the possible modes.

FSR_XC

Light output dropping when stopped sounds good.

As for the speed related issue - why not have the beam focus narrow as you go faster & widen when slower. Bouncing around on tight singletrack, I want to see as much as I can around me, yet hammering down a road I want to see further infront.

thebluefox

Beam focus is more relevant than strength i think.

Also, pics?

Mark_K

Yep the beam pattern is the bit that makes a light more useable in differing conditions rather than the power !

steveofshrops3478

Ok guys, thanks for the input!

I see your point about wanting lots of short range light when on, say, a slow but tight and technical trail, for example. Thats was the main concern I had, and one of the reasons I posted this question.

Someone mentioned that a light that dimmed after you had stopped for a few seconds would be good. I think I may try and implement this. It would be simplified if no other speed-brightness or speed-focus parameters were needed, as it could work off a pretty good inertia sensor, or a good accelerometer, mounted in the light/battery pack it's self rather than additional cabling/hardware needing to be mounted to your bike.

The speed - focus relationship thing is a really good idea. Ok, so it is probablly over engineering it more than my original idea, but I am an engineer, so it's what I do!

It could be fairly difficult, but I once built a disco light with a remotely operated focus setting. One problem will be miniaturising it, the other (bigger) problem will be making it reliable and robust enough to cope with the vibration that it will encounter!

I think I'll focus (no pun intended) on the basic light with a good user interface first, and a variable focus thing can come into play in version 2.0!

As for pics, I'm not quite at the stage of having anything in a finished stage. I have the electronics built, the system tested, and know I can make it fit, but time is the major issue at the moment, so have't yet built an enclosure yet I don't really want to put up photos of it mounted in waste pipe covered in gaffer tape and a computer heatsink on top!

I'm going to use this as inspiration for mine:


Though, the body will be smaller in diameter, on;y have one led rather than 3 and most probablly have a topside reflector to stop the loss of light which would otherwise end up lighting the treetops! Oh, and mine won't look quite that sexy unfortunately (It'll be anodised). Oh, and my mounting will be totally different.

FSR_XC

1300 lumen from one LED?

I would prefer to see something like you show, with 3 LED allowing you to use varying focal settings and therefore a very good spread of light.

The major issue with the 'torches' that everyone praises is the beam pattern and 1 LED can't easily allow for this.

What about 3 settings, but instead of power related, beam related.
eg: 3 LEDs - Long, med & wide beam settings. with settings Long - using med & long, flood - using all and wide - using med & wide. (The order is deliberate so that the centre setting is the most powerful as you would not want to switch from wide to flood via long)
The power drop when you stop could then be as simple as only med beam on.

Make this with 900+ lumen inc 3hr battery for less than £100 and you'll sell a lot of them.

. . . . . & my fee . . . . . ??????

strodey

So you slow down to go round a corner and enter the rock garden and the light dims. Hmmmmmm

FSR_XC

I am very interested to see how you get on with this.

djvagabon1

Let me know how you get on. Id be very interested in buying some off you.