Recent content by Steve K

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  1. Steve K

    repairing a Supernova Triple dynamo headlight

    I haven't been hanging out here for a while, so sorry about the delay. Rust is certainly odd... it might be a capacitor leaking and leaving a residue?? Photos would help. Still, there could be other problems, and it could be hard to work out what the problems might be. As far as a proper...
  2. Steve K

    a forgotten treasure... the Belt Beacon strobe light

    I saw that my flickr account was showing a bunch of views of my Belt Beacon stuff, so I figured I should see what's going on at CPF! Good heavens, it's been a while! I checked my photos, and all I can see is that "Italy" is part of the marking on the bulb. While the battery is 9 volts, the...
  3. Steve K

    Dynamo to 5V USB charger

    hi Peter, Disconnecting the AC input seems reasonable. Electrically, this can be done with a P channel mosfet or PNP transistor.. or even a relay, although that's a bit inefficient (and I'm not sure that relays like being bounced around on a bike). I've done a somewhat similar technique for...
  4. Steve K

    Lupine SL AF

    a bit of electrical tape over the sensor will take care of the problem of switching over to DRL mode! If you could find some semi-opaque tape, you might be able to adjust it to your desired sensitivity. Of course, this might be difficult, depending on the location of the sensor. I've got...
  5. Steve K

    Lupine SL AF

    Osram is one of those LED manufacturers that I don't see mentioned a lot, but now and then I become aware of how active they are in the automotive lighting market. Pretty impressive stuff! I've seen mention of some of their linear LED arrays, which do seem very suitable to making a beam that...
  6. Steve K

    Lupine SL AF

    Lupine makes some very high quality stuff... it should perform quite well! That's a pretty massive lens on that light! That suggests that either the LED is rather large, or it is producing a very tight, focused beam. Looking forward to a report on how well it works. edit: just saw the...
  7. Steve K

    Light & Motion Stella 300 Dual

    Just replacing the damaged XR-E should help, and an optimal bin ought to make a difference too. Definitely try to figure out if the heatsink is making proper contact with the mating surface of the board. It is possible that some of the support for the board has shifted, distorted, shrunk...
  8. Steve K

    Light & Motion Stella 300 Dual

    Good photo! Replacing the LED should produce quite an improvement... that one looks like it has been operated at high temperatures. You might want to check that there's not a problem with the thermal path. I'm guessing that the heatsink sits directly on the silver colored portion of the...
  9. Steve K

    Light & Motion Stella 300 Dual

    The XR-E was a good LED. ... somewhere in the 60 to 100 lumens per watt. I've got these in a couple of my own home-built headlights. Changing to a better bin of the XR-E should be low risk, although it might be difficult to get enough improvement to notice. It would be nice to upgrade to...
  10. Steve K

    Axa Pico 30 dynamo front lamp

    a quick update... it occurred to me that the "transistor" could be a dual diode package. This is a pair of diodes that are connected and housed in a single package. An example is this part from Diodes Inc. ..... https://www.diodes.com/assets/Datasheets/ds30232.pdf My guess is that this dual...
  11. Steve K

    Axa Pico 30 dynamo front lamp

    I'm having a hard time figuring how a transistor would be used on the AC side of the bridge rectifier. There is a slim chance that it is there to act as a shunt regulator, in order to limit the charge voltage of the supercap. Of course, the LED and 3 ohm resistor should be doing a reasonably...
  12. Steve K

    Axa Pico 30 dynamo front lamp

    The photos on the CyclingUK forum are helpful, but it's not easy (or not possible) to figure out the schematic from them. You should be able to look at where the traces run in order to figure out what is connected to what. Even with that, you'd need a meter to figure out of any of the devices...
  13. Steve K

    Busch+Müller B&M Lumotec IQ cyo senso plus: connection battery polarity

    very interesting! I've got a dead B&M Eyc that I've been meaning to reverse engineer. With any luck, maybe I'll figure out what they do in order to behave like this. It does appear that they use a switching converter, so it might be regulating the current to the LED.
  14. Steve K

    Busch+Müller B&M Lumotec IQ cyo senso plus: connection battery polarity

    There may be problems with this concept. Many/most dynamo lights rely on the dynamo to limit current to 0.5A. If they are connected to a power source that can deliver quite a bit more, it is possible to severely damage the light. I've seen a Supernova light that was connected to an ebike's...
  15. Steve K

    Dyno light test rig...

    Excellent! There's nothing like running some experiments to really prove or disprove whether something will work. If you have a few meters, I'd suggest measuring the voltage and current out of the dynamo, as well as the frequency of the dynamo voltage. You'll be able to tell how much power...
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