Home made tail light for my bicycle.

shein

Newly Enlightened
Joined
Apr 2, 2012
Messages
3
Hi Guys,


I want to share with you my experience in building a tail light for my bicycle.
I live in Ukraine and I like to cycle to my work but commuting by bicycle is not really popular in here and we don't have bike lanes on roads. So, I have to ride on the public roads along with cars.
I'm really concerned about my safety so I decided to build a really bright tail light. So, every car driver would notice me on the road.


I wanted to build a small and compact tail light so I decided to use the case from the cheap Chinese tail light which I bough on DX (SKU:110252)
The description to this light says that it has 3w led. It's obviously not true. I disassembled it and found out that it has 40mA forward current PLCC led.
But the case was fine. It had the lens which perfectly matches with a 1W led on a star which I bought on ebay (1W red LED 40-45lm).


To power the device I decided to use two 10440 Li-ion batteries connected in parallel. Each of the batteries is rated to 600mAh but the real capacity is around 300-350mAh. So the total capacity of two batteries is around 600hAh.
DX SKU:974
The batteries fitted the original battery holder perfectly. Only minor soldering was needed to connect them in parallel.


To control the led I used the led driver board which I also bought on DX (SKU: 6190).
It has Atmel Attiny13A microcontroller on board and that is great because I've had some experience in programming them.


The led is rated for forward current 700mAh but the control board provided 1000mAh current. So I removed one of the 7135 chips to lower the output current.
I also soldered an ISP programming connector to flash a new firmware.


Here are some pictures of the process:
The original board from the tail light

The new control board

Original schematic:

Modified schematic:





I decided to leave the programming connector for future firmware update.


And glue it back.




Main features of my firmware:
- Two flashing modes. (I decided that flashing modes are more than enough for the bicycle light)
- Low battery warning. Changes flashing mode and reduces led power to minimum.
- Turn off at critical battery charge.
- Check battery charge. Flashes one to five times depending on the battery charge.


The source code is open and everybody is free to modify it.
http://code.google.com/p/tail-light-attiny13a/


The total cost of build is:
Tail light case: $5.30
Control board: $3.19
Led: $2
Batteries: $4.30
Total: $ 14.79


I understand that It just a little cheaper than the original Planet Superflash tail light. But mine has 1W led and the Planet has only 0.5W :)
Also I got a satisfaction from building something with my hands and you can't put a price on that :)
Unfortunately I don't have the original Planet light so I can't compare them. I can only say that my light is bright, very bright.

 
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Kestrel

Flashaholic
Joined
Oct 31, 2007
Messages
7,355
Location
Willamette Valley, OR
Hello shein, welcome to CPF. :wave:

Please edit your posts to remove the DX and ebay links, I replaced your first DX hyperlink with the DX SKU # as an example. Edit: Thanks. :)

I have also moved your thread to the /Bicycle/ subforum where I believe it to be a better fit.

Regards,
 
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Steve K

Flashlight Enthusiast
Joined
Jun 10, 2002
Messages
2,786
Location
Peoria, IL
Nice work! It's always fun to modify a product and add your own bit of genius/madness. ;)

regards,
Steve K.
 

tomgopher

Newly Enlightened
Joined
Nov 27, 2011
Messages
12
That's really cool. Nice to be able to reprogram an existing DX circuit. Can you upload your sourcecode elsewhere(maybe github.com)? The zip file that I downloaded contains an http server error.

<b>Warning</b>: fclose(): supplied argument is not a valid stream resource
 

shein

Newly Enlightened
Joined
Apr 2, 2012
Messages
3
That's really cool. Nice to be able to reprogram an existing DX circuit. Can you upload your sourcecode elsewhere(maybe github.com)? The zip file that I downloaded contains an http server error.

<b>Warning</b>: fclose(): supplied argument is not a valid stream resource

Thanks!

I moved the source code to http://code.google.com/p/tail-light-attiny13a/
So, there shouldn't be a problem accessing it.
 

1 what

Enlightened
Joined
Jul 6, 2007
Messages
617
Location
Australia
Hi Shein.
Nice job.
You'll find there are a few of us here at CPF who enjoy either designing or modifying bicycle taillights.
Welcome to the "group".
I especially enjoyed your reprogramme of the DX driver.
 

minisystem

Newly Enlightened
Joined
Jul 12, 2011
Messages
96
Wow. That's great. Nice work! I've been working on an Attiny10-based flasher, which is kind of a pain because it has to be programmed in assembler, but it does come in a SOT23-5 format, which is nice and small. Out of curiosity, what IDE did you use to code the firmware for the Attiny13?
 

shein

Newly Enlightened
Joined
Apr 2, 2012
Messages
3
what IDE did you use to code the firmware for the Attiny13?
To build the project I used WinAVR which uses gcc as a compiler.
But to actually write the source code I used Microsoft Visual Studio because it's convenient for me.
I've recently discovered a great IDE to develop a firmware for AVR. It's Atmel AVR Studio 5. It's free and it uses open source gcc compiler and avr-lib. So it's just like WinAVR but with a nice IDE and a great simulator.
 

minisystem

Newly Enlightened
Joined
Jul 12, 2011
Messages
96
Yes, I've been using AVR Studio 5 as well. I'm just not a command line kind of guy, so the GUI makes things much easier for me.
 

cehowardGS

Newly Enlightened
Joined
Dec 27, 2011
Messages
42
Nice light, great project.:thumbsup:

Here is the one I am running, and it is 95% close to the real Planet Bike Superflash Turbo/Blinky.. $4.00 with free shipping, on ebay..

Is the one in red.. The other one is the real thing..


PBSF-63.jpg


PBSF-64.jpg

PBSF-69.jpg


PBSF-84.jpg


PBSF-82.jpg


That is a SUPERFLASH TURBO I am comparing it too. ($28) Yes, they are both only .5 watt. But, this light only cost me $4 shipped. Since this I have ordered about 10 of them. Outfitted all my helmets and putting two on a bike, and on my backpacks. They come to about 1/5th the price of the real thing, and in performance, they are 95% to the real thing...

Just sayin...:wave:
 
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werto.palomin

Newly Enlightened
Joined
Oct 7, 2009
Messages
2
Hi cehowardGS,
nice tail light!
have you measured the burn time?
have you try to use it with two 10440 li-ion battery in parallel for best runtime?
:whistle:
Nice light, great project.:thumbsup:

Here is the one I am running, and it is 95% close to the real Planet Bike Superflash Turbo/Blinky.. $4.00 with free shipping, on ebay..

Is the one in red.. The other one is the real thing..



...cut...





That is a SUPERFLASH TURBO I am comparing it too. ($28) Yes, they are both only .5 watt. But, this light only cost me $4 shipped. Since this I have ordered about 10 of them. Outfitted all my helmets and putting two on a bike, and on my backpacks. They come to about 1/5th the price of the real thing, and in performance, they are 95% to the real thing...

Just sayin...:wave:
 

cehowardGS

Newly Enlightened
Joined
Dec 27, 2011
Messages
42
Hi cehowardGS,
nice tail light!
have you measured the burn time?
have you try to use it with two 10440 li-ion battery in parallel for best runtime?
:whistle:

No, I have just been running rechargeable aaa batteries. I also run one on my helmet, and I carry spare batteries.. Sorry for the late reply too, just seeing this... ;)
 
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