pmath
Newly Enlightened
This homegrown development owes a lot to Candlepower Forums and my friend Pete "Lizard" Heal in Canberra. Pete lent me a 3W LED head light to use during the 1000 km Great Southern Randonnee in October 2004. It was a great little light and inspired some serious research. Then I found CPF. Rue the day!!!
After a number of prototypes, much commuter testing, and not without a few anxious moments I set off on Satuday night last to ride my recumbent for 200 km in the dark. We started at 8 PM when much of Australia was sensibly watching the Commonwealth Games and rode through quiet back roads in central Victoria about 100 km from Melbourne.
So.. the lights. On the boom of my Flying Furniture recumbent I have two hard-used units. These have been running direct drive off custom battery packs for about a year. I use three AA NiMH cells and have a two stage switch with a resistor for "low beam" or Alkaline cell use.
On the handlebars I had one of the latest assemblies. It looks a bit less shabby, less world worn and have a nice mounting bracket.
Here I guess the insides are more of interest than the appearance. Inside I have a TV1J emitter on one side of the slug , and snugged into a recess the one and only magnificent FluPic board (Oops getting carried away here
) The one shown here is a bit dodgy as it was my prototype, knocked up in haste one night last week after Goldserve sent me my batch of custom FluPic boards.
Between the slug and the outside world in another carefully bored recess is a Judco on-off switch. I've used these in other applications and found them tough. They aren't waterproof sothe reason they sit inside a separate sleev and not against the back wall of the main inner housing is that I need a nice wide bearing surface for a flat rubber disk which sits against between the two. This has sufficient flexibility to allow the swithc to be operated with only a slight outward deflection of the disk. Picture of this will follow once the batt on my Olympus mju is pumped up again.
I want to use a different switch in these heads because for simplest operation the FluPic interface seems to like a momentary off switch. Hints on such a unit which will cope with up to 1 A continuous operation would be appreciated:thinking:. Kevin "Goldserve" programmed these for me with just one mode as I don't want people getting confused driving the interface one handed, sleep deprived and at speed in the middle of the night. So I have STROBE -> HIGH -> LOW -> OFF -> PROGRAM. High and Low are user settable. I commend Goldserve to any one here. His responsiveness, attention to detail and support has been incredible. And the boards only took about a week to get from Canada to southern Australia.
Once I settle down I'll set the loggers up and measure how many electron are going where at each setting and for how long.
I've very deliberately not included batteries on the head for several reasons. Firstly, many thousands of kilometres of night riding has taught me the vulnerability of brackets when they are too heavily loaded. Secondly, for different applications I want to be able to use the most appropriate battery pack. When weight is important why carry any more than you need?
Side on this is how it looks. Main tube diameter is about 27 mm.
I'm not sure if I went the best way around choosing the cable. Officially it is audio calbe of some sort - two wires wrapped in copper and all inside a soft and flexible round rubber case. It seems strong and doesn't offer too much resistance. Feels nice!
The optic I am using is the 17mm Fraen narrow spot with the concave front face and a hole in the midde. Of all the optics I have played with (only 3 or 4
) this one is my favourite. It gives good enough side light to enable a rider to pick up quite a bit of roadside detail (including several kangaroos, and two owls on Saturday night). But for me the most exciting part is that this light give me enough reach and spread on the road to enable me to travel considently around 30 kph. Apart from this immediate reach roadside pole reflectors and the like are visibly at least 200 metres ahaed.
On Saturday night our route took us through territiry which involved some rapid decents and with two - and at one stage me helmet light as well - my maximum speed was 70 kph, and I was comfortable that I could see very good detail of the road ahead (but the kangaroo I couldn't see but that I could hear in the bush beside me at one stage was a bit of a worry)
I replaced the batteries in the light I used constantly only once and even at that stage, after about 3.5 hrs on the normal bright setting from the FluPic, it still produced usable light but not sufficient for high speed. Better safe than seeing how far I can stretch a rechargeable battery I thought.
So, for me, an 11 hour 200 is a bit slow but it was one of the most satisfying rides I have done for a long time because of the success of these lights I have built. And I was home in time to see Aussies win both the mens' and womens' road races on the telly!
I'm stoked and can't wait for the next long ride!
Will try to figure how to do night shots too!
:thanks: Cheers and thanks again to all who have contributed.
After a number of prototypes, much commuter testing, and not without a few anxious moments I set off on Satuday night last to ride my recumbent for 200 km in the dark. We started at 8 PM when much of Australia was sensibly watching the Commonwealth Games and rode through quiet back roads in central Victoria about 100 km from Melbourne.
So.. the lights. On the boom of my Flying Furniture recumbent I have two hard-used units. These have been running direct drive off custom battery packs for about a year. I use three AA NiMH cells and have a two stage switch with a resistor for "low beam" or Alkaline cell use.
On the handlebars I had one of the latest assemblies. It looks a bit less shabby, less world worn and have a nice mounting bracket.
Here I guess the insides are more of interest than the appearance. Inside I have a TV1J emitter on one side of the slug , and snugged into a recess the one and only magnificent FluPic board (Oops getting carried away here
) The one shown here is a bit dodgy as it was my prototype, knocked up in haste one night last week after Goldserve sent me my batch of custom FluPic boards.
Between the slug and the outside world in another carefully bored recess is a Judco on-off switch. I've used these in other applications and found them tough. They aren't waterproof sothe reason they sit inside a separate sleev and not against the back wall of the main inner housing is that I need a nice wide bearing surface for a flat rubber disk which sits against between the two. This has sufficient flexibility to allow the swithc to be operated with only a slight outward deflection of the disk. Picture of this will follow once the batt on my Olympus mju is pumped up again.
I want to use a different switch in these heads because for simplest operation the FluPic interface seems to like a momentary off switch. Hints on such a unit which will cope with up to 1 A continuous operation would be appreciated:thinking:. Kevin "Goldserve" programmed these for me with just one mode as I don't want people getting confused driving the interface one handed, sleep deprived and at speed in the middle of the night. So I have STROBE -> HIGH -> LOW -> OFF -> PROGRAM. High and Low are user settable. I commend Goldserve to any one here. His responsiveness, attention to detail and support has been incredible. And the boards only took about a week to get from Canada to southern Australia.
Once I settle down I'll set the loggers up and measure how many electron are going where at each setting and for how long.
I've very deliberately not included batteries on the head for several reasons. Firstly, many thousands of kilometres of night riding has taught me the vulnerability of brackets when they are too heavily loaded. Secondly, for different applications I want to be able to use the most appropriate battery pack. When weight is important why carry any more than you need?
Side on this is how it looks. Main tube diameter is about 27 mm.
I'm not sure if I went the best way around choosing the cable. Officially it is audio calbe of some sort - two wires wrapped in copper and all inside a soft and flexible round rubber case. It seems strong and doesn't offer too much resistance. Feels nice!
The optic I am using is the 17mm Fraen narrow spot with the concave front face and a hole in the midde. Of all the optics I have played with (only 3 or 4
) this one is my favourite. It gives good enough side light to enable a rider to pick up quite a bit of roadside detail (including several kangaroos, and two owls on Saturday night). But for me the most exciting part is that this light give me enough reach and spread on the road to enable me to travel considently around 30 kph. Apart from this immediate reach roadside pole reflectors and the like are visibly at least 200 metres ahaed. On Saturday night our route took us through territiry which involved some rapid decents and with two - and at one stage me helmet light as well - my maximum speed was 70 kph, and I was comfortable that I could see very good detail of the road ahead (but the kangaroo I couldn't see but that I could hear in the bush beside me at one stage was a bit of a worry)
I replaced the batteries in the light I used constantly only once and even at that stage, after about 3.5 hrs on the normal bright setting from the FluPic, it still produced usable light but not sufficient for high speed. Better safe than seeing how far I can stretch a rechargeable battery I thought.
So, for me, an 11 hour 200 is a bit slow but it was one of the most satisfying rides I have done for a long time because of the success of these lights I have built. And I was home in time to see Aussies win both the mens' and womens' road races on the telly!
I'm stoked and can't wait for the next long ride!
Will try to figure how to do night shots too!
:thanks: Cheers and thanks again to all who have contributed.
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