Luxeon LED bike headlight

posted May 4th 2006 4:00am by
filed under: transportation hacks

luxeon headlight

[Ian] built this headlight for his commuter bike. It is based around the Luxeon Star LED which is supposed to be equivalent to a 5W halogen. He mounted it to an aluminum frame and used a Fraen narrow lens. It’s powered by a pack of 4 rechargeable AA batteries. He’s got a list of improvements he would make. The first one is a better casing since his looks terrible compared to Suzy Jackson’s sexy light.

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15 Responses to Luxeon LED bike headlight

  • AllenKll says:
    May 4, 2006 at 4:54 pm

    Suzy Jackson’s light is much sexier.
    Suzy Jackson probably is too…

    Reply Report comment
  • timmeh says:
    May 4, 2006 at 5:06 pm

    Second that (I hope at least)

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  • sparky says:
    May 4, 2006 at 5:23 pm

    It would last a lot longer and be much more practical if they would have made a DC/DC converter for it.

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  • dontcallmeroy says:
    May 4, 2006 at 6:04 pm

    sorry, but ive gotta say, this isnt that impressive. I made a bikelight with a prolight LED, the difference is that mine was rgb and had a microcontroller.

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  • Stephen says:
    May 4, 2006 at 6:30 pm

    why don’t you do your own writeup so we can all be impressed

    Reply Report comment
  • dontcallmeroy says:
    May 4, 2006 at 6:53 pm

    no digicam. sorry, readin my post it sounds a bit cocky. the guys got some good stuff on that site, i think the sumo bot things more interesting.

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  • idleprocess says:
    May 4, 2006 at 7:20 pm

    Nominal 4.8V feeding a ~3.6Vf LED for this sort of application is a good candidate for using a cheap resistor. Using the 2400mAH cells, runtime will be close to 180 minutes with a ~800mA drive current. A good DC/DC converter is about 90% efficient vs this setup’s ~75% efficiency … and would cost about as much as all the other components combined for another 36 minutes of runtime (20% improvement).

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  • idleprocess says:
    May 4, 2006 at 8:23 pm

    A nominal 4.8V driving a LED with a Vf of ~3.6 through a resistor isn’t all that inefficient – ~75%. His setup should be driving the LED at about 800mA for around 180 minutes. A good DC/DC converter is about 90% efficient … and cost about as much as the rest of the components combined for an additional ~36 minutes (20%) runtime. Simple, cheap, efficient – choose two.

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  • Vrogy says:
    May 4, 2006 at 9:33 pm

    http://www.littlefishbicycles.com/audax_i_pics/gsr_finish.jpg
    meh. Her craftspersonship is pretty good, though. Hu-ah for quality!

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  • rbrooks says:
    May 4, 2006 at 10:29 pm

    Seeing the demand for these, isn’t there some sort of commercial equivalent?

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  • turpie says:
    May 4, 2006 at 11:00 pm

    These might be OK for road riding, but a 5W halogen is almost useless for mountain biking. Last year I replaced my homemade 20W Halogen (which was pretty good) with a Niterider HID light, and couldn’t imagine riding with anything as weak as a 5W light.

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  • Dax says:
    May 5, 2006 at 11:20 am

    #9 Yes there are many commercial equivalents but they can cost anywhere from $200 to $400 for a realy good halogen setup. Hence why DIY is quite practical for this application.

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  • tony rancid says:
    May 5, 2006 at 6:21 pm

    turpie
    quite a few people do use similar for mountain biking. standard diy model is 3x3W luxeon, its brighter than 20W halogen, about as bright as a new hid, less than half the price of a hid and have a longer life expectancy than a hid, you choose.
    http://singletrackworld.com/forum/read.php?f=2&i=2351940&t=2101245#reply_2351940

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  • Jake von Slatt says:
    May 6, 2006 at 12:41 am

    The 5 watt Luxeon isn’t equivalent to a 5 watt halogen, it’s a 5 watt LED and probably nearly as bright as an HID.

    my bike headlight (http://bike-recumbent.com/headlight.shtml) isn’t an LED but the 50 watt high beam rocks for fast downhills.

    Jake.

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  • ted says:
    May 7, 2006 at 6:25 am

    Measuring light output in watts just doesn’t make sense anymore.

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