An amazingly professional LED bike light

posted May 7th 2009 1:23pm by
filed under: classic hacks, led hacks

light1

[Tom] sent us a link to this very professionally done project. He built a bike light that is a 540 lumen Luxeon light with a custom case.  The LED, Lens, and driver were purchased first. Everything else was designed around it. The design is compact and good looking. You can download the CAD files on the site if you want to make your own. He is using an Atmel AVR ATTiny13 to control brightness.

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15 Responses to An amazingly professional LED bike light

  • stunmonkey says:
    May 7, 2009 at 1:42 pm

    Very nice. The CAD files are a nice touch too, more people should really include them – most serious hackers nowadays have our own machines or at least access to them by this point.

    Just a note to the inevitable clueless apologists for crappy hacks who keep pointing out ‘hacks aren’t supposed to be as good as commercial products, that’s the point’, well suck on this. Crappy hacks are NOT the point, you just aren’t trying hard enough or just aren’t good enough. Try following examples like this guy’s light. He’s got it right.

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  • Clay says:
    May 7, 2009 at 1:49 pm

    Good job!

    Reply Report comment
  • Radfahrer says:
    May 7, 2009 at 2:00 pm

    I really want to see some pictures or videos of this thing in action. I’m having a hard time imagining what a 540 lumen light would be like at night.

    Reply Report comment
  • RoboGuy says:
    May 7, 2009 at 3:12 pm

    Crap.

    When I read the title I thought it said “Light Bike”

    One can only hope…

    Reply Report comment
  • oNo says:
    May 7, 2009 at 3:18 pm

    @stunmonkey

    Surely its not the quality of the hack but the idea behind it, if you want to work on a nice case for a hack you can do that yourself, its the idea thats important isnt it.

    Reply Report comment
  • kanamin says:
    May 7, 2009 at 3:22 pm

    it’s… beautiful

    Reply Report comment
  • tony says:
    May 7, 2009 at 10:39 pm

    he bought the driver? that’s weak. I made one that looks very similar with a 700 lumen LED. 10 watts of led power is intense. too intense in fact. I can project a beam 300 yards. the next one I make will be a little less bright, and will use optics.

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  • error404 says:
    May 8, 2009 at 12:43 am

    Very impressive! Really makes me wish I’d taken some machining courses (and had space and money to buy such nice tooling :P).

    He should be able to get standby power consumption much lower than 7mA though. The BuckPuck draws < 0.5mA Iq, and in power down mode the tiny13 can draw as little as 0.5uA.

    Wouldn’t be too hard to do the buck converter with the tiny13 itself, a current shunt, and a low Rdson FET, and more importantly more space efficient. He’d also lose the 0.5mA Iq of the BuckPuck and with appropriate choice of 5V regulator could make standby draw less than the battery’s self-discharge.

    Nonetheless this is a great project and it seems like he accomplished his goals in a very nice looking package. Big props to this, most of us are just way too lazy to spend this kind of time on doing things ‘right’.

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  • vikki says:
    May 8, 2009 at 4:55 am

    to tony: what do you mean weak, so he purchased an led light assembly, so what, did you even follow the link and see all the work that went into the rest of it? you are in the presence of greatness and don’t even know it.

    and to roboguy, it’s not crap, your just dyslexic. (so am i, i just read things more carefully)

    this project goes way beyond hack and straight into fabrication, and it takes a lot more to build something from scratch than to mod it from something else. this is excellence, plain and simple.

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  • Tom says:
    May 8, 2009 at 5:38 am

    Thanks all. I usually have as much fun figuring out the packaging as I do actually making the parts.

    The Buckpuck was cheap an easy – finding the individual parts to create a buck converter where I’m at in China is a PITA, but I am disappointed in the noise and power consumption. error404 is correct, the spec sheet says 500uA quiescent current, but the 7ma I get is an actual measurement with the control pin high and the Tiny13 sound asleep. I don’t know how LEDdynamics comes up with 0.5ma!

    I recently got a wireless bike computer and even though the bike light is inside a metal cylinder (I’ve even added copper foil under the vinyl cap) it’s so darn noisy that it interferes with the wireless wheel sensor. I may end up making my own buck converter after all.

    If I can come up with a way to do a video, I’ll post it on the site.

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  • fartface says:
    May 8, 2009 at 6:30 am

    Losers make a crappy prototype and leave it at the crappy part. REal hackers refine past step 1 and enter step2 and then 3 to make it look very good and durable.

    Anyone that stops at the crappy pile of wires and calls it done is a wanna-be ankle-biter.

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  • strider_mt2k says:
    May 8, 2009 at 9:34 am

    Extremely well done.

    Looks like this will easily withstand the rigors of being on a bike too.

    Excelsior!

    Reply Report comment
  • SheeEttin says:
    May 8, 2009 at 12:56 pm

    Why is this not powered by the bike?

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  • arne says:
    May 9, 2009 at 5:02 am

    i’d love to see a “bike powered version” too. is this possible or does it require to much power.

    Reply Report comment
  • Rick says:
    May 12, 2009 at 2:42 pm

    What a waste… All that equipment and he builds a bike light. Give ME that equipment and see what I build!

    What’s next? A handbrake activated tail light? OOoooooooooooo woooowwwwwwww!

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