[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.
Suzy Jackson’s light is much sexier.
Suzy Jackson probably is too…
Second that (I hope at least)
It would last a lot longer and be much more practical if they would have made a DC/DC converter for it.
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.
why don’t you do your own writeup so we can all be impressed
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.
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).
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.
http://www.littlefishbicycles.com/audax_i_pics/gsr_finish.jpg
meh. Her craftspersonship is pretty good, though. Hu-ah for quality!
Seeing the demand for these, isn’t there some sort of commercial equivalent?
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.
#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.
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
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.
Measuring light output in watts just doesn’t make sense anymore.