What's a good e bike headlight?

[Alan B]

Can I use two of these in series?
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Super-Bright-12V-85V-Universal-Motorcycle-E-bike-20W-LED-Modified-Headlight-Lamp-/400792305146?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&var=&hash=item5d51153dfa

I have 24s lifepo4 so I cant use these with the fully charged pack and I was wondering if I could use two in series.
If not going for the conventional way with a dc-dc.

One option is to bring out the midpoint of the pack so have two 50V supplies.

Another option is to series them but put 60V zeners across each of them to insure the voltage doesn't get too far out of balance.

This assumes they are power isolated to the case.

 

[hungarianguy]

Can I use two of these in series?
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Super-Bright-12V-85V-Universal-Motorcycle-E-bike-20W-LED-Modified-Headlight-Lamp-/400792305146?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&var=&hash=item5d51153dfa

I have 24s lifepo4 so I cant use these with the fully charged pack and I was wondering if I could use two in series.
If not going for the conventional way with a dc-dc.

One option is to bring out the midpoint of the pack so have two 50V supplies.

Another option is to series them but put 60V zeners across each of them to insure the voltage doesn't get too far out of balance.

This assumes they are power isolated to the case.

Thank You!
I was afraid its not that simple :lol: , I'll go for the DC-DC than.

 

[ridethelightning]

really handy stuff. great thread.

 

[Alan B]

...
The Lumenator ebike light needs redesign so to become an acceptable street legal solution.

To be fair, every bicycle light on the market needs a redesign to have a proper pattern to meet SAE/DOT requirements for headlights.

In most parts of the world these lights are already legal as there are very few places that specify pattern requirements on bicycle lights. You may live in one of the few places in the world that regulates patterns on bicycle lights. The Lumenator is legal here.

 

[Rodney64]

Very good thread. I'm also in the hunt for a new light. I also have the cycle Lumenator and it just hasn't the range when travelling at 20mph. Its ok with street lighting.

 

[alsmith]

The fenix bt20 does look ok, the btr20 seems more practical with the handlebar switch, but I wouldn't buy it over the T6/U2 ebay lights without seeing beam shape pictures first- you could get 4 single led lights, or even 2, 3, 4 or more led lights for the cost of the single led bt20. Multiple lights would give much more light and can be pointed low, high, left, right to give a customisable light spread to whatever you want- not just whatever the light maker decided it should be.

 

[Alan B]

I've also considered combining several single beam lights into the desired pattern. I think it is a good idea but difficult to get what is needed. Each light would have to be adjusted in intensity as well as have a small enough pattern. Low beam setups should not allow the LED die to be visible by oncoming eyes to avoid the tiny ultrabright spot in their vision. Many of the cheap lights are unsuitable for this due to their wide patterns.

There are reviews with photos and videos showing beam patterns of the BT20 if you want to see that.

I rode with my BT20 on the homeward commute again last night in 13 miles of darkness. For a bicycle I'd call it excellent. I felt it was adequate for 15-20 mph. Visibility of the ground in front of the tire is very good. I adjusted it so there was very little light above the horizon. What I find is that the hotspot disappears if you raise the light too much. With the distance and the angle of the pavement it just doesn't send much light back above a certain angle (beyond a certain distance). I didn't try to accurately measure the distance, but beyond about 30 yards, it doesn't have enough intensity to illuminate adequately (given that your iris responds to the light coming back from close in). But if you angle the hotspot slightly down from "too far" it works well, and the light into driver's eyes is quite reduced (since the hotspot is well below the horizon). No drivers have flashed me when I run this light.

For more than 20 mph it was not as good as I'd like. It depends on the road, on my route there is a lot of debris and some imperfections in the surface that I need to see, and I need to see them in plenty of time to gently slow or adjust trajectory. I don't want to be making sudden last minute course corrections or brake applications.

It is interesting that having the sinewave controller with torque throttle facilitates smoothly running at varying speeds, so I adjust my speed for conditions including visibility from the headlight more easily than with the jerky control of the standard throttle to PWM type controllers that I was using before.

I may try a second light for a "high beam" that would be turned on and off and put more light well downrange. The BT20 makes a good low beam pattern with close in and medium range light and not much into oncoming eyes. When there is no oncoming traffic a brighter focussed flashlight type beam could be added for "high beam" to see farther out, but it must be fingertip controlled from the handlebars for safe use. The MagicShine 808e with standard lens might be good for this, as long as it is off when oncoming traffic is present. Since I have that I could try it, but there is a problem turning it on and off easily and quickly. Another possibility is one of the ebae lights with reflectors, not optics. The optic based lights spread the light too wide for a good long distance high beam. The multi-led small reflectors are probably also too wide beamed for this. To get the distance pattern takes larger, deeper reflectors.

Drive at a safe speed for your lights, even if it is slower than you'd like.

 

[friendly1uk]

Can I use two of these in series?
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Super-Bright-12V-85V-Universal-Motorcycle-E-bike-20W-LED-Modified-Headlight-Lamp-/400792305146?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&var=&hash=item5d51153dfa

I have 24s lifepo4 so I cant use these with the fully charged pack and I was wondering if I could use two in series.
If not going for the conventional way with a dc-dc.

One option is to bring out the midpoint of the pack so have two 50V supplies.

Another option is to series them but put 60V zeners across each of them to insure the voltage doesn't get too far out of balance.

This assumes they are power isolated to the case.

Thank You!
I was afraid its not that simple :lol: , I'll go for the DC-DC than.

Zeners might be easier

Not much to it.

 

[Alan B]

Those are low power zener diodes, they need to be rated adequately to handle the difference between the loads current needs of the two lights which is not precisely known, and their voltage rating should be greater than half the supply voltage.

 

[crea2k]

Just a bit of an oldskool suggestion here, but here in the UK, when you drive over to mainland Europe you are supposed to put headlight defelctors on your headlights, as out light point towards the left side of the road so not to blind the people on the right coming the other way, when in Europe it blinds the people coming the other way, so you are supposed to put these deflectors on, so it doesnt blind the people on the other side. Couldnt you just do this with the ebike lights and either mask off one side or put some kind of diffuser or fresnel lens on it, or literally just point them towards one side of the road ?.

http://www.halfords.com/car-seats-travel-equipment/driving-accessories/car-headlamp-converters/halfords-headlamp-converters

 

[The fingers]

http://www.cnet.com/news/orfos-creates-a-force-field-of-light-around-your-bike/ 8)

 

[amberwolf]

Although, if what you're after is the road being lit up around the bike to make you look larger, downlighting is a better solution than small bright single diffuse lights like those.


If you look at my CrazyBike2 (or Delta Tripper) you'll see white LED strips under tubes pionting down, lighting the road around the bike both rear and sides. The headlight takes care of the front, mostly, though there's some from the downlighting too, since the downtube lighting is angled forward (and thus is also directly visible from the front).

 

[Alan B]

What's the best color for downlighting? Red in the rear and white up front?

 

[SloNEZ]

Re: What's a good e bike headlight?

Unread postby The fingers » Thu Nov 06, 2014 1:30 am

http://www.cnet.com/news/orfos-creates-a-force-field-of-light-around-your-bike/ 8)

The guy doing this kickstarter is a former student!
I'm pulling for him

 

[The fingers]

I've seen the "laser" instant bike lane marker light, and it looks like this one outshines it by far. Lotta $green$ though. 8)

 

[amberwolf]

What's the best color for downlighting? Red in the rear and white up front?

Best might be relative to yoru situation, but I use white because it lights up everythign better. Since older license-plate-lights would light up the ground behind and around the back of a vehicle with white light anyway, it's where I got my inspiration to use them all over. There is a product called the Down Low Glow that uses (or used) CCFL tubes inside clear protective tubing. I was going to do that, at one point, but never did, as theyr'e so fragile I broke some just trying to get them setup. :/ But when LED aquarium strips came along supercheap on clearance, I jumped at the chance and strapped them on the bike. There are even cheaper and better ways of doing it, less fragile, but that's what I have.

As long as the actual light source itself is not visible to the rear, then in most places there's nothing illegal about having white light shining on the ground around the vehicle, or even lighting up the vehicle itself.


For instance, in an old scifi show Babylon 5 there are large towers on some of the ships specifically to hold lights to shine on the ships themselves to light up emblems, names, etc. While I wouldn't really wanna put stuff sticking out teh side of a car or bike to do that, if I already had a place to put them I'd be willing to.

ON my old DayGlo Avenger, I had planned to use UV LEDs under the bars and seat to shine on the dayglo paintjob, causing the bike to appear to glow at night. I never got past a quick test of the theory using some low-brightness LEDs out of an old cmputer fan, but the idea worked.

I've thought a number of times of placing white LEDs of very high brightness in similar places, to ligth up a regular bike itself, and the rider, without shining the lights on anything else. It'd require masking off parts of the light cone from each LED, and would be a PITA and very time consuming, but it would make an interesting spectacle and certainly make it easier to see the bike/rider at night.


But downlighting in white is about as far as I've gotten on a permanent basis.

 

[Alan B]

I like the UV idea, also will make the scorpions light up, and other things on the pavement perhaps.

 

[Eclectic]

What's the best color for downlighting? Red in the rear and white up front?

I am using waterproof red 5050 SMD strips (something like this: http://www.ebay.com/itm/2-x-Waterproof-White-SMD5050-50CM-30-LED-Flexible-Strip-Light-DC-12V-/351217007111?pt=US_Car_Lighting&hash=item51c62a3a07 only red) in the back. 12VDC and they can be cut every third led. They also have adhesive on the back so it was real easy to stick them on the bottom of trunk on the rear rack.

 

[Alan B]

I've been considering a red rear light bar to give some "width" to the bike. Having LEDs point both to the rear, and downward to light up the ground, would be interesting.

 

[amberwolf]

You might also look at MattyCiii's folding lefty light stick, if you really want width.

 

[Alan B]

I think I saw that. Interesting idea, I was thinking something a bit less wide.

Perhaps an aluminum "u" channel, say 2 feet wide, horizontal across at the rear of the rack, with the "U" down. One strip of red LEDs across the back, and another in the "U" pointed down.

Perhaps RGB individually addressable LEDs then the micro can do interesting things with position and color. On the forward outside edges perhaps a couple of amber or white LEDs facing forward. Make it swivel to vertical for parking.

But this thread is about headlights. So tonite I tried a "stock" MagicShine 808e together with the BT-20. The hotspots were overlapped and I really liked double the light in the central area. They are running on separate batteries so if one goes out for whatever reason the other will be unaffected. Redundancy. Two BT-20's would be even better.

Comparing the MagicShine 808e to the Fenix BT-20, they have similar hotspots but the Fenix pattern is more tuned for riding with more light down in front of the wheel and less in the top half of the pattern lighting up the oncoming driver's eyes. There is still plenty of light to illuminate signs and tree branches above when they are close.

The MagicShine has a reputation of bothering oncoming eyes, I think this is from the unblocked LED die that is visible from the forward direction, it is very small and very bright. The aftermarket spreading lens (fresnel, not a diffuser) I have on the other MagicShine blocks this and spreads the light out horizontally, so it reduces the "range" of the light somewhat but makes it more road friendly. I keep that one pointed toward the side of the road away from oncoming drivers but tonite I didn't run it. Right now I have four forward headlights plus a blinking white 6x6 LED array. Plenty of forward light, but I don't run them all at once.

 

[crea2k]

What's the best color for downlighting? Red in the rear and white up front?

I am using waterproof red 5050 SMD strips (something like this: http://www.ebay.com/itm/2-x-Waterproof-White-SMD5050-50CM-30-LED-Flexible-Strip-Light-DC-12V-/351217007111?pt=US_Car_Lighting&hash=item51c62a3a07 only red) in the back. 12VDC and they can be cut every third led. They also have adhesive on the back so it was real easy to stick them on the bottom of trunk on the rear rack.

Are they waterproof ?.

 

[The fingers]

I would like a programmable sequential flashing amber LED safety rear light bar about 3 feet wide, like the ones in the rear windows of police cars. 8)

 

[Alan B]

I'm thinking of Neopixel LEDs. Each RGB LED is individually programmable for color, and they can be pretty bright, and fairly waterproof.

http://www.adafruit.com/category/168

Instead of a "U" bar, an "L" bar with LEDs on the inside two surfaces mounted so the LEDs would point both back and down. You can make it whatever width you want, these LED strips are variable length. I put some of them on my GPS clock and they are really bright, I have to run them at about level 8 or 16 of 256 to be comparable to other LED displays. Turned all the way up they're too bright for nighttime viewing at close range, so they should be plenty for this. A 1 meter 60 LED strip in full power white mode is about 18 watts of efficient LED power!

An Arduino or Teensy can drive them, so you can make whatever arrangement you want, blink, turn signals, brake lights, pulsing, breathing, random, etc. Just be careful of the colors you program, the local police might get very testy if you use their special reserved color (usually blue). But white, red, amber should be fine, and maybe even purple, pink or orange. I would make it no wider than the handlebars so it doesn't actually make the bike "wider". There are times the handlebars are an impediment width wise. If the bar swivels into a vertical position easily that would be useful to get it out of the way when necessary.

This thread is about headlights, so not sure if the OP wants this tail-light and down-light discussion to be mixed in here.

 

[Eclectic]

Are they waterproof ?.

I don't have any practical experience with waterproof because I've never ridden my bike in foul weather (California is in its 3rd or 4th year of severe drought) but these led strips are totally encapsulated in clear plastic (probably vinyl). You may get some exposure when you cut the strip or when you strip back some of the coating to attach wires. They are just real easy to use. 12VDC, flexible, self adhesive and you can cut them at every third led.

I would like a programmable sequential flashing amber LED safety rear light bar about 3 feet wide, like the ones in the rear windows of police cars. 8)

I don't know about police safety bars but you can get 18" wide strips of leds that have the Knight Rider KITT flashing sequence.