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I was cleaning up my workshop and I started pulling out all my old DIY bike lights. Thought it would be interesting to put together a little history.
1995
I really wish I still had my first DIY bike light or at least pictures. Let's just say it was rather crude. A fog light assembly from the auto parts store, a primitive bar mount, a huge square heavy 7ah sealed lead acid battery that I mounted on a rear rack.
1997
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Light head made from plumbing parts, 20 watt GE MR16 halogen bulb, battery belt made from 11 - 1.2v 5ah Nicad D Cells.
This may look like a beast by todays standards, but it was a big step up. You still really noticed the added weight and it really sucked when you fell on the batteries and got a big bruise on your hip. But at least I didn't have to stop every 2 miles and re-strap the big lead acid battery to the bike rack.....
1999
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Aluminum light head, 20 watt MR-11 bulb, 11 - 1.2v 4.5ah Nimh 4/3 A Cells
I bought a lathe and mill and started manually machining my housings. That and the switch to much smaller and lighter 4/3A nimh cells was a massive improvement. At this point you can still feel the weight of the light, but not so much that it really changed the way you rode. Run time was about 2 hours and you could carry a second battery for longer rides, but then you really started feeling the weight especially if you were running a bar and helmet and 4 battery packs.
2002
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Welch Allyn 10 watt HID bulb and ballast, custom controller mounted to camelback strap, 11 - 1.2v 4.5ah Nimh 4/3 A Cells
When Welch Allyn came out with the 10w HID bulb and ballast I was dying to give the new technology a try. The main motivation was longer runtime and the increased brightness. I was lucky because when they first introduced 10w HID parts, you could buy a developer's kit for $500 dollars that included 4 bulbs and ballast. That worked out really nicely since my wife and 2 daughters had really gotten into riding by this point. We were starting to do 24 hour races as a family so 4 light were just the ticket.
The HID ballast wasn't regulated so the brightness varied a fair amount with battery voltage. The ballast also didn't like being run over voltage and since they were pretty expensive parts I decided to build a custom controller. The controller regulated the voltage so I could run the light right up at peak brightness, provided a battery fuel gauge, low battery shutoff, and included an integrated charger. It connected to the camelback strap so it was really easy to turn the light on and off and see battery status. Since it provides voltage regulation, I was able to update all my HID light to li-ion batteries in 2006 by just getting new battery packs.
I'll have to say these lights served us well. We really put them through a lot over 6 years of use and they've been amazing reliable. I never saw the amount of bulb and ballast failure that seem to be pretty common in the Niterider and L&M HID light that have 3+ years of use. I attribute that to the metal housing which does a much better job of dissipating the heat compared to the commercial lights plastic housings.
There are a couple of things that I didn't like about HID light in general. This may sound very odd to folks on this forum, but I thought they were too bright given the fact that you can't effectively dim an HID light. I really like to run both a bar and a helmet light and I always thought two HID lights was more light than I needed. As a result, I ended up using only a helmet light most of the time.
Mostly because I was just curious to try them out, I've updated 2 of these lights to the new 1000 lumen NGX bulb and ballast. That makes them incredibly bright and they have a really nice beam pattern. But they use even more power, which shortens the runtime for extra lumen I still don't think I really need. The NGX ballast does have a high and low mode, but the low mode is about the same brightness as the original HID.
2008
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Combinations of triple and quad XREs and XPGs, bflex driver, 4 cell 18650 li-ion battery
I'll have to say that my HID lights worked so well that it actually slowed my progress toward moving to LED based lights. But, the desire for longer runtimes, less weight, and multiple brightness levels finally created the needed motivation. I also updated my lathe and mill to CNC, which helped with taking the manual labor out of the machining. A friend of mine that is big into model rocketry also got me into DIY anodizing.
I always run a bar and helmet light now and I almost never run these lights on high. Typically I run them at 700ma and I also tend to use broader beam patterns than the HID lights to spread the light over a wider area. I can say without any doubt, this is the by far the best night riding setup I've ever had.
Here are few more pictures that show some of the details of the construction.
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And a final picture....the whole collection of machined lights.
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2009
So what does this coming year hold.... The only thing that slightly annoys me about my current setup is the weight of the helmet light on really long rides. It's down to about 70 grams with the current light, but a DIYer can never be completely happy.
For my next project, I'm working on a 20mm triple XPG helmet light. To keep the weight down, I'm not going to put the driver in the light head. The plan is to build a custom driver and combine that with the battery pack. The driver will include li-ion protection circuitry, multiple high efficiency buck regulators, remote temperature sensing, a variable brightness mode based on light head temperature. I'm also considering building li-ion charging into the PCB, but the jury is still out on that one. Another idea is to make the battery / driver assembly such that it can clip onto a camelback strap. But I need to do some experimentation to see how well that works.
I'm also going to anodize a lot more of the lights. I have a bunch of nice colors from caswell to try.
1995
I really wish I still had my first DIY bike light or at least pictures. Let's just say it was rather crude. A fog light assembly from the auto parts store, a primitive bar mount, a huge square heavy 7ah sealed lead acid battery that I mounted on a rear rack.
1997
Light head made from plumbing parts, 20 watt GE MR16 halogen bulb, battery belt made from 11 - 1.2v 5ah Nicad D Cells.
This may look like a beast by todays standards, but it was a big step up. You still really noticed the added weight and it really sucked when you fell on the batteries and got a big bruise on your hip. But at least I didn't have to stop every 2 miles and re-strap the big lead acid battery to the bike rack.....
1999
Aluminum light head, 20 watt MR-11 bulb, 11 - 1.2v 4.5ah Nimh 4/3 A Cells
I bought a lathe and mill and started manually machining my housings. That and the switch to much smaller and lighter 4/3A nimh cells was a massive improvement. At this point you can still feel the weight of the light, but not so much that it really changed the way you rode. Run time was about 2 hours and you could carry a second battery for longer rides, but then you really started feeling the weight especially if you were running a bar and helmet and 4 battery packs.
2002
Welch Allyn 10 watt HID bulb and ballast, custom controller mounted to camelback strap, 11 - 1.2v 4.5ah Nimh 4/3 A Cells
When Welch Allyn came out with the 10w HID bulb and ballast I was dying to give the new technology a try. The main motivation was longer runtime and the increased brightness. I was lucky because when they first introduced 10w HID parts, you could buy a developer's kit for $500 dollars that included 4 bulbs and ballast. That worked out really nicely since my wife and 2 daughters had really gotten into riding by this point. We were starting to do 24 hour races as a family so 4 light were just the ticket.
The HID ballast wasn't regulated so the brightness varied a fair amount with battery voltage. The ballast also didn't like being run over voltage and since they were pretty expensive parts I decided to build a custom controller. The controller regulated the voltage so I could run the light right up at peak brightness, provided a battery fuel gauge, low battery shutoff, and included an integrated charger. It connected to the camelback strap so it was really easy to turn the light on and off and see battery status. Since it provides voltage regulation, I was able to update all my HID light to li-ion batteries in 2006 by just getting new battery packs.
I'll have to say these lights served us well. We really put them through a lot over 6 years of use and they've been amazing reliable. I never saw the amount of bulb and ballast failure that seem to be pretty common in the Niterider and L&M HID light that have 3+ years of use. I attribute that to the metal housing which does a much better job of dissipating the heat compared to the commercial lights plastic housings.
There are a couple of things that I didn't like about HID light in general. This may sound very odd to folks on this forum, but I thought they were too bright given the fact that you can't effectively dim an HID light. I really like to run both a bar and a helmet light and I always thought two HID lights was more light than I needed. As a result, I ended up using only a helmet light most of the time.
Mostly because I was just curious to try them out, I've updated 2 of these lights to the new 1000 lumen NGX bulb and ballast. That makes them incredibly bright and they have a really nice beam pattern. But they use even more power, which shortens the runtime for extra lumen I still don't think I really need. The NGX ballast does have a high and low mode, but the low mode is about the same brightness as the original HID.
2008
Combinations of triple and quad XREs and XPGs, bflex driver, 4 cell 18650 li-ion battery
I'll have to say that my HID lights worked so well that it actually slowed my progress toward moving to LED based lights. But, the desire for longer runtimes, less weight, and multiple brightness levels finally created the needed motivation. I also updated my lathe and mill to CNC, which helped with taking the manual labor out of the machining. A friend of mine that is big into model rocketry also got me into DIY anodizing.
I always run a bar and helmet light now and I almost never run these lights on high. Typically I run them at 700ma and I also tend to use broader beam patterns than the HID lights to spread the light over a wider area. I can say without any doubt, this is the by far the best night riding setup I've ever had.
Here are few more pictures that show some of the details of the construction.
And a final picture....the whole collection of machined lights.
2009
So what does this coming year hold.... The only thing that slightly annoys me about my current setup is the weight of the helmet light on really long rides. It's down to about 70 grams with the current light, but a DIYer can never be completely happy.
For my next project, I'm working on a 20mm triple XPG helmet light. To keep the weight down, I'm not going to put the driver in the light head. The plan is to build a custom driver and combine that with the battery pack. The driver will include li-ion protection circuitry, multiple high efficiency buck regulators, remote temperature sensing, a variable brightness mode based on light head temperature. I'm also considering building li-ion charging into the PCB, but the jury is still out on that one. Another idea is to make the battery / driver assembly such that it can clip onto a camelback strap. But I need to do some experimentation to see how well that works.
I'm also going to anodize a lot more of the lights. I have a bunch of nice colors from caswell to try.
