Huge fan of your products. I have the evo and by the end of this winter it’s all I used on my night rides. I started with this on my bars and a niterider pro 2200 on my helmet. I started leaving the niterider at home as it just wasn’t needed.

what is the benefit of this life over the evo? Just smaller and lighter?

 

Huge fan of your products. I have the evo and by the end of this winter it’s all I used on my night rides. I started with this on my bars and a niterider pro 2200 on my helmet. I started leaving the niterider at home as it just wasn’t needed.

what is the benefit of this life over the evo? Just smaller and lighter?

The cutoff beam pattern for road/gravel use. So you won’t blind oncoming traffic, pedestrians, etc.

Guess I didn’t exactly make that too clear. e we are still working on some new graphics and stuff.

 

The design brief for this was pretty simple. Take the Road Edition that many people loved, and make it wireless. We have decided to target this as our "middle of the range" light for road/gravel bikes. Meaning that it has a single 21700 Samsung 50E 5000mAh battery instead of an 18650 that's found in Hangover, or double 21700 cells that's found in Evo. Runtime is around 2 hours on high, 3 hours on adaptive. Lumen levels is around 1100-1200 which is actually less than our outgoing Road Edition, however improvements in the beam pattern control, efficiency, and being able to have the freedom to design the light around the reflector itself rather than the shell like in Road Edition, means that we have a MUCH better beam pattern and more throw. The light carpet improvement is truly one that you have to see in person to believe, pictures aren't capturing what a tremendously huge difference it is.

All sounds good, considering I never use max. output on my current "Road Edition" 1100-1200 lumens with a beam improvement should be more than enough. Any idea when the runtime charts will be added? Juicy post!!!
Mole

 

We've teased it long enough, we've finalized things well enough, that we think finally time to openly talk about it.

Still another 1.5-2 months (As of March 2022) till we can actually start shipping since we have to prioritize Evo and Hangover production in our PCB scheduling since we are out of those thanks to the IC chip shortage and needing to tweak the boards to work with different IC's. Though our hard parts are finalized, things have been tested, the beam pattern tweaked to perfection, and production has started on those parts. So with that in mind... Ta daahhhh!

DETOUR

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The design brief for this was pretty simple. Take the Road Edition that many people loved, and make it wireless. We have decided to target this as our "middle of the range" light for road/gravel bikes. Meaning that it has a single 21700 Samsung 50E 5000mAh battery instead of an 18650 that's found in Hangover, or double 21700 cells that's found in Evo. Runtime is around 2 hours on high, 3 hours on adaptive. Lumen levels is around 1100-1200 which is actually less than our outgoing Road Edition, however improvements in the beam pattern control, efficiency, and being able to have the freedom to design the light around the reflector itself rather than the shell like in Road Edition, means that we have a MUCH better beam pattern and more throw. The light carpet improvement is truly one that you have to see in person to believe, pictures aren't capturing what a tremendously huge difference it is.

Here are some photos comparing the new Detour to the Road Edition:
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As you can see, MUCH wider field of view, and a lot more lit up in front of the bike near the tire. The photo might make it look a slightly bit blown out near the leading edge, but rest assured in person the effect is not noticeable. In fact part of our delays to launching this product was because of two tweaks we needed to make to the reflector to perfect that beam pattern for a truly seamless riding experience.

Even though it is technically two different beams blended together, much like a lot of stvzo compliant cutoff beam pattern lights out there, I've been absolutely obsessive about making sure that the distribution on the ground is nearly perfect. Nothing annoys me more whether on a bike or in a car then having weird artifacts or dead zones in a beam pattern.

Same USB-C quick charging, same USB-C cables, same pass-through performance as all our other lights. It also uses our quick release mounting mechanism that we've been successfully utilizing on the Trail Evo and constantly making improvements to. We know that there are a lot of weird aero bars and strange handlebars coming out in the market so we have invested in a new Formlabs Fuse 1 SLS printer so that we can bring more custom mounting solutions in house. As we build up those mounts we'll launch them on the site.

For those with bike computers, we have a modified version of the quick release mounting shoe that has the gopro adapter built into it, so that can mount Detour underneath your bike computer while still using the quick release function. Evo is a bit too heavy for the mount so we've only sent that to customers who specifically requested, but it's perfect for Detour.

We are anticipating we'll launch this in late May 2022 or Early June.

We are NOT doing a pre-order, nor wanting to do a big ole surprise drop like we did with Evo because we are pretty much out of the original Road Editions right now so we are fine with letting everyone know this is coming. Instead we have a signup list where you'll be emailed as soon as it's available for purchase.

Head over to the product page, read some more deets, and sign up to be notified when it launches!

Detour Bike Light

Designed & assembled in the USA. Wide, perfectly even cutoff beam pattern that doesn't blinding oncoming riders, pedestrians or traffic while still being seen.

www.outboundlighting.com

Brilliant. Thank you. Been waiting for the thread and cannot wait to buy and compare to my Road edition.

 

Really looking forward to getting my hands on one of these! Any chance you could design a 3d printable 10mm adapter for this light that would allow it to attach to fork crown dynamo light mounts?

 

That is a good idea: I have a dynamo lighting bracket on the fork on a couple of bikes and if I could mount the Detour on that…

 

@Outbound if I were interested in the gopro QR mount, can/how can one be acquired?

 

We'll have it on the site once Detour is launched. Though now that Detour is "out there" and at least in sign-up stage, I guess I can get it on the site soon. Just need to source a nice bolt to include with it. The typical thumbscrew that comes with gopro accessories usually isn't enough torque to really hold it tight since it's just two flat surfaces (that's why we moved to serrated mating surfaces on the Quick Release angle adjustment for example).

Main thing we wanted to avoid is people buying it to put Evo on it. It can work, if you really torque the ever living crap out of it, but Evo is just simply too heavy for that style of mounting. Will have to put a large disclaimer on the page.

 

For those with bike computers, we have a modified version of the quick release mounting shoe that has the gopro adapter built into it, so that can mount Detour underneath your bike computer while still using the quick release function. Evo is a bit too heavy for the mount so we've only sent that to customers who specifically requested, but it's perfect for Detour.

I'm not quite following this. Are talking about hanging it from the underside of an out front type of Garmin/Wahoo mount so the light would be mounted upside down? If that's the case how does the beam cutoff feature work?

 

Not the greatest pics here, but mounted on a PNW stem. Tom has the Garmin stuff at his place in WA. Hope this clears it up.

 

Looks like exactly what I need for mounting this under the kedge out front mount I have on my road bike. I'm excited for the Detour. Been using the hangover, trail, or trail evo for my DRL's in the summer depending on which bike I'm on. All work fine, but the mounting is a bit strange on the hangover and the trail and evo are just over kill for a DRL.

 

Had a good time at Sea Otter talking about detour to a lot of folks. The NSMB guys got a few pics (along with a ton of other gorgeous ones) in this article: NSMB.com - Deniz' Excellent Adventure to Sea Otter

 

I've been waiting to order the Detour since I read about it in January, really looking forward to it! I know the challenges of supply chains/production of electronics right now, as I own my own small electronics company in an unrelated field. But I hope this light can be ready by the time I'm going on my first bikepacking trip soon.

I'm thinking the fork crown mount you mentioned above might work best for me, but do you think mounting it lower on the bike than the optics were designed for will noticeably affect the beam throw? I'm assuming it'll put more light close to the bike and less of it farther down the road, but maybe it wouldn't be enough to really matter.

 

I've been waiting to order the Detour since I read about it in January, really looking forward to it! I know the challenges of supply chains/production of electronics right now, as I own my own small electronics company in an unrelated field. But I hope this light can be ready by the time I'm going on my first bikepacking trip soon.

I'm thinking the fork crown mount you mentioned above might work best for me, but do you think mounting it lower on the bike than the optics were designed for will noticeably affect the beam throw? I'm assuming it'll put more light close to the bike and less of it farther down the road, but maybe it wouldn't be enough to really matter.

Probably not a big deal, but more difficult to aim. We deal with that problem with dynamo lights. Mounted at/next to the tire is fine, but it takes 5 minutes of futzing to get the setup correct.

 

It would be very cool to put a 1/4-20 thread in the back of the quick release mount for those that want some added options for hard mounting.

 

Unfortunately no room for a threaded insert of that size between the battery and the edge of the shoe. We’ll have a gopro adapter that works with the quick release that launches at the same time as Detour. So should be able to integrate that into any unique situations easily.

 

Got our 5000 units of hard parts in yesterday! Finally. We are now just waiting on our first batch of PCBAs to get run through and we can finally get rolling.

Have a new piece of automation coming in as well, an automated soldering machine that will help with the battery and pcb soldering to be absolutely perfect every time and increase our throughput substantially for Detour, Evo and our future products.

 

I am excited!

 

Nice little blurb on bicycling.com of one of our Pre-Production units that was run during the Unbound race last weekend.

All the Latest Gear from This Weekends Unbound Gravel

We Got up Close and Personal with Bikes from the 200 and 350XL Races, and Other Gravel Gear Rolling around Emporia.

www.bicycling.com

 

Tom is down at our PCBA supplier this week before Bentonville banging out the minor production issues and ironing those out. Our automated soldering machine showed up last week, and we've been greasing our Detour top shells all day, and have over 1000 of them at the ready.

Most likely going to do a soft launch here in a few days, and start shipping lights hopefully end of next week or early the following.

 

Most likely going to do a soft launch here in a few days, and start shipping lights hopefully end of next week or early the following.

Thanks for the update. Clicked to be notified on your site. Thinking this light may be the bicycle light high point of the year (not so much the 9000 lumen Race Face light bar).
Mole

 

Alright guys, going to do a soft release here. Website is open to purchase and will be shipping in the next two weeks. We have all the parts greased, boxes folded, manuals stuffed, and just waiting on PCBA stuff. Ran into some more minor issues that are just frustrating but we absolutely want them 100% complete before rolling into a launch. Not wanting this to be like when we launched Hangover, haha.

Really appreciate the patience, and really can't wait to finally get this rolling!

Detour Bike Light

Designed & assembled in the USA. Wide, perfectly even cutoff beam pattern that doesn't blinding oncoming riders, pedestrians or traffic while still being seen.

www.outboundlighting.com

We are just letting you guys know, and those that signed up on the email list. We'll be doing a full on launch with media blitz and all that when we are actually shipping to our first customers.

 

Hi guys, what is the status of the Detour light? I placed my order nearly a month ago and it hasn't shipped. When I placed the order, the product page said shipping date would be in July.

Currently, the web page says orders placed now will ship in "Early August". It says the light is in full production.

For an order placed about a month ago, what is the realistic shipping timeline going to be?


Thanks

 

a $258 light with shipping and taxes included for europeans, phew. Was looking forward to it but that's a bit rich, unfortunately :/ For those not having to pay that much, I'm sure this light knocks it out of the park!

 

Yep, unfortunately just no way around taxes and duties these days. Used to be able to fly under the radar a bit, but now we gotta play with the big boys.

Now that our production has been able to scale with the investments of a new robotic systems and the warehouse space, we are hoping to actually be ahead of inventory, and can start investing in 3PL systems in the EU to expand our presence there.

 

Yesssss! Order placed. Hopefully I'll have it in time for my August trip 🥳

 

Thanks Matt! Really looking forward to the detour. Lately I've been revisiting a lot of my test lights that would be considered competition for the detour so should have relatively fresh impressions for comparison. Placed my order, can't wait!!!!
Mole

 

Does the GoPro adapter come with the light? I did not see the GoPro adapter on your website.

 

Just the standard quick release with 31.8 and 35mm bars comes with the light. The GoPro (officially have to say Action Camera mount) one is here: Outbound Lighting -- Quick Release Action Camera Mount — Outbound Lighting

 

Annnndddd time to spend some money.

 

I love this kind of beam, very useful in any situation.

I have read constant current so no PMW problems on this light, and I like that too a lot.
I really appreciate with the runtime graph which highlights an excellent Total lumen output data.
1.8h in high is very good performance.

I would have preferred aluminum as a material of the case, but I understand that the choice fell on a synthetic material.

I was almost certainly not good looking for this information on the site, so I write here to ask for some details:
1)
CREE XD16 led but there are different variant of this led, which model is present here?
What data of
Ra
R9
CCT
DUV

2)
Another important information I would like to know would be that of the max throw.

3)
is the firmware customizable?

Thank you very much.

 

I would have preferred aluminum as a material of the case, but I understand that the choice fell on a synthetic material.

I was almost certainly not good looking for this information on the site, so I write here to ask for some details:
1)
CREE XD16 led but there are different variant of this led, which model is present here?
What data of
Ra
R9
CCT
DUV

2)
Another important information I would like to know would be that of the max throw.

3)
is the firmware customizable?

Thank you very much.

Thanks for the questions! Hopefully my answers don't sound too arrogant, but here we go.

Regarding the aluminum, I am assuming you believe this to be the superior material because of a higher thermal conductivity number? I've explained it in the past on the other products (that use magnesium), but the thermal conductivity of a material is only one part of the thermodynamic equation. When we look at the problem as a whole, the heat generator (The LED), the vias to the PCBA, the PCB material, the copper vias, the thermal grease, the actual substrate material itself (thermally conductive plastic vs aluminum in this case), the surface area of the heat sink, and finally the actual convection rate of the air, we'll find that the actual greatest bottleneck is the convection rate of the air stream at low airspeeds (under 20mph for example).

So basically no matter how incredibly efficient the heat sink material might be (even if we used copper for example) the actual temperature of the LED, which is what we ultimately care about, won't decrease because the bottleneck is how effectively we can remove the heat via convection off the surface of the material. The only way to counter that is by increasing the surface area of the heat sink or increase the airspeed.

So instead of a small aluminum heatsink, we use a large thermally conductive housing with the fins placed into the airstream to increase the surface area. This means that we aren't bound to the conventional materials of aluminum which constrains how we can produce the light. Instead we can focus on the really cool materials that have a lower thermal conductivity because in the entire thermodynamic equation, it's not a bottleneck. Plus the heat generation rate of the LED is low enough (600 lumens per LED, spread part across the light) that we aren't overwhelming the material.

One other benefit of the thermally conductive plastics is that it significantly reduces the "how hot the light is" feel. The actual surface temperature is the same, but because the thermal conductivity is lower, when you pick up the light it takes longer for the heat to transfer to your hands. So the light ultimately doesn't "feel" as hot as an equivalent magnesium or aluminum based light, which is an unintended side effect, but a positive one from a customer perspective.

-----------------

The LED is a 5700K, 80CRI standard bin XD16.

The other specifics are pretty irrelevant due to the selection of components from a distribution of LED's that we'll recieve from CREE, as well as the fact that the light shifts when it hits the reflector and passes through the polycarbonate lens, so the color specifics will be slightly different than what's on a datasheet.

These are the same LED's that we've been using in Trail Evo and recently switched Hangover to these LEDs as well (tweaked the optic to optimize it as well), and people seem to love it.

----------------

Firmware is not customizable.

 

thanks,
your explanation was very comprehensive.
I really appreciated your long examination of the material.
I guess you did a study on heat dissipation, so I don't question the dissipation capacity, in fact it was not my intention to make a criticism.
from the web I am very appreciative of your products.

I answer your question:
I prefer aluminum because I prefer metal objects.
Mine is just a preference, just my point of view. I think that a metal is more durable than a synthetic material that tends to deteriorate over time and with atmospheric agents; in short, aluminum gives me a premium feeling.

Thanks for the information on led tech spec.
5700k is cold but certainly less than the 6500k often found on bike headlights.
generally very cold LEDs are chosen because they have a better performance lumen/watt.
However, I prefer neutral white LEDs with HiCRi and small DUV, possibly with a good value of R9 because it allows to better discriminate shadows and depth by increasing the contrast.
currently the LEDs with these characteristics have also significantly improved the lumen / watt performance, the nichia 519a have excellent performance, the gt-fc both 40 and 60 give really excellent both performance and light quality and have high CRI> 90 and very good R9 value.

congratulations on your products.
they're very interesting.
the new quick release system is also very nice.

talking to the builders is a privilege.

nice to meet you.
I hope to read the news about your products again and sorry for my English.

 

As a person working with thermoplastics a.k.a "plastics", OutBound is employed highly advanced thermoplastics which is rarely seen in the bike light industries, so that’s good for pushing the boundaries in the bike light market. They open up a broad range of new opportunities for “thermal management” which can act as metal alternative as traditional heat removal applications.

I can’t speak what thermoplastics which Outbound use, since I am only familiar with SLS/MJF based nylon powder.

The main benefits is, thermoplastics is more lightweight which is appreciated by weight weenies since the main market of this light is swift roadies.

aluminum gives me a premium feeling.

For metal equivalent of lightweight material, magnesium is quite common, some fork body and pedal already used them, Trail Evo bike light which developed earlier is also using magnesium as main casing, resulting the most lightweight 2x21700 equipped bike light as for I writing this, compared with other 2x21700 bike light in the market such as Ravemen PR2400, Magicshine RN3000 and Moon Rigel Max, thanks to magnesium.

I think that a metal is more durable than a synthetic material that tends to deteriorate over time a

Not all thermoplastics created equal, the mostly deteriorating over time usually ABS plastics exposed by sunlight and outdoor. Every industrial thermoplastics is have specific characteristics depending the material, e.g very durable with sunlight, not brittle in the freezing condition, flame retardants, some of them even more expensive than metal.

 

We are hoping we can start running parts through our production line on Monday now. It honestly feels like this thing is cursed from the development standpoint. Hard parts took some tuning for the reflector to be just right, but we got that all squared away and finished up 2 months ago as you saw, and was ready to roll.

Lots of unforseen issues in our PCB that we could have patched and shipped, but we want to do things right for long term stability. Anyone remember the original hangover issues? The whine that I literally couldn't hear because I'm hard of hearing? 😅 Or the original die cast aluminum Evo mounts? We always know there will be something, but man between global part supply problems, constant redesigns because of the inability to secure large quantities of drivers that we need, and then finding strange things happening in testing, it's been a ride.

Here is a blurb that Tom wrote out to customers asking for updates in the last day or so:

Short answer: we expect to start shipping orders on Monday and finish clearing out all existing orders on the books by Thursday. In slightly more detail: we finally got the new PCBs from our vendor after having to redo them to address a quality concern, then I spent 12 hours a day for 5 days straight through the weekend beating my head against the wall to address some unforeseen "features" of a new driver we ended up switching to because of parts supply issues, just last night I got through a second round of validation testing with the "final" firmware modifications and everything looks good, so I released production at our PCB vendor in Arizona, they're getting me the first few boards overnighted today so I'll have them tomorrow, I'll do additional sampling over the weekend and runtime testing, then the rest of the volume will start coming in Monday to HQ where we'll assemble, do more final testing, and start shipping them out the door. So if we don't have any more delays or problems, then we'll start shipping early next week and should be able to get enough through to clear out all orders on the books by Thursday, and this is why I hesitate to give finite dates for anything, because it's never just a matter of receiving stuff, slapping it together, and tossing it in a box. We are in the home stretch now!

I was looking back at some emails, and we had paid for the tooling for our hard parts 14 months ago.... thinking we could launch in late fall or early winter.... ha......ha.......ha........ Oyi.

However!

We got our new soldering robot online, and a box folding machine just arrived yesterday that I have gotten online and running. Have a cobot arm coming in a few weeks to be demonstrated by our friends at Promation to think about applications for it in the near future.

If you want to see more of the robotics/printing/behind-the-scenes stuff going on at Outbound, can check out our TikTok (groan, i know):

TikTok - Make Your Day

 

We are hoping we can start running parts through our production line on Monday now. It honestly feels like this thing is cursed from the development standpoint. Hard parts took some tuning for the reflector to be just right, but we got that all squared away and finished up 2 months ago as you saw, and was ready to roll.

Lots of unforseen issues in our PCB that we could have patched and shipped, but we want to do things right for long term stability. Anyone remember the original hangover issues? The whine that I literally couldn't hear because I'm hard of hearing? 😅 Or the original die cast aluminum Evo mounts? We always know there will be something, but man between global part supply problems, constant redesigns because of the inability to secure large quantities of drivers that we need, and then finding strange things happening in testing, it's been a ride.

Here is a blurb that Tom wrote out to customers asking for updates in the last day or so:



I was looking back at some emails, and we had paid for the tooling for our hard parts 14 months ago.... thinking we could launch in late fall or early winter.... ha......ha.......ha........ Oyi.

However!

We got our new soldering robot online, and a box folding machine just arrived yesterday that I have gotten online and running. Have a cobot arm coming in a few weeks to be demonstrated by our friends at Promation to think about applications for it in the near future.

If you want to see more of the robotics/printing/behind-the-scenes stuff going on at Outbound, can check out our TikTok (groan, i know):

TikTok - Make Your Day

Ahh, I think I have gotten confused, because I have seen photos of (what looks like) finished Detour lights, here in this thread. I assumed the production line was up and running. Maybe those were test units, or maybe there are inner components that still need to be installed? You are open and honest with what's going on, but you mention technical terms (light components) that I don't understand. I see a photo of a Detour light, I assume it's totally finished.

I haven't been this anxious for a bike light since back in the day, when I upgraded from a crappy incandescent light running on (2) C batteries, to a Nite Rider Firestorm (HID light). My current lights (when riding on the road) have black electrical tape over the top 1/3 of the light/lens, to block the stray light from dazzling drivers. I get flashed on the road every ride (and not the good kind of flash!) if I let my 'regular' bike lights shine in a 360° pattern. I've seen it from a drivers perspective; it's pretty annoying. I'm not saying we need any laws or regulations in the U.S. to regulate bike lights, but we do need good lights such as Outbound's Detour so riders can see, be seen, and still be courteous to other riders (on the trail) and drivers (on the road)


P.S. - I didn't see that TikTok update because, well, it's Tik Tok!

 

Got a shipping confirmation for my Detour today!
Mole