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This bike light has turned into it's own little hobby. In addition to the high output bike light, I also have a lower output helmet light in the works, using:
- LED: Single Cree XP-G Q4 - warm white (3000K), on star board (ledupply.com, $6.25)
- Driver: 5-mode, 1000mA "3 x 7135" (IC) based, 3-4.5V input (dealextreme.com, $3.19)
- Lens: Various 20mm TIR lenses (ledsupply.com, $1.25 ea)
- Battery Holders: (2) 2 x 18650 Li-Ion battery holders (digikey.com, $3.80 ea)
- Batteries: 4 x 18650 Tenergy protected Li-Ion cells (2 cells, in series, for bike light, 1 or 2 cells, in parallel, for helmet light), with 2-channel charger (amazon.com, $46.99)
- Aluminum for housings, prototypes: 2" x 2" x 12" Aluminum Square Bar (speedymetals.com, $21.73)
- Heatsink: The Northbridge cooler from an old PC
Why don't you just hook a generator to your rear wheel for a power supply?
ReplyDeleteI don't think the old-style "generator touching wheel" would work well off-road, or even hopping curbs. The thing to do would be to use a dynamo hub, on the front wheel (don't seem to make them for the back). That would mean buying a hub and re-building my wheel - for all of my bikes ($60-100 per bike). That would get me about 6W - my light is a 10W. The other problem is that my bike uses a Cannondale "Lefty" shock, so it takes a unique "one-sided" hub, and I haven't been able to find a dynamo hub for that.
ReplyDeleteWhat I plan to do is get a 5W solar charger for all my rechargeable batteries, so at least I'm using free energy to charge them up.