Electronics, Lighting, & Gadgets - Supernova E3: connecting a taillight from another brand?

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Madsnail
01-17-09, 10:00 AM
Is this at all possible to connect a taillight from a different brand to the Supernova E3?
I bought a Supernova E3 thinking it would be compatible with any dynamo powered taillight out there. It never occurred to me that it could be a problem, I thought it would be similar to B&M or Schmidt headlights.
Now I find myself scratching my head: the Supernova E3 has two wires for the taillight, a red one and a blue one, but my B&M Seculite Plus taillight only came with one black wire, and as far as I can see it has one connector for power and one for the ground.
Is there any way that I can hook this up together?
PS: Sorry if this is a stupid question, but I'm a complete idiot when it comes to electrical matters.
highroller
01-17-09, 03:31 PM
try connect the red wire so it touch the bike frame for 1 wire lights.
BarracksSi
01-18-09, 05:09 PM
Does this help?
http://bumm.de/docu/download/330alk-e.pdf
It mentions cables for both current and ground.
Madsnail
01-18-09, 11:52 PM
Thanks for the replies.
Actually I know which connectors are for power and for ground on the tail light. The problem is that I don't think the Supernova E3 has any grounding (really not sure about that), yet I still get 2 cables, one red and one blue to connect the tail light...
highroller seems to suggest that the red wire is the ground, though I'd like to get more opinions on the proper wiring pattern.
PaulRivers
01-20-09, 05:04 PM
You probably already know this, so feel free to ignore it, but I just wanted to mention that you definitely connect at least one tail light to the E3 - Supernova sells their own tail light that's meant to be connected to the E3, though it's about $70.
BarracksSi
01-20-09, 06:06 PM
Ah -- that's this one:
http://www.supernova-lights.com/newsite/e3_tail_light.html
http://harriscyclery.net/itemdetails.cfm?ID=2762
Madsnail
01-21-09, 12:04 AM
huhuhu, thanks guys, but you're right, I know about it already. I'm not interested for 2 reasons:
1/ As I said, I already have a tail light. (since I had it before buying the Supernova E3, I should have checked for compatibility...)
2/ I don't have a rack yet, meaning I would need the seatpost mounted version that is more like 140$.
I've read somewhere yesterday that the Supernova E3 converts the AC from the dynamo to DC which goes through those red and blue wires. Something tells me my tail light takes AC and that just won't work, but I have no idea if this is correct or not. Also, I'm wondering in this case if I should just plug my tail light directly on the dynamo somehow...
Try connecting the red wire to the "+" terminal and the blue wire to the ground terminal on the taillight.
Even if the headlight converts the AC to DC, it should still flow through the taillight just fine.
Alternatively, you could wire the taillight directly to the terminals of the dynamo. If you do this, you will have no on/off control of the taillight so you should leave the headlight turned on at all times to prevent the possibility of overdriving the taillight. This is a good safety practice anyway.
Madsnail
01-21-09, 02:44 PM
Try connecting the red wire to the "+" terminal and the blue wire to the ground terminal on the taillight.
Even if the headlight converts the AC to DC, it should still flow through the taillight just fine.
Thanks supcom, that did it! I felt really stupid with this thing... Thank you very much for the help.
(PS I think I've seen your name in the long distance cycling section of the forum. I hope to post there next time, I bought the light for long distance rides.)