Originally Posted by
RomansFiveEight
I imagine some folks might not have a dedicated commuter workhorse. Might be commuting on a bike that is also tasked with some other job.
My question (just a curiosity); is are there in-line batteries for dynamo lights? Where I'm at, rural, lots of inattentive drivers as night who aren't necessarily distracted but seriously caught up in 'highway hypnosis'. They are used to being alone on the road. I'd be concerned about sitting at stop signs without any light. But such a setup would be cool if it still had a rechargeable battery. I understand Dynamo's probably couldn't charge that battery, but it could be recharged at home and used in such a way to just 'augment' the lights; keeping them consistently bright and working when stopped. Then when rolling, the Dynamo takes over, etc. Does such a setup exist?
More curiosity than anything. Even in that situation, if the battery failed; you'd still have lights as long as you were moving.
Yeah, there are a few things like that.
The current tech is something called a "standlight," which is a capacitor built into a lot of modern dynamo lights. It powers the lights, often at a somewhat reduced level, for a few minutes even if the wheel isn't turning. That's relatively new technology (I first heard of them about ten years ago) and I really don't know much about it.
An older approach is just to have batteries in the lamp housing, and a switch; I have a Lucas headlight made in the early 50's the switch marked for three settings: D - O - B. D=dynamo, O=off, B=battery. It just takes regular batteries, and doesn't recharge them.
I'm not clear about what kind of batteries the old Sturmey Archer battery unit took:
Sturmey-Archer Heritage :: History
https://hadland.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/sadbu.pdf
And there's a DIY solution, where you wire up a bank of rechargeable batteries that you charge up in daytime riding and switch on when necessary; description
here, but I haven't tried it.