PaulRivers

Well, I guess I should tell the whole story.

I bought a new bike (a Civia Hyland) and it came with a dynamo front hub and a Shimano dynamo light. The Shimano light is craptastic - it has no standlight so it's not even a useful "be seen" light, uses a halogen bulb which puts light out about 10 feet in front of you max, it has a 2nd led that blinks while you're riding (again, no standlight on that either) that you can't turn off (I prefer to turn off my lights in this one particularly sketchy area) and no way to hook up a tail light.

So I went online and did a bunch of research about dynamo lights. I ended up buying a Lumotec Cyo as it appeared to have 90% of the light output and illumination of the higher priced lights (like the Schmidt Edelux and the Supernova e3) for half the cost ($110 vs $200). I ordered it, had it installed (that was a trip, to, but it's a whole 'nother story"). It's worked great - the beam pattern is really very useful, and I can't believe a dynamo light puts out this kind of light - it's all I ever need for fair weather riding in the complete dark, and almost all I need for riding in the rain and with intermittent street lights (I really like a lot of light, and to be fair I complained that my $400 Dinotte 600L light didn't quite shine out far enough either). But really - a very worthwhile purchase.

So then I took a look at the dynamo rear lights. According to my reading of the Peter White site, the "DToplight XS Plus" was the only rack mounted tail light that would work with my average 6 volt shimano dynamo (turns out I was incorrect, and he's since updated the wording on his site). It was a little ugly looking on his site, but I really liked how it looked like it was as wide as the bike and would light up an entire bar of red light on the back of my bike.



Well, I ordered it and got it, but:
1. It's even uglier in person
2. It doesn't light up the reflector part - only the middle where the LED's are lights up.

According to the Peter White site, the "6 volt Busch&Müller DToplight Plus", which also doesn't light up the entire bar across the back looks much nicer, but has been discontinued and no longer sold.

However, after this I found out that the "Busch&Müller 4DToplight Senso Multi" (the one I currently have, that I'm asking about) does actually have 4 LED's - 2 in the middle, and one on each side, so it should light up a bar the entire width of the back of the bike. It comes in a dynamo version. So I ordered it. I figured that the standlight in my front light (the Cyo) would power it, or if it didn't worst case the batteries would take the place of the standlight.

But now that I have it, my experience with it has been that:
1. The Cyo doesn't provide any standlight power to the taillight.
2. The 4DToplight doesn't appear to have a "standlight via the battery", it has "always on", "completely off", and "dynamo power w no standlight".

I tracked down the manual online today, and it says the light has these settings:

„0”: The light operates like a conventional dynamo powered rear light, battery operation is not possible.
„1”: The rear light shines permanently if batteries are installed. When the dynamo is engaged the rear light is automatically powered by the dynamo whilst riding. Without batteries or in the case of dead batteries the light works like a conventional dynamo rear light. When the dynamo is not engaged the light can be used as a battery rear light.
„S”: If the dynamo is not released the light/dark and motion sensor automatically activates the light (powered by batteries) in the case of motion and darkness or poor light. When stationary the light continues to shine for up to four minutes. Upon first using position „S” the light will automatically shine for up to four minutes regardless of external factors.

The "S" position didn't seem to work at described. Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that I was spinning the front wheel but wasn't actually riding the bike around and thus the bike wasn't moving. I'd prefer a real standlight vs batteries, but at this point I'd be willing to deal with batteries that only power the light for the standlight part - even with daily riding you'd think the batteries would last a full year of riding. I'll try riding it around on "S" tonight and see what happens. If it stays on after I stop for 4 minutes, then turns off, that would be good enough.

I was just hoping that someone else had this same light and would be able to say "mine stays on when powered by the dynamo for several minutes after the bike stops moving, then turns off" or "mine doesn't stay on unless I put it on never-turn-off battery power, either".