Can you see in total darkness for a commute? It looks interesting. The only think I know about lights is that I like my MagicShine. The high mode is just want I want for high speed descents. The medium / low is good for flat roads as long as there's not too many potholes.

Hmmm...I'm skeptical but I'd love to give it a try. I have a similar system, but much less well engineered, that does not illuminate well enough to illuminate the road sufficiently (it complies with Danish standards but surely not German ones).

My biggest concern would be that the beam would be really narrow.

Still, pretty cool.

put a Schmidt. E6 halogen lamp on my new Bike Friday.. today,
I has their folding stem , a 1" quill in a 9/8 threaded fork
so had a mount for threaded headsets .. B&M , modified it to wedge on the
bottom part of the folding stem , it tapers a bit wider at the top, so a jammed fit at first .

will look for an O ring or so to make the grip better..

Need a wired taillight that will mount on a seat post,
as I have gotten to like my jump on and go lights .

I have a new generation SON and a Supernova E3 triple. 650 lumens. Very nice set up. I made a light shield to keep it from bothering oncoming traffic.

In today's world of good LED lights with long run-time and even better rechargeable batteries, LED battery lights really trump dyno lights. I do like dyno lights because they are always there - ready to go whether you forgot and left your light on and burned out the batteries, or you are hopping on the bike after letting it sit for months or years. The dyno is always ready. There are shortcomings of dyno lights of course, such as difficult maintenance, unit expense, no lights when stopped, etc.

However, if you are a regular commuter, you will be dialed in to your lights/battery needs, maintenance, and replacement timing.

If you do use a dyno, it is STILL a good idea to have some kind of battery light in addition so that you have some light when you stop. With an additional battery light, you can also have two focus zones on the road.

Standlights are pretty standard now so front/rear lighting remains for ~5 minutes after you stop pedaling. A flashlight is still handy for repairs though.

I completely and totally disagree with this idea, as it's the complete and total opposite - today's LED lights are what make dynamo's useful.

LED lighting has moved into both battery and dynamo powered light. But before LED lighting, dynamo lights were pathetic. The standard halogen dynamo lights were only "so other people can see me" kind of lights, like today's $20 light from the bike shop, here's a pic -

(from https://www.peterwhitecycles.com/headlights.asp ) -


The higher end lights put out this incredible narrow window of light so the road up ahead was lit up, but nothing off to the sides whatsoever -



In those days, if you wanted any sort of decent amount of light a battery pack was the only way to go, unless you were willing to ride in a little tunnel of light. People would rig up 2 of those halogen Schmidt e6's to try to get a wider beam. But a dynamo light was difficult to get to put out a decent amount of light for night riding.

The idea that LED lighting somehow only helped battery lights is...silly. Dynamo lighting was the biggest beneficiary, and dynamo lights have a limited amount of power from the wheel. Now with the same power LED dynamo lights could put out like 3 times as much light.

Here's a Lumotec Cyo (there's actually a small amount of light put off to the sides that you can't see in the pic, I know because I own one) -


If you prefer a less focussed beam, here's a Supernova e3 -


Here's an e3 triple -


LED lights have made dynamo lights more useful vs battery lights, not less useful. The advent of LED lighting has made it far more possible to use only a dynamo light for commuting (depending on your conditions and lighting needs) than it was before LED lighting. You were more likely to "need" a battery light before than you are now.

Almost all modern dynamo lights have a "standlight" that keeps the light producing about half power of the normal light when you come to a stop for something like up to 5 minutes, so your lights don't turn off when you stop.

The only thing this wouldn't work for is that it would be difficult to use to change a tire or work a chain back onto the bike as dynamo lights are usually physically attached to the bike and pointing straight ahead.

I just finished my dynohub setup, and even after only 2 days using it, you can have it when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers. I will never use battery lights again.

+(1/2) Only one of my bikes has a dynohub. As it turns out, i rode the other one the other night; the battery, which I thought was fully charged, gave out 2 miles from home. I relied on my puny helmet light, mumbling under my breath the whole way, "Why didn't I ride the other bike?"

And cue sheets. Can't read a cue sheet with a low mounted dyno lamp (or any non-head-mounted light). That's why in addition to my dyno lighting I have a Princeton Tec Quad (3x AAA) LED lamp on my helmet. Great for night time repairs, reading cue sheets, spotting street signs, and blinding your ride partners when you forget to turn it off and you look over at them to say something. X-P

LOL! :-D

Well, technically you can mount most dynamo lights on the handlebars...though they're designed more to be mounted on the front fork. The ones with a shaped beam are especially designed to be mounted at the fork, which I found out with my Cyo.

But that is one thing I didn't think about. :-)

Simple solutions are sometimes the best ones. I love it.
Damn, I shoulda gotten a triple

Nicely done!

+1 It's nice not to have to fret over topping off a battery charge. Or in the case of an unregulated charger to get back to unplug it after time is up.

I have a Supernova E3 Pro, and its standlight is so weak that it's on par with a keychain light powered by a button battery. It makes sense to me to have a battery-powered light, preferably with an indiscriminate "shotgun" beam pattern, to help show up in environments like this:



I have to make a left turn here. Not a good place for a headlight that drops to 10% power when stopped.

"10% of it's power when it's stopped" sounds like an exaggeration...however, regardless of what main front light I was using in those conditions, dynamo or high powered battery light, I would be running a second blinking front light anyways to identify me as a bike and be a little more eye-catching. I wouldn't want to rely on an "steady" light to be seen under those conditions, there's just to many other bright conflicting light sources.

How are other road users supposed to see you with your headlight hidden, though?

If anything, I'm exaggerating on the generous side. The E3 Pro's standlight is sufficient for pedestrians not to walk into you by accident if you're stopped on the MUP, and sufficient to maintain technical street-legal status for a couple minutes at a stoplight, but it's very weak, especially in the asymmetrical beam pattern where it's not putting much light above the horizon for oncoming traffic to see. I find it ideally suited to finding the keyhole on my apartment door, though

Hilariously, Supernova warns against looking into the headlight, because they think even the standlight is dangerously bright

haha, well, I don't want to argue as I have not used an e3 myself...I have a Cyo and the standlight is about 50% of full brightness.

I also want to say that I think I lost the emphasis I was going for in my previous post - point I was trying to make was that even with a 200-400 lumen battery light, in that kind of traffic I would still want to have a 2nd blinking light in order to stand out as a bike, regardless of how weak/powerful my primary front light was. Without a blinking front light you stand a good chance of getting lost in the sea of powerful car headlights. (This is not meant to disagree with your point - if it really is less than 10% that might go over the threshold into "completely invisible to drives", I've seen some people with some cheap AA powered lights that are so weak I actually couldn't even see them as a driver until I was about 10 feet away)

In retrospect, I should've gotten a Cyo too, if not an Edelux. I want to see forward, not from curb to curb.

My home built light incorporates a bank of super capacitors that provides a STAND LIGHT That Ive seen stay lit at some intesity for a tad over an hour.

My commercial inoled stand light function stays lit for as long as 10 Min.

"John"