Light and motion
 

I have a light and motion VIS360 that died on me last night. When it is plugged in, it blinks for a few seconds, then becomes solid green. Any ideas how to get it to charge?

Dave

Moved from "Road"

Have you tried contacting L&M? If your battery is dead, that wouldn't surprise me as a lot of negative reviews mentioning that happening was what put me off from buying one myself.

I sent them a message, but they haven't responded yet. Went thru the troubleshooting steps on their website already.

Batteries don't last forever, even lithium ion. My buddy had the light for years, and put it thru a lot of use. He upgraded to a different light, and passed it on to me maybe 2 years ago. I ride at night a lot, and use it on every ride. From what I understand it is discontinued too. Would love to get it going again, but it's probably not worth shipping to the UK for service if it comes to that.

Dave

I have a couple of L&M lights -- Urban 500 and Rando 500. While they're reliable, compact and bright enough, they don't appear to be serviceable in any way. And the rubber band mounts tend to break after about a year. I had to switch to a Two-Fish velcro type light mount for my Urban 500, but the battery won't hold a charge anymore. The Rando 500 is going on two years old, the strap is still good, but the runtime is greatly diminished now and probably won't last another year.

I've mostly switched to NiteRider headlights, which are very comparable, a bit bulkier, but seem to be accessible for replacing the rechargeable batteries. And the Lumina Dual LED 1800 is outstanding, with a beam broad enough to cover typical two-lane rural highways edge to edge, and a lens that helps distribute the beam evenly and cut off the top to avoid blinding oncoming traffic. I checked out the L&M dual LED lights and they weren't really comparable. In the same price range the NiteRider is a better value.

Thanks for the idea. My Dad has a Niterider, and they have a nice quality feel to them. Looks like the Lumina Micro650 would be a nice option for a helmet mounted light, at a fraction of the Light and Motion price.

Have you tried prying open the case? It has been a while, but I remember popping apart the battery/rear light (vis360+) to check the weather sealing (not impressed, as an aside). Cannot recall the battery, but I wonder if there is not a DIY way to replace it like you can do with other brands (Cycliq comes to mind). Not exactly apples to apples, but worth a try if Light and Motion does not reply. I remember the company offering service for their lights, but wonder if that is no more. The design and quality of the newest version of the Vis360 seems to be less than the previous model, which makes me question if they service their lights.

I opened it up, and removing the battery was very easy. There's a small connector on the circuit board, and it popped right off. There was a part # on the battery, but nothing comes up on a Google search for the part #.

Dave

Try a search for the battery on the bay?

It doesn't sound, from your description, like an exhausted battery. I think that, before it got to the point of not even charging, you would've noticed the battery's charge diminishing dramatically.

In other words, I think that replacing the battery would be wasted time and money. But I could be wrong.

Unplug it and plug it back in again. Repeat as many times as there are cells in the battery.
it’s the BMS, or balancing device, trying to give each cell an equal charge.
Happens with my Canon camera.