Solstice reading: article for the dynamo lighting curious
 

From Bikepacking:

https://bikepacking.com/plan/dynamo-...harging-guide/

A bit bikepacking-oriented (fair enough) and far from a broad market survey, but on the whole, not too bad.

I've no experience with dynamo hubs yet, but I've just done two vintage bikes with bottle dynamos - one mixte and one dutch bike - and when weight is not an issue for city commuting, I think they're a brilliant inexpensive solution. You can get a full kit off aliexpress (front & rear lights + bottle dynamo) for less than €20.

I have dynamos on all my bikes, including my Salsa Mukluk fatbike. My experience pretty much mirrors what the article says. Still use them but.

Thanks for posting. That is a very good article, quite complete. As I was reading it, I was often thinking that they should have mentioned some point, but typically found that it was covered later.

Bike tourists and commuters often have a flashing taillight on, without headlight. If you want a daytime flasher, use a battery light. I have battery powered lights on most of my bikes that also have dyno powered lighting for that reason.

Many of the headlights and taillights are reasonably well sealed against rain, but often are poorly sealed on the back and bottom. If you mount a light directly above the front wheel where a lot of tire spray will hit the tire in rainy conditions, you should not be surprised when the light stops working due to water ingress. Lights are often mounted much higher above the fork crown or off to one side to avoid that.

Randonneuring, my dyno powered lights are on. And most exercise rides, the dyno powered lights are on.

When touring, I typically am only using the USB charger, lights off. When touring on my S&S coupled bike (that requires assembly and disassembly at the start and end of a tour), I do not even install dyno powered lights, only install the USB battery charger and the hub is only used for battery charging. Battery lights are then used for all lighting, batteries charged from the dynohub.

A side note on relying on a dynohub and USB charger when touring for power needs: Some bike tourists are content with charging up a powerbank during the day and then using that to charge their other devices in the campsite later. The article stated that "Dynamo USB chargers deliver about 3-6 watts under ideal conditions", but I find that when bike touring on fairly flat ground, at the end of the day I was lucky to average over 2.5 watts, 2 watts on flatter ground is more likely. And since output drops with slower speeds, in hilly terrain your output will be less. I have been self sufficient for electric needs when touring for several weeks, but that required that I minimize the backlight on my GPS, leave the phone off except when checking e-mail or checking weather forecasts with a few phone calls, only using the phone when weather was warm as Li Ion batteries lose a lot of power when cold, etc. If my phone was cold, I would warm it up inside a jacket before I turned it on to reduce battery power consumption.

I posted a description of how I wired up my rando bike with a dynohub, lights and USB charger a few years ago. That is at this link if anyone is interested in more detail:
https://www.bikeforums.net/electroni...b-charger.html

Thanks again for posting, a very good article.