I've got a 10w MR-11 light right now. Don't have a regular commute or anything, so I've been using for afternoon rides where I get caught up after sunset. Probably about 1-1.5 hours a day. I have put a female DC socket at the end of a 12" lead on the battery and a matching plug on the light. I put the same plug on my 12v smart/trickle motorcycle-battery charger. So I just unplug the light from the battery and plug in the motorcycle-charter. This way I can also use the AC/DC brick 12v transformers that's common as well. Recharge about once a week overnight, about 8-hours on the smart-charger. :)

FREE to a good home

I have 3 [Gone] 12V markers Gone!

Ho Ho ho!

ok, with this in mind... i decided to add another 10W bulb. now i've got a bouble lighting system, 30W total and i can use them together or seperate. the best part is the fact that i can use both for 75% of the time and then just the 20W(which is plenty) for 25% of the time AND still have the over kill factor of .45( 4.55 needed from a 5AH battery). that's some good stuff.... :D :D

after posting, i decided to go downstairs and take a pic.....(it's obvious i'm procrastinating with my studies)

the first pic is what i started with... the second two pics are what i have now. funny thing is, i haven't even ridden with the lights yet. i'm looking forward to it though.

If you have a "smart charger," that is, a charger that knows when the battery is charged and will cut down to a "trickle charge" from full charge, you can leave it plugged in overnight, or all day. A good smart charger will have indicator lights that signal when the battery is charged and is now in "trickle charge" mode.

I forgot to mention another option to cut back on the size of your battery (or increase your run-time, if desired.) There are "energy saver" bulbs available (I use one) that allow you to get more light per watt, much like those bulbs you see for your home that draw 14 watts but put out the equivalent of 60 watts of light. Mine supposedly draws 20W but puts out ~ 35W.

In addition, the focus of the beam can make a lower wattage light seem brighter. You sacrifice some peripheral visibility, but as long as you can see what's in front of you, that's what's important. On the other hand, too wide a beam sacrifices precious visibility where you need it most.

I just about drain my battery on the way to work (one hour,) then I spend the next 7 hours recharging. I will probably go with a 5 AH eventually (like I used to have) because I like having "spare" battery power in case I need it unexpectedly.

Some of those energy savers are just overvoltaged. If you run overvoltage, the filament is hotter, and you get more light per watt burned. Tradeoff is shorter bulb life. Energy saver 12v bulbs are probably just made as 10v bulbs.

MR16 bulbs seem pretty durable. I have a ride that goes over 4 miles of bumpy gravel twice a day, and I used the same bulb for a year (still have it, but my primary is now an HID). So the "shorter life" may still last a year, and if you get significantly more light, it's worth it.

ItsJustMe, check this bulb out--5,000 hrs.

http://www.bulbs.com/products/produc...ucts&class=840

Are there any "Energy Saver" MR16s other than the Philips?

I like your setup here and think I'm going to try to build something comparible for my power source. I think I'm going to go with a 5ah setup, so I'll probably buy these: http://www.batteryspace.com/index.as...OD&ProdID=1158

They're cheap and I think they'll provide plenty of power for my commute if I charge every day at work. A question I have is why you built your power brick to supply 13.2V instead of a flat 12V. Is there something I'm missing here? Should I buy 11 of these batteries so that I can get 13.2V or can I get by with 10? Also, what smart charger do you recommend for this type of setup (assuming I go with the C batteries instead of your D's).

Thanks everyone for all of the great information. I'm learning a ton (and having a great time). :D

Another question for the regulars here:

Any reason (other than price) not to go with Li-ion over NiMH? BatterySpace has a sweet deal on a prebuilt 11.1V 7200mAh water bottle battery, 100 bucks including the charger:

http://www.batteryspace.com/index.as...OD&ProdID=2217
http://www.batteryspace.com/ProductI...-Li-1440-1.jpg

It's a little more capacity than I "need", but it's only 20 bucks more than I'd spend on the NiMH battery I "need" plus charger. Plus it has lots more capacity, weighs less, and is less work than making a water bottle battery out of cells or packs myself. Any "gotchas" I should be aware of with Li-ion? Should I add an extra inline fuse between this thing and my lights just to be on the safe side?

If you're driving a 12v halogen at 11.1v, you'll be losing A LOT of light, much more than -9%, probably closer to -15%. Better to run another cell to get 14.8v and use an efficient, nearly-lossless regulator to keep it around 13v. Then you'll get brighter light and longer capacity due to the extra cell and the regulator will provide a longer run-time of a fixed brightness. Rather than super-bright at first that fades faster into a dim 2nd half of the charge.


I got 13.2v so that I can overdrive the halogen light by about 10% and get 20% more light out of it. :) The charger I use is a Battery Tender that detects full-charge through a voltage-plateau I believe. So it stops at 12v or 13.2v or 13.8v for SLA batteries, varies depending upon what's hooked up. Another source for smart-chargers are the Black & Decker chargers for cordless-drill batteries. Some of the smart-chargers even have an adjustable trigger-point for when they switch from charge to trickle mode.

So let's say that I use a battery pack similar to the one you setup. Although the Battery Tender looks like a pretty nice (and expensive) charger, could I get by using something like this?:

http://www.batteryspace.com/index.as...OD&ProdID=2051

Sorry for the dumb questions, but I'm pretty new to this stuff. I'll make sure to get some pictures up once this is completed as is looks pretty cool on my bike so far. :D

This is a great site for battery questions...great tips on run-time estimation and how to chose type of battery for application.
http://user.fundy.net/cyclist/bikecurrent-FAQ.html

If you add an extra cell in series to increase voltage, there is no extra increase in actual runtime or aH. Unlike a cell added in parallel. But in parallel, there is no increase in voltage.

As for the Philips IRC lights, they are not "overvoltaged". The reflector has an infra-red coating added to it. The coating increases the filament temp without increasing power-usage. (hotter filament=brighter light)

Osram also makes an IRC, but I have only found it in the 35->50W version.

Thanks for the feedback and link, guys. I hadn't yet thought the effect of dropping the voltage by 9% all the way through. Looks like that will drop the effective wattage by 15%, and light output by 30%. Yikes. Makes sense of course -- if overvolting bumps up the efficiency (basically twice as fast as it increases the wattage), undervolting would cause the reverse to happen.

Bumping all the way up to 14.8v Li-ion (with a PWM regulator) would work for the halogen, but I'm also going to be running Xenon strobes and a Luxeon III LED (in an MR16 package, rated for nominal 12V) with this system too .. those can't run off a PWM regulator, and hooking them up directly to the higher voltage would likely blow those out pretty fast ... so I'd either need 2 regulators or live with the inefficiency of the conventional regulator. In any effect, this ends up adding more complexity to the system than I'd like without much benefit.

So now I'm thinking it will be better just to stick with a 12V or 13.2V NiMH system, despite marginally more weight than a Li-based system and the fact that I'll have to put the battery in a water bottle myself. Will the Night-Sun/Lightman 12V strobe run OK off a 13.2V system, or does it really need to be hooked up to a (nominal) 12V source?

Yeah, you don't get more capacity with extra cell in series if you hook it directly up to the bulb. It'll actually consume more current, be brighter and discharge the entire pack faster. However, if you use a switching-regulator with very minor loss, it will output a steady 12v output even when the battery's at 14.8v. This runs the bulb at a lower amperage than if you hooked up the battery directly. You'll get a longer run-time before the battery discharged to 12v. It flattens out the sloping discharge-curve and makes it wider; gives you longer run-time until a certain discharged level.

Well...they're a week or two late but here they are! Pics of my "Geekiness" headlight in final form. You can click on the pics to see a larger version.

On the rack, that's the 10ah SLA battery covered by a small canoe dry bag I had. Under the cover is the 5amp mini fuse. It's held to the rack using two 1" nylon webbing straps on a no-slip pad. The wires are inside a 1/4" loom, the switch box is silicone sealed (not the prettiest), the switch has a waterproof boot on it. The connection from the switchbox to the light itself uses a weatherproof trailer connector. She rocks 37.5watts for 2.5~3 hours...beyond that...I don't know, haven't had to run it that long!

http://img182.imageshack.us/img182/5...00013jr.th.jpg
http://img182.imageshack.us/img182/8...00021lc.th.jpg
http://img209.imageshack.us/img209/6...00041nq.th.jpg
http://img182.imageshack.us/img182/3...00059ee.th.jpg
http://img182.imageshack.us/img182/8...00075yz.th.jpg
http://img182.imageshack.us/img182/7...00068xx.th.jpg
http://img227.imageshack.us/img227/7...00115fu.th.jpg

[QUOTE=TheDL]Well...they're a week or two late but here they are! Pics of my "Geekiness" headlight in final form. You can click on the pics to see a larger version.

On the rack, that's the 10ah SLA battery covered by a small canoe dry bag I had. Under the cover is the 5amp mini fuse. It's held to the rack using two 1" nylon webbing straps on a no-slip pad. The wires are inside a 1/4" loom, the switch box is silicone sealed (not the prettiest), the switch has a waterproof boot on it. The connection from the switchbox to the light itself uses a weatherproof trailer connector. She rocks 37.5watts for 2.5~3 hours...beyond that...I don't know, haven't had to run it that long!
QUOTE]

Nice job! You only need to add an amber strobe to the mix and you will be done.

Question on NightSun strobes, for anyone who knows:

Speaking of amber strobes, my 12V NightSun/Lightman strobe arrived yesterday (as did my Optronics housings, subject of a later post). It mostly looks straightforward to hook up to the system I'm building, Except there's no indication of polarity on the supplied connectors. The instructions say nothing about this either, except just plug it in to your NightSun battery - which of course I don't have because I'm making a homebrew system. Anyone know which side is + and which side is - on these things? Or is it polarity protected so I don't have to worry about it?

I'm pretty sure it's protected, but I'll check my Lightman strobe when I get home to be sure, and post it tomorrow.

(No indication of polarity tells me it's probably protected, but it's better to be safe than sorry. If you were hoping of hooking it up tonight--sorry! :) )

Ok, kick me! I'm an idiot. I forgot...

:(

(It's Christmas and all kinds of stuff is goin' on...)

Hi, About an idea I have not seen elsewhere in this thread which you first posted. Searching under LED truck tail lights I found some massive LED lights that take 650 milliAMPS at 7 to 12 volts. A 7~ watt tail-light? About $45 and $14 for a bracket to support it. They have it in amber, red, and WHITE. Have you or anyone else you know of tried these? These LED arrays are up tp 7" across. A visual angle that large might get more attention than a narrow spot or point. Any ideas? You and SVLOID seem to be the sharp ones on lights.

I use Item 1284R on this page: http://www.led-r-us.com/smlights.shtml for a rear light. It's a truck "marker" light with a built-in reflector. It's about as bright as a car taillight, it casts light in all directions (it casts a red pool on the pavement), it's weatherproof, it meets the legal requirement for a reflector, and it runs on my 12V system. Oh, and it was six bucks.

If I recall correctly it's rated at about 1.8 watts.

Good. I found a different truck supply web sire. Prices about the same. If the light were white would it be strong enough for a headlight? As I understand the physics of an LED chip the light comes out of the edge of the chip with something like a 90 degree spread. That spread is fine for a tail-light. A collimating or lense system is needed if one needs a narrower beam. Laser pointers completely correct the spread to give a very tight beam. Too tight for us. One bike supplier calls their system Opticube; marketing tactic ? :rolleyes: Part of what I like about a six or seven inch wide light emitter is you can get s good amount of light down the road without the painful intensity of n H.I.D. system. Comments?

Just wanted to share some pictures of my 12v light setup. I am using the Optronics driving light housing. A 20w 12 degree spot in the front and the Vellman strobe in the rear. I am using the BatterySpace 4500 aMh NimH battery and easily get over a hour run time. The battery box is a waterproof food storage container. The little black protusion on the clear battery container is a switch. There is a second one on the other side. I also use a helmet mounted 10w spot running on it's own 2000aMh battery that is stored in a side compartment of my hip bag. You can never have too much light :D

Thanks again to all that shared their advice and experience.

Kevin

OK, my system is now built, and I rode in with it today. Sorry no pics or beamshots yet, but I'll post them eventually. Meanwhile, here's the lowdown:

- High beam: Philips Masterline 35W MR16, Optronics housing, mounted on front canti stud. $24, 150g.
- Low beam: Luxeon III MR16 (from autolumination.com), Optronics housing (housing drilled out in back to fit the bulb), mounted on front canti stud. $32, 140g.
- Front blinkie: Night-Sun/Lightman Xenon strobe, amber lens, on the handlebar. $40, 140g.
- Running lights: Pirahna 2-LED clearance lights, amber on front fork, red on rear seatstay. $15, 30g.
- Battery: pre-built 12V, 5000mAh NiMH pack (10 "C" cells) from batteryspace.com, fitted into a Zefal Magnum water bottle. 2 external connectors - one always "hot" for charging or high beam, one controlled by a waterproof switch mounted on the bottle cap, just like TurboCat sets them up. $60 (plus $30 charger), total weight 1050g including bottle, wiring, switch, fuse, etc.
- Connectors, switches, misc.: I utilized a number of parts from an old dead "donor" TurboCat system someone gave me. Bonus: TurboCat connectors mate perfectly with the connectors on the strobe, making it plug-n-play. By the way, the "pent" side of the connector is "+" and the "flat" side of the connector is "-".

Until now I have been riding with a 25-watt TurboCat S25 6V headlight system, which is just bright enough for my hilly, poorly lit suburban commute. The Macho SLA battery gives me plenty of runtime, but is also plenty heavy and bulky.

My objectives with this new system were:
- Water bottle battery. The placement of the TurboCat's huge brick makes it a major PITA to carry my bike up 4 flights of train station stairs in the morning. As it turned out, I needed the big Magnum bottle to hold the battery and associated wiring on top, but that's OK.
- Luxeon III based low beam. Low power consumption and still plenty of light for bike paths and moderate-speed offroading I occasionally do on the way home from work.
- Brighter high beam, with more total output and a broader beam than my current spots. And the new system ends up more than doubling the light output of the old one.
- No more weight than my existing system. The S25/Macho weighs 1550g. As it turned, out, the battery+headlight came in at about 1350g, plus 200g for the strobe and running lights. Nice!
- Moderate runtime on high beam. My evening commute is only about an hour, and I only need the high beam on 75% of it. Even assuming only 65% effectiveness due to cold temps and high current drain, 5000mAh should be enough for 45 minutes of high beam and plenty of leftover time on low beam+running lights. Or 6+ hours on low+running lights alone.
- Total cost under $200 for the battery+headlights. I hit that target easily, and the total cost for everything (including miscellaneous parts & supplies) was around $230.

So far I've only taken it out for a quick night ride around the 'hood, plus this morning's commute in broad daylight and a few minutes of demo'ing for curious coworkers. The real test will come in about a few hours. Here are my observations so far:
- Man, that 35W Philips bulb is bright! Even the 20W (spot beam) Philips is just as bright in the center as the full 25W of my TurboCat, but with a substantially broader beam. Impressive, since TurboCats are the best MR11-based systems out there besides Light & Motion. Just goes to show how much better off you are with a high-efficiency MR16. The 35W (narrow flood) is nearly as bright as the 20W Philips spot in the center, with an enormously broader beam. Definitely feels like we're in car-headlight territory. On last night's test ride, I kept looking back to see who was following me.
- The Luxeon III should be fine for low-beam use. This MR16-enclosed emitter is noticeably less bright than my Luxeon III Princeton Tec Apex headlamp, but still far brighter than their Luxeon 1W Eos headlamp. The Apex has much more sophisticated optics than the MR16, so no surprise here. In any event, it still throws quite a bit of light and should work fine for my low-beam purposes.
- The Luxeon III MR16 has a surprisingly well-focused beam, considering that it is specified as 100 degrees. The width of the hot spot is actually comparable the Philips 20W spot, and not much broader than the Apex. It's the spill that appears to go out to about 100 degrees, and while that area is proportionally a bit brighter than with other halogens, it's not excessive at all and there's still plenty of throw.
- The (automotive) LED clearance lights are amazingly bright too, enough to draw attention from any direction even in broad daylight. Well worth the 15g (!) of weight and 500mA of draw that each unit represents. I may put a second amber one on the other side of the fork. Maybe I'll also get myself a much smaller battery for summertime and commute with these babies year-round.
- I believe that the lumen output figures on the widely-quoted Starlight 78 Watts vs. Lumens page are flat-out wrong. I just don't think there is any way that an MR16 halogen is putting out 40+ lumens/Watt at rated voltage (or 50+ when over-voltaged), as claimed on that page I've looked at all the major light manufacturers' product lines, and there is hardly a halogen bulb in ANY format or of any size that puts out more than 15-20 lum/W. Check the Philips catalogue itself: their standard 20W MR16 only puts out 240 lumens, or 12 lum/W, and the super-efficient MasterLine (spot) I have puts out 370 (not 850), which is 18.5 lum/W. Even the 35W puts out 800 lumens, or 23 per watt. Many discussion threads on this board and elsewhere have cited these figures to show that Halogens are vastly more efficient than LEDs and just as efficient as HIDs. I've never been convinced, and the more I look the more it seems that the best Halogens are just as efficient as LEDs, and still not in the same league as HIDs. Don't get me wrong: it looks like my 880 lumen system will outshine many HIDs, but it also consumes an awful lot more juice and needs a much bigger battery.

All in all, thanks again to everyone who has contributed to the ENORMOUS amount of valuable information in this thread. Between this and the Starlight 78 page, I was able to make a huge number of "right" decisions that I might not have made otherwise.

- Dan

Dan --

Sounds like a great setup. I like to have a set of lights that has motorists scratching their heads and saying, "What kind of aircraft is trying to land on the road ahead?" and sounds like you've got it.

The MR-16's put out a lot more light than the MR-11's because they have bigger reflectors. The best thing you can do to increase efficiency is to have a big reflector.

Do you have a link for the clearance lights?

DCCommuter, how's the weathertightness on those, pretty decent?

http://www.pmlights.com/products.cfm...pId=1438#V168A

v168a is amber, v168r is red.

http://www.pmlights.com/cacheimages/...1a5a91872d.jpg

The construction is pretty robust. The light is two pieces, a base and a cover, each piece is solid plastic and there is a neoprene gasket between them. The mounting bolts hold the two pieces together. The elements inside are all "potted" in epoxy, with the hookup wires going into the epoxy as well, so there are no exposed conducting pieces. I would expect it to work underwater even with the cover missing.

They are sold for use on tractor-trailers; the big selling point is that they are more durable than conventional tungsten bulbs. According to the web site they are rated for 100,000 hours (22 years of continuous use).

Well, now that I've ridden it home, I just have to say I'm thrilled with my system. The 35W high beam casts out an incredible cone of bright light. Too early to gauge driver reaction, but I'm sure the combination of the high beam, the amber running light and the strobe has vastly increased my frontal visibility. And fortunately the battery held out all the way home.

At first I wasn't very impressed at all with the Luxeon III low beam, because it was really only lighting up the pavement in darker areas between streetlights. Then at one point, while riding down a really dark street I noticed a cone of bluish light moving through the trees! So after a quick stop to re-aim the thing so it actually hit the road, it did quite well, casting almost as much light as my old 10W low beam. Sweet!

I got the idea of mounting the lights on the canti studs from this thread, but this decision is causing several problems. (1) The lights end up pretty close to the wheel (unless you seriously mangle the mounting bracket), causing the tire to cast a major shadow and causing a blind spot for oncoming drivers. And that's with the lights hanging down below the canti studs -- if I'd done the opposite it would be even worse, positioning them right next to the tire. (2) Even though I'm using washers, the bolt holding the housings onto the canti studs comes loose way too easily. Maybe I should have put Loctite on the bolt instead of grease! (3) The lights are too hard to remove and put on my other bike.

Finally (4) this location makes for a very serious safety hazard if in the event a light came loose and either rotated sideways into the wheel -- or worse, fell off completely, in which case they would swing down on their wires into the front wheel. I'm paranoid about this: many years ago I had a brake lever come loose and swing down on its cable into the front wheel, causing an instant 25 mph endo onto pavement that I never want to repeat. For this reason, I've always been careful to loop headlight wires over and not under the handlebar, so if they rattled loose they wouldn't fall very far. The Optronics housings will easily bolt onto my TurboCat CNC QR brackets, so I think I'll go that route and position them just under the handlebar.