Dynamo lighting
 

Hi everyone! Newbee here.
I recently bought myself a Fuji hybrid bike, and installed some lights. My boyfriend was "against it" because he thought dynamo lights are the way to go, "the way it's always been done". I noticed there aren't many bikes with dynamo, so I was wondering how come? I wanted to explain to him, but had no arguments :) Now that I have LED lights, I still want to know.

Dynamo lights tend to be heavier and more expensive than battery powered lights, and are often permanently installed on the bike. IMO they're an excellent idea for a commuter bike -- you get light with the flip of a switch, no batteries to keep charged, etc. In the end, it's your choice. If you ride at night, you need lights, dynamo or battery doesn't matter.

Love my dynamo light! I have a dynamo hub (not a bottle dynamo). It weighs around 400g. No switch though my front light has an off button. No more worries about forgetting to charge my lights. I won't go back to battery lights. Too annoying. Weight and drag are overrated, this hub added a small bottle of water's worth of weight to my bike. I didn't notice a difference in pedaling.

Not many dynmos are sold here because our bikes are spec-ed to be racer clones not everyday utility bikes.

Dynamo lights are best if you are planning on commute to work by bike everyday and run the majority of your errands. If you are planning on being a casual rider then LED lights are a better option.
I do love my dynamo lights but I only use my car if I really have to other wise I do everything on my bike.

Modern dynamo lights are LED. They are very bright with a useful pattern of illumination.
Dynamo-hubs are better than bottle dynamos which run off the tyre.
The whole system is fit and forget; no battery management, dimming lamps, no eeking out power whilst riding home or altering plans to fit around your battery life.
Almost everyone who switches to dynamo hubs prefers them.

All my bikes have dynamo hubs. It just makes sense for me to always have a light on the bike

Keep your lights, get a new boy friend.

Dynamo heads are like religious zealots

Cut your losses

What is a bottle dynamo?

Plus and minus either way. The way I see it, you can get more total light for the same dollar when using a battery light, but with a dynamo you never have to worry about batteries.

The reason I picked dynamo was on the gray foggy days I would get where I was going and forget to turn the light off. Then when I went to go home it's "Oh #*$&*, no lights."

Something like this:

https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/01...mo_compact.jpg

It's a well known fact that dyno light users are better lovers, so sorry for your wife....

Quite frankly, generator lights isn't "the way it's always been done". Generator lights are only viable now because of LED lights within the last 10 years or so. When paired with halogen or any filament bulb, they were just horrible. Battery powered lights almost killed them off entirely because batteries work well with incandescent lights.

With modern LEDs battery lights still have some advantages over generator lights. Generator lights only advantage over batteries is that you don't have to charge a battery. Battery charging isn't onerous enough, in my opinion, to make generator lights that much better. Generator lights are expensive...around $200 for a single light for a bike. If you have multiple bikes, you need multiple systems which adds up very quickly. If you want more than one light, you are basically out of luck. If you want a helmet light, you are out of luck.

Battery lights are so cheap that you can buy 10 of them for a typical generator system. But, because the lights are so easy to swap from bike to bike, you don't need 10. You need one but having more then one is nice for the extra light and the redundancy in case something goes wrong. You can even add one to your helmet for a light that is useful and attention getting.

Not sure I can agree with that. Sturmey-Archer's "Dynohub" came out in the mid 1940s (I have a 1948 model that still works fine) and was a standard feature on the Raleigh "Superbe" 3-speed that was marketed as lifetime transportation for the working man. My 1972 Superbe is still my means of getting to work in the morning.

You have to admit that the light isn't nearly as bright as battery powered lights of 15 to 20 years ago nor as good as modern LED. I used generator lights long ago and they were very poor. That's why I went with batteries.

That they're "not as bright" isn't the same as "not viable." And you can put modern LED bulbs in the old lights to get better output.

My commuter bike has a dynamo light and it is extremely handy, but I'm concerned that a) it might not be bright enough, and b) the light goes off a few seconds after I stop pedaling, so I will be invisible if I stop at a traffic light, for example.

I'm thinking of perhaps buying a battery-operated light to complement the dynamo light.

No, it's exactly the same. If both lights have a single emitter, modern LED generator lights put out about as much light as modern LED battery powered. But old incandescent systems aren't comparable at all. An old incandescent generator light is barely adequate as a "be seen" light and isn't even that for something as old as your generators if you aren't moving.

If my Dynohub-equipped Superbe is "not viable" I guess I have to wonder how I've manged to survive riding in the dark for all these years...

I have both. A little battery blinkie on the helmet doesn't hurt. But for general lighting, -dynamos.

More modern lights have a "standlight" feature that will give you about 5 minutes of light when stopped (capacitor in the light). Unless you're an infrequent casual rider, dynamos are the way to go.

What you see depends on where you Look ..

I have 3 on my front Porch ..

the German Commuter bike scene has them predominant , making a Huge Market at home ,
Then, as they got better every year, then the Better ones got exported to the rest of the world..

Now many Bikes in Germany Sell with no other setup.

IF you ride the Trolley and Bus a Lot, and the Bike Rarely , then a Battery light may be adequate..

Sturmey-Archer offered a battery standlight option for their Dynohub for decades:

http://www.os2.dhs.org/~john/sturmey-archer-dbu.jpg

But a modern capacitive standlight is very nice and much lighter.

Schmitt delux hub, rim, spokes, labor, and head lamp will run around $675 and 450 grams of increased weight compared to a more powerful battery setup good enough for a 600Km ride that adds $20 up to maybe as much as $120 and only adds 300 grams weight without the real elephant in the room....6-10 watts of drag from the dynamo. I have eight 18650 batteries that I keep charged. Not much of a hassle at all and I can take the lights and batteries off the bike in minutes. I can it them on another bike in minutes....how many dynamo systems let you do that.

I have yet to ride at night. My commuter bike also came with dyno-hub powered LED lights. I notice the taillight stays on longer than the headlight. But then again, the headlight has a sensor that determines whether or not to turn on - and I think it's a different setting than the taillight. Still, when the headlight does turn on, it stays on for at least a minute, though i haven't timed it yet.

I have no doubt there are some lights out there that are brighter, but it seems like whatever light you get, somebody will make a brighter one than the one you got sooner or later.

dynamo hub + lights are the best. whoever here is discouraging against hub generator hasn't use one lately. yeah adds weight, but this bike is for commuting. There is no one out there running races on commuter bikes so if the bike is 32 pounds fully geared so be it. another thing they said with battery lights you can easily detach it and re attach to another bike, and it is true, but that is so inconvenient that nobody out there is constantly transferring lights on bikes before you go out and ride.

I have a bike with a dynamo hub and I really like it, I have two other bikes I thought to share my NightRider lights with them but instead of removing the lights from one bike to the other I just ride the one with the generator on it.

Good luck to you man.

To be honest, I haven't really tried using my dynamo yet, I only just tested it for a second to make sure that it works. Could it be that the standlight feature will kick in once I have been cycling for a couple of minutes and it has generated enough power to have some to spare when it's stopped? It's a brand new bike, so I'd be surprised if the dynamo didn't have that feature.