No problem about the questions. You'll want an inline fuse holder and a fuse to put in it. Both are available at radioshack. I don't have a fuse because I'm using a 10ah car jumper pack, so it has all that built in. You'll need a fuse bigger than the amount of amps you'll be drawing. Let's say you have 20w and a 35w, thats 55w. 55w/12v = 4.58amps. You could go with a 5amp fuse, but it'd be cutting it close. I'd just use a 10amp.

I use a 10 amp ATC automobile-type blade fuse. You can get the holder for a few dollars at most auto parts stores. More reliable that the in-line glass-tube type fuses.

thanks guys. I cant wait to go out and get a switch and parts for another light. I cant believe how excited I am to see if I can get a switch to work. I cant believe ive made all this so far.

Actually, on a bike a blade fuse is probably a better idea. They are way more durable.

I bought a couple Malibu 25 watt lights. I never found a good means to mount one and it threw an uneven pattern. Looking at it from 60' away it wasn't as obnoxious as the MR16s. I had offered to give them away for postage earlier with no takers - don't know what I did with them now.

I realy wana know more about how the bubls/lights are mounted in the housing, and how did you make that houseing, also how did you mount the housing, and do you mind for a wiring scymatic?

thanks

I would also like to see how you did that. Also, did you use ebay sockets for your bulbs? I've seen them sell for $3 or so and I think thats a good deal considering everywhere else I see them they are upwards of $8.

A couple days ago, I was riding and almost home, and reached down into a pocket on my front panier for the garage door opener.. I missed, and got slower, and missed, and got slower, finally managed to tip over and land on my butt, laughing like an idiot at how stupid that must have looked. I don't think anyone saw though...

So yesterday, I couldn't resist. I scavenged a reset (push on, release off) button from an old computer and an unused blinky handlebar mount. Opening up the garage door remote, I soldered a two conductor wire to the back of the circuit board, tied it into the switch, a few pieces of heat shrink tubing, a few small cable ties, and now my bike has a permanently mounted pushbutton garage door remote. Mounted the switch itself on the blinky mount with several layers of epoxy to give it support.

It sits right next to the GPS cradle and above the pair of 1W LED headlamps.

If I rode much at night on dark roads, I'd probably build the MR16 with 3W led bulbs. As it is, I think its better to have the pair of 1w mountables on hand with alkaline AA's, as opposed to having to be concerned with keeping a rechargeable topped off.

Isn't that expensive though?

whats going to provide more light (with witch combo will i see better at night) 1x20w or 2x10w (halogen GU lights) and if i run a H3 55w 12v fog lamp for lke 1 min how much is it going to afect a 5Ah batt? (12v)
also any idea about how 1 min of 12v motorbike horn use is going to affect over all burn time?

I dunno, each light was about $30. [PlanetBike 1W LED spot ] I think of them as mutli purpose. At times where the power is out, they can light a room for many hours on a single set of AA's; they're handy enough to make pretty good camping flashlights, and they provide the just-in-case lighting I feel I need on the bike. Now perhaps Rita in '05 warped my fragile little mind, but we were without power for over three days, and at the time I only had a single Luxeon LED flashlight. It really worked well, and I would have been very happy to have several, so now I have a total of 4 of these 1W LED lamps.

Also, these little spots do run fine on rechargeable NiMH's, so if I were using them daily, it wouldn't be hard to swap in fresh batteries each morning.

I think I could probably do the 3W LED MR16 for $30 not including the battery, (I have quite a few SLA's); but you loose a bit of the "handiness" in the process. On the other hand, one could make an MR16 "lamp base" that would hold a 12V 12ah SLA, for the incremental cost of the MR16 connector, some wood, a switch, and the wiring, so maybe that wouldn't be so bad. Its the bulb that carry's most of the cost

here are some more photos of my current setup.







This is pretty pedestrian to most of you guys but for me its a big deal. Right now the two headlights both run of different sources. One is a 20w spot the other a 20w flood. One runs off the 3.3Ah SLA the other runs off an 8 pack of regular double As and is mainly a just in case battery.

The new light I made I added a switch. Boy am I proud of myself for doing that.

The back blinkies are just regular blinkies for now until i know more about what I am doing.

next i am going to look into fuses and a switch box.

Well, I've read every post in this thread, plus some other material I found across the web, and I've ordered all the parts for my custom system. Here's a list of what's on the way or here already:

2 Optronics QH-12IT Fog Lamps from eBay (take MR-16 bulbs) ($8)
2 20 Watt MR-16 bulbs (1 36 degree, 1 15 degree), $13 from Home Depot
LightBrain Dual Controller from Trail Head Lights ($25)
2 Waterproof Switches from Trail Head Lights ($4 each)
Stop-Turn-Tail Red Led Tailight from Doran Manufacturing ($9.49 + $7.99 shipping)
Amber Velleman Strobe from All Electronics (still $8.99)
500 ma 12 volt lead acid battery charger from All Electronics ($12.75)
Various connectors, fuse holder from All Electronics (~$10)
LED flasher relay from eBay ($6)
Rubber-coated P-clamps from local hardware store ($2.50)
Food storage container with silicone seal from K-Mart ($3)

I already had a 5 AH SLA battery from a dead UPS (electronics problems, not battery problems), wire, and some suitable switches. I ordered the LightBrain to give me the ability to easily dim the lights and have automatic fallover from one bulb to the other if one should burn out. I'm planning to wire the flasher relay to the tail light lead on the S-T-T light to give me a monster blinkie. The stop lead will be wired up to a brake switch to give me a usable braking signal. Other possible additions will be a car horn (already have) and turn signals, but these might not be included until Rev. 2.0. I'll be sure to post pics as the project evolves.

Ken

How many hours a day do you use them? I only recharge my EL-500 batteries after about 10-15 commutes.

What setup are you runing?

Now that I got this working I want to upgrade to nihm batteries and a higher aH. Has anyone used one switch to power two lights? Like One setting for one light, another for the other, then a 3rd position for both lights at once and finally a 4th position for off? Would it just be easier to use 2 switches?

For you guys that have multiple headlights and taillights run off the same battery, how many switches do you have?

Does anyone have a voltage regulator?

Can anyone recommend any good books for someone starting out with this type of thing?

I have one EL-500 headlight, running on 2250 mAH NIMHs. I'm building a 4-Luxeon homebrew headlight to go with it...slowly.

Switch question: I have a great system-except for the switch. It's a Trailtech 13 W HID and an 11.1V Li-Ion battery. The problem is that the Trail Tech switch that I bought won't switch the light off. It has two position. When it's on, the low battery light comes on even when the battery is fully charges. When it's off, the low battery light goes off, but the HID stays on.

I sent it back to Trail Tech and they said it works for them.

Any suggestions? Thanks.

I use the Lightbrain controller as my switch. The Lightbrain regulates the input voltage to 13.2v and switches through 5 settings from 34% on one light to 100% on both. I now either use a 6150mah Li-ion 18v battery (I haven't tested it for longer than 1hr) or a pair of 8.4v NiMh 3300mah batteries in series.
In the picture(s) you can see the optronics housings hanging off my aerobars. The red square switch is the momentary on. The little canister is a 35mm film case sealed with hot glue and electrical tape. I don't use a switch but connect the lightbrain to the battery. I have extra Optronics housings from an Ebay purchase so I try various halogen bulbs from 20w to 35w, and 8 - 24 degrees. A few are various color temperature Solux bulbs.

So here's some crappy pictures of my ride with my custom light build. I used the Malibu lights from Home Depot along with a small outdoor conduit box for the switch mount. The lights are a 20w spot and a 20w flood, switched independantly. I have them powered by a 4500mAh 13.2v NiMH battery, which powers everything nicely.

I'm happy with how everything turned out, and I used this setup all winter. Still, I am ready for a rebuild so that I can make things look a little cleaner and a little better waterproofing would be nice.

Hello all, after reading many of the pages of this thread (and taking up much time I should have been working) I'm starting to narrow down my selection of parts for my own lighting system. Posting this up for feedback for tweaking and refining the final product before I spend any money.

1) Housings: Optronics MR16 driving lights - reason is fairly obvious. Highly recommended and easy to aquire.

2) Bulbs: Philips Energy Advantage bulbs. Point of debate here
a) 2x 20W. 1x 36*flood, 1x 8*spot - probably plenty of light, but would likely need to run both a fair bit of time to get best results.
b) 1x 30W NarrowFlood 24*, 1x 20W 36*flood, or maybe the spot. - run the 30W primary with the 20W for times when I either need more light, or in evening settings when some light is needed but not primary, or when longer battery life needed.
c) 1x 35W NarrowFlood 24*, 1x 20W 36*flood, or maybe the spot. - run the 30W primary with the 20W for times when I either need more light, or in evening settings when some light is needed but not primary, or when longer battery life needed.
d) 2x 30W, one Narrow flood 24*, spot or flood (input welcome).

3) For one of these setups (Max Wattage = 60W for short periods, Avg Wattage ~35W) would I be good to use the following battery:
13.2V 5000mAh NiMH https://batteryspace.com/index.asp?Pa...OD&ProdID=2193
-OR-
12V 4200mAh be enough. https://batteryspace.com/index.asp?Pa...OD&ProdID=2215

Commutes will be short (35-45mins max travel time), but may want to include some night rides of up to an hour or so. I know the general math behind Wattage/Amps/Battery life time, but wanted some feedback all the same. I'm leaning to the bigger battery. While it is $15 more, and will reduce my bulb life, at a max of 2 hours a day, even if I get only 20% of the advertised life out of the bulb I'll have over a year's worth of commuting life on them.

Batteryspace Update
Sorry if this info has already been posted, I haven't been keeping up on this thread.

Batteryspace.com has some new stuff since last time I looked. They now have full ready-to-go LiIon/charger/13W HID setups for about $220. I built my own HID from their parts but this would be tempting if I were doing it again.

They now have the 30W HID in stock for $160. That would certainly be a hell of a blowtorch! They say 100W halogen equivalent.

They also have a few mounting brackets and odds and ends that might be useful to folks on this thread.

I notice that they are now indicating to use ONLY 12V & 13.2V NiMH or 11.1V Li-Ion battery packs with their bare HID bulbs. I had a disagreement with them after I used one of their 14.4v packs (which they claimed was "perfect for HID") and it fried the HID in 3 hours. Glad they changed their tune on that.

Cuda2K, I use a 50 watt very narrow spot at 12 degrees and enough unreflected light goes out the front of the bulb to light up a two lane road and the shoulders as well. A 24 degrees 'flood' would seem to waste light in the trees and fields along side the road and not put light on and further down the road. As MR16 bulbs are inexpensive please try the narrowest spot you can find at least once. The only bulb I have ever had too tight a beam was a PAR36 shielded filament spotlight. As far as the batteries go, I vote for the 13.2 V battery. Wiring losses and connection resistances will drop the voltage at the bulb to 12 V or a harmless bit of overvoltage. Go with a 12 v battery and it might be underpowered. Given adequate money I would like a 18 to 24 V battery and a variable voltage regulator.

Forgive me if this has already been posted here:

https://www.instructables.com/ex/i/A9...E506/?ALLSTEPS

I Have A Question is there a way to make left and right turn signals for bikes ?