Tips on winter commuting/riding in the dark

[mrcharly-YHT]

I'm just pleased I got my order in before YACF emptied the shelves.

[Jurek]

I'm just pleased I got my order in before YACF emptied the shelves.

It might take a while.
They're showing a stock of 3940 items.

[Ham]

1. Cheap AliExpress USB CRee  XML (https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32614646189.html?spm=a2g0s.9042311.0.0.43594c4dnGQd0y)
Modified with fresnel lens to shape the beam and powered from a power bank in a stem bag.
This is my best light. 

At that price it would be rude not to... *clicky*

I molished one of those into a worklight for Mrs Ham, portable for dim holiday apartments, sewing for the use of, some time ago. A folding tripod of 15mm plastic water pipe provided the lightweight stand.

[Cudzoziemiec]

What are people intending to use for a battery for this?

1. Cheap AliExpress USB CRee  XML (https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32614646189.html?spm=a2g0s.9042311.0.0.43594c4dnGQd0y)
Modified with fresnel lens to shape the beam and powered from a power bank in a stem bag.
This is my best light. 

[chrisbainbridge]

My plan would be just to use the USB to my dynamo through the Igaro D1 converter

[mark]

Has the battery life of lights significantly improved?  I seem to remember needing to charge my front light every 2nd or 3rd day commuting 15-20 years ago.  Dynamo is so much less faff. Fit and forget as many have said.  My commute is country lanes and any light can’t be on some super low battery setting that illuminates nothing more than brake cables.

Battery and LED technology have improved quite a bit, but the manufacturers seem to be using those improvements to build smaller lights to do the same job, instead of keeping the lights the same size as the old ones and having the batteries last longer. My guess is that not many people cycle as far or for as long as a lot of the posters on this thread, so at a certain point it's just not profitable to make the lights last any longer on a given charge. Smaller lights, on the other hand, mean reduced shipping costs throughout the supply chain, take up less space on the shop shelf, and are more appealing to a lot of cyclists.

[grams]

I don’t think there have been any dramatic improvements since white LEDs and lithium polymers got cheap enough to put in bike lights, which is at least a decade ago now, maybe even two.

[Kim]

I don’t think there have been any dramatic improvements since white LEDs and lithium polymers got cheap enough to put in bike lights, which is at least a decade ago now, maybe even two.

B&M's IQ optics are a contender, possibly.  Beyond that, battery management that does a better job of not killing the cells after a disappointingly low number of charge cycles, and LEDs with somewhat better colour rendering.  And the standardisation on USB for charging things is welcome.  It's all a bit incremental, though.

Regardless, manufacturers continue to have a conspicuous blind spot for brackets when it comes to battery lights.  (This remains a major advantage of dynamo lighting IMHO.)  It's mitigated somewhat by smaller, less heavy lights which can be strapped in place with an o-ring; Morton Thiokol notwithstanding, it's hard to mess up an o-ring.

[mark]

I don’t think there have been any dramatic improvements since white LEDs and lithium polymers got cheap enough to put in bike lights, which is at least a decade ago now, maybe even two.

Maybe not any dramatic improvements, but there seem to have been a series of incremental improvements in white LEDs. Four or five years ago, the cheapest Black Diamond headlamp/headtorch put out 150 lumens at maximum output. Today the same headlamp puts out 250 lumens and retails for the same price it did five years ago. Other headlamps in Black Diamond's range show the same increase in output.

[quixoticgeek]

I'm genuinely curious, and at just over $10 delivered, I've ordered one. I'll see if I can get the lense too.

My only conclusion is that I have been really really spoiled by my Edelux II.

I used the ali express light today for the first time to cycle 4km home. It underperformed my expectation. Even with the lens fitted the beam sucks. I wouldn't like to do any distance with it.

J

[Frank9755]

I'm genuinely curious, and at just over $10 delivered, I've ordered one. I'll see if I can get the lense too.
...
A lot of my choices of kit on the big bike at least are guided by the same events as you. But even then 7hours of run time isn't enough. I do do rides with 12+ hours of dark on them. Hell on Ruska it was 12 hours of dark, a whole day, and another 4 hours of dark. I know Chris has a point that to an extent weight isn't worth worrying too much about. But that's getting on for hefty batteryage to get the run time.

Given I seem to have caused a few people to buy the AliExpress lights, let me add that I had one of these die after a thunderstorm.  I suspect some water got in where the wire goes into the light body.  I had it mounted upside down so this weak spot was exposed much more than if it was the right way up.  Since then I have waterproofed that spot by putting a tiny bit of blu-tac around the wire where it enters the light.  Sugru, silicon, chewing gum, etc should also work.

Regarding range, that's obviously to do with your battery, not the light.  Shouldn't be an issue for the OP but if you need 12 hours, then have a 20Ah or take another 10Ah.  Changing over is not a big deal.  Unlike the early Hope lights, it does give you a warning!  Battery weight and bulk does add up but resistance-free hub, etc.

[Cudzoziemiec]

There may be a trend for battery lights to get smaller, and they're certainly all smaller than, say, the old Night Riders of the late 80s, but at the same time something like a Cat Eye Volt is much bigger than the same company's AA-powered models of the early LED era or halogen era 20-odd years ago. Probably has longer battery life too. But one certain benefit is you do not nowadays ever see a yellow blinky pretending to be a front light.

[Audax1]

Thanks so much for all the replies, so immensely helpful and went far further than the things I'd been considering so really grateful. Will investigate the clothing, tyres, lights, and other pieces of kit as well as the approaches of getting into a regular commuting routine.

Many thanks

[quixoticgeek]

My light arrived from ali express. First impressions, do not look at light while turning on... also ow. Also bright.

I wanna try it on the Brompton, only thing I'm not sure about is a) which battery pack to use, and b) where to mount it so it's dry.

J

[Jurek]

Have you actually tried to buy from that site?
I cannot get it to work on a Mac or a Windoze machine in any browser???

Yes, I bought a couple more as spares a few months ago.  It seems to work OK now- I have just added one to my basket.
Have you selected the colour?  I have gone wrong with that on A-E before.

Couldn't see anywhere obvious to select the colour........
I will try again.

Click on the pictures.

Sorted.

These have just arrived.
I can confirm that they are f'ing bright, and will do very nicely as emergency uplighters when the main voles fail to be forthcoming from the sockets.

[hubner]

I got one of these lights a few years.

They are awful as a road cycle light, the beam is circular like a torch, with a very small bright centre spot. They are blinding to oncoming road users unless pointed almost straight down. If pointed to light up the road surface (dazzles other people), it's very bright but very narrow right in front of you but fades quickly further ahead.

[Kim]

I'm hoping the fresnel lens will help with that a bit.

I have a light on my mountain bike with wide and narrow conical beams.  It's pretty good for off-road riding when you need an obnoxious amount of light to make sense of the surface, but when there's oncoming traffic it needs to be tilted so low that it's effectively an (extremely power-hungry) 'be seen' light.

[grams]

Most 18650 torches have an adjustable lens to vary the beam width so you can at least try to find a point that lights up just the right amount of road and not the sky. That makes them much more suited to road riding than the clip on cree-style lights.

[Frank9755]

You need the fresnel lens for road use.

The other worthwhile upgrade, also from c and b seen, is the hope style clamp which makes the mounting much more stable.

[andrew_s]

You need the fresnel lens for road use.

Fresnel lenses aren't much good, IMO, assuming you mean this sort of thing:
C&B SEEN WIDE ANGLE/DIFFUSER LENS FOR 1000/1200 LUMEN BIKE LIGHTS

All they do is spread the light left & right. They do nothing to keep it down..
As far as an oncoming road user is concerned the effect is the same as dialling the brightness down a bit, and then, if you turn the wick up to compensate for the reduced brightness, so you can see better, you're back where you started.

[hubner]

I would think the same amount of light that goes down on the road surface also goes up into the eyes of oncoming road users including cyclists, especially on 2 way cycle paths.

[Frank9755]

Fresnel lenses aren't much good, IMO, assuming you mean this sort of thing:

https://www.candb-seen.co.uk/product-39mm-diffused-lens.html

That's the one.  (I've replaced the Amazon 'unavailable' link with one to their site).

The pictures they use don't illustrate it very well, nor is their explanation very good, but, IME, it does work in practice.  It changes the shape of the beam from a cone to basically a square box (on the road) with a fairly clear cutoff where you want it to be at the top. 

Think of it as a miniturised 2-dimension positive lens, which is essentially what it is.  It doesn't change the beam left/right at all.  But the rays that would have dazzled oncoming roadusers are bent (refracted) so they go straight down the road.  Same for the bits that would have gone straight down at the ground.  That means it puts the bulk of the light in the area where it is useful.

It's not exactly German standard, but it's good enough to make a useful on-road light. I've not had drivers flash me when using it - which used to happen a lot with my Hope Vision Ones, which were far less bright, but conical. Essentially, if fresnel lenses are good enough for lighthouses, they'll do for a bike light!

[Kim]

My fresnel lens arrived this morning.  The beam shape really isn't bad - instead of a tiny hotspot that's no use for anything, you now get a horizontal rectangle of a similar aspect ratio to the IQ reflectors.  Obviously it's symmetrical, so biased towards the nearfield, and the edges are fairly soft, with lots of spill.

So not up to B&M standards, but a vast improvement on a typical conical-beam light.  I haven't tried it on a bike yet, but I suspect it would be a reasonable 'main beam' or cyclepath light.  (I'd want a second light because how much do you trust Chinesium?)


Current draw of the lamp is almost exactly 1A at 5V, for those playing along at home.  (If you're calculating run time, remember that USB battery packs quote the amp-hour capacity of the 3.7V nominal Li+ cell, not that available at the USB output.  Multiply by about 0.7 to get a realistic figure.)

[Frank9755]

My fresnel lens arrived this morning.  The beam shape really isn't bad - instead of a tiny hotspot that's no use for anything, you now get a horizontal rectangle of a similar aspect ratio to the IQ reflectors.  Obviously it's symmetrical, so biased towards the nearfield, and the edges are fairly soft, with lots of spill.

So not up to B&M standards, but a vast improvement on a typical conical-beam light.  I haven't tried it on a bike yet, but I suspect it would be a reasonable 'main beam' or cyclepath light.  (I'd want a second light because how much do you trust Chinesium?)


Current draw of the lamp is almost exactly 1A at 5V, for those playing along at home.  (If you're calculating run time, remember that USB battery packs quote the amp-hour capacity of the 3.7V nominal Li+ cell, not that available at the USB output.  Multiply by about 0.7 to get a realistic figure.)

That ties in almost exactly with my experience, right down to getting about 7 hours use from a 10Ah battery pack.

[mrcharly-YHT]

Fitted, one test ride.
With my battery, I estimate about 4hrs on low

Fresnel lens ordered.

Light gives lots of security on rural roads, lighting up both verges.