New B&M 100lux headlight.

On Sat, 16 Dec 2017 19:00:32 -0500, Frank Krygowski
wrote:

On 12/16/2017 3:58 PM, Jeff Liebermann wrote:
I was wrong.

That phrase is very rare on Usenet! Congratulations on your honesty!

Does that compensate for my miserable math, creative logic, and
failing memory? Probably not. Never mind...

Would you buy a headlight from a company that fakes their demo/test
photos?

Is it "faked" or is it clarified?

I think the fashionable term is "enhanced" which can mean almost
anything.

I'd use the former term only if the effect and intent was deception. But
I've bought several of their headlights. IME all performed as expected
or better, consistent with the beam shots I found. I don't think there
was anything dishonest happening.

Agreed. I don't see any evidence of tampering with the beam pattern.
As James pointed out, my false color image looks almost exactly like
their computah model.
http://802.11junk.com/jeffl/pics/bicycles/Cygo-Premium/80%20Lux%20-%20Ausleuchtung%20IQ-Premium%20-%20false%20color.jpg
https://www.bumm.de/files/Technologie/IQ-TEC%20vs%20IQ-Premium.jpg
However, the surroundings in the garage appear to have been fabricated
for the occasion. Whether the intent is to deceive, or simply the
results of an overly creative art department is a matter of personal
opinion.


--
Jeff Liebermann
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

On Fri, 15 Dec 2017 23:36:28 -0800 (PST), Oculus Lights
wrote:
On Friday, December 15, 2017 at 10:09:36 PM UTC-8, Tim McNamara wrote:
On Fri, 15 Dec 2017 19:22:02 -0800 (PST), Oculus Lights
wrote:

snip

Barry, Barry, Barry. You are your own worst PR possible. You might
have a great product, but you are not proving it here or in the other
forums where I just spent ten minutes reading your screeds. Your web
site fails to convince as well (visually disorganized, repetitive and
is kinda like one of those late night TV Bell & Howell flashlight
commercials).

Good luck with your products, Barry. I think your best approach is
going to be to learn to manage your anger when you are dealing with
people. You're going to get blunt assessments of your product and
your style on the internet, might as well understand that up front
and use it to your advantage.

Hey Tim,
Same thing said privately would be constructive. Said publicly
its an attack and bait for others to redistribute and attack further
on.

You overestimate my prominence on the Internet, I think.

Would you pull the post please?

Unfortunately this is Usenet, Barry. There's no effective way for me to
"pull" the post. The technology is what it is. This is the Cateye
HL-500 of forums. Or maybe the Wonder Light!

Yes, I am old. I did a tour once with the HL-500 when it was new tech.

Constructive suggestions and honest product examination is how I get
my best improvements. Declaring across a widely read internet forum
that a product has a fatal flaw where there's nothing wrong at all
needs to be shut up quickly before it gets anywhere else around the
internet.

This is a Usenet newsgroup, Barry. It has dwindled in the age of Web
forums and now there are probably fewer than 100 people who read
rec.bicycles.tech, maybe fewer than 50. 10 years ago there were 1000 or
more participants; it has never been a widely read thing in the 20 years
I've been involved. Now it barely exists as a ghost of its former self.
This is true of every other newsgroup I am aware of; many of them have
ceased to exist altogether. Look at the posters' names- there's about
10 regulars posting (and mostly rehashing the same conversations over
and over, like old guys at the diner talking over the good old days).

Not sure where you say I'm being angry.

For example: threatening to "take people on," to get funding by suing
them, attacking anyone who dares to critique your product, etc., are
indicative of anger. Whether you mean to or not, you come across as
angry and defensive. You will get more negative reaction to that than
to what others say.

Do you also tell people posting misinformation to get first hand
information instead of idle offhand speculation? Do you attack Daniel
Emerson or Tom Carrol personally when you don't like something about
an, L&M light? Think about it. My life is my lights. Attacking me
claiming therefore you shouldn't buy my lights, you attack my ability
to barely keep a roof over my head. So please pull your last posting.

Again, no way to pull the post with the available technology. Usenet
operates like a bucket brigade.

I was simply offering you some advice based on reading what you yourself
have written here and in other places. In my opinion, what you write
and how you write it is more problematic for you than any of your
so-called detractors. You may, of course disagree with that.

I have no idea who Daniel Emerson or Tom Carrol are. If they post here
it has gone unnoticed to me. I don't recall having heard of L&M lights,
for that matter. I only know of your product because you brought it up.
I have lights that work great for me and I am not a potential customer
for Oculus or for L&M. I don't do battery headlights as a matter of
personal preference and pay no attention to that marketplace at all. As
noted previously, I have no ill will towards you or your products and
wish you every success.

On Sat, 16 Dec 2017 18:03:39 +0700, John B wrote:

Didn't I read somewhere that Usenet was not intended for commercial
posting, advertisement and other such activity was frowned on? --

Well, yes, but there is no mechanism for enforcement. Except for
moderated newsgroups, Usenet has always relied on self-correction.

On 16/12/17 21:58, Jeff Liebermann wrote:
On Sat, 16 Dec 2017 12:06:53 -0800, Jeff Liebermann
wrote:
I would expect to see something lit up in the distance beyond the
columns. Nope. The light stops dead in it tracks after passing the
columns.

Original photo:
https://www.bumm.de/files/Produkte/80%20Lux%20-%20Ausleuchtung%20IQ-Premium.jpg
I was wrong. There really is some detail in the dark areas beyond the
columns. I did some contrast and gamma tweaking with Irfanview, which
brought out some detail:
http://802.11junk.com/jeffl/pics/bicycles/Cygo-Premium/80%20Lux%20-%20Ausleuchtung%20IQ-Premium%20-%20contrast-adjusted.jpg
So, it might be real, where the Photoshop job removed all the expected
floor debris, ceiling hangers, and column fasteners which I would
expect in such an underground garage. Or, the background might have
been borrowed from a Poser or DAZ 3D libraries. I'm sure the photo
was edited, but I don't know to what degree.

Would you buy a headlight from a company that fakes their demo/test
photos?

Joining in subjectively, the garage looks photo-shopped. However, the
beam pattern is exactly like my CYO. I angle it down a fraction more
than in that picture, cutoff hits the ground ~20-30 metres from the
bike, making that dip between near and far more pronounced, but that it
what it looks like on unlit asphalt.

Look at the bleed left and right, that's what I don't see the need for!

Oculus Lights wrote:

Just goes to show the suckers people are for believing third hand
innuendo on the internet instead of calling me to get their facts straight.
That Kickstarter backer was removed and banned permanently. Kickstarter
sent a letter that his claims had no basis.

Without links to it and the court transcript, the interested public will
never learn who was right.

Unremarkable? Ordinary? The patent office disagrees.

The patent office's criteria might not be the same as mine. I was also
surprised what Bumm and others have been awarded patents for.

No way to make that
beam with ordinary obvious parts, methods, and procedures. Everything in
there is proprietary or not normally available off the shelf.

As nobody including MTBR has supplied contrary evidence to your, the
designer's assessment, I have no problem with your statement.

the description of the parts in that picture is wrong,
that its not "ordinary" nor the portrayals and claimed negatives of it. Nor
is any mention made of the angles, shapes, layout, offset, dimensions, and
every other aspect of a compound optic that creates the beam, separate from
the physical pieces in it.

Cutting through the emotions, I can see what you mean. I am not agreeing
with some MTBR user's description of your lamp. I mistakenly mixed the
physical "exposed" part into one sentence with my personal views about the
lamp's optics. From what I can see in the photo, the compound optic is
certainly special, and the parts can absolutely do what they are supposed to
do. I, much like Frank, just don't find the resultant beam as attractive
and useful as its designer does.

lost holiday sales
to lights from the big companies that pay Francis Cebedo big money for
advertising and sponsorship, but Oculus is constantly chosen over by anyone
comparing side by side.

Who cares about Mr. Cebedo? From what I have seen, it's entirely obvious
that he doesn't know much about bicycle lights. But he seems to be an
advanced martial arts practitioner, allowing you to become emotional on his
own forum. If everybody prefers your lamp, tested side to side with theirs,
I don't see a reason why you should waste your time exploding on forums.
Just hit the Bay Area's races and trails and sell dozens a day, tell your
new customers you appreciate fair reviews, quietly exchange 2 percent of
sales, thrive and become rich and happy!

Either take me up on the bet or retract your who accusation.

No bets needed, no WHO needed. I retracted what could be read as an unfair
accusation.

(This statement was not effected by anything that might be construed as
coercive, but made trying to be similarly fair about the Oculus lamp shown
as Frank was in reviewing it. EOD. Happy holidays!)

On 12/17/2017 4:13 AM, Tosspot wrote:

Joining in subjectively, the garage looks photo-shopped.Â* However, the
beam pattern is exactly like my CYO.Â* I angle it down a fraction more
than in that picture, cutoff hits the ground ~20-30 metres from the
bike, making that dip between near and far more pronounced, but that it
what it looks like on unlit asphalt.

Look at the bleed left and right, that's what I don't see the need for!

Personally, I think the next development in bike headlight optics should
be to purposely add lateral beam width, and with an upward component. I
want cutoff straight ahead, as with automobile lights. But if there were
a little more light thrown (say) up to the right, it would help on a
right turn into a driveway or tight street intersection that was unlit.
The upward component would be to compensate for the bike's tilt during
the turn.

A further benefit would be a brighter light directed toward motorists
approaching a stop sign as the bicyclist proceeded with the right of way.

--
- Frank Krygowski

On 12/15/2017 7:40 PM, Oculus Lights wrote:

Call me to get accurate information about the parts in my lights and remove your posting and admit you were in error, or shut the **** up.

That's not too helpful. In any case, there is no way to remove a Usenet
posting.

I would respectfully suggest that you put that information on your web
site. Also, glaringly absent from your web site, is a "Specifications"
button, i.e. What is the output at each setting?

When I was evaluating integrated-battery lights, I chose the Lezyne
Decadrive 1500XXL. The Oculus looked good also, but I liked some things
about the Lezyne better. Ended up buying two of them, along with extra
aluminum mounts for other bicycles.

1500XXL Positives
-----------------
1. Metal enclosure. Being an engineer, and dealing with thermal issues
on a continuous basis for 25+ years, and having experienced LED failures
from heat, the Lezyne design appealed to me more due to their thermal
solution, even though it adds weight,

2. Mounts. Leyzne offers an aluminum handlebar mount
http://www.lezyne.com/product-led-acc-alhandlebrmt.php. You can have
these mounts on each bicycle and it's faster reattaching a strap every
time it's removed (and unlike lights with separate battery packs, you
remove integrated-battery lights a LOT).

3. Specs. Lezyne specifies the lumens at each setting. Their web site is
very informative.

4. Beam pattern. Sufficient side spill and sufficient top beam.

5. Micro USB rechargable, high-current charger available.

6. Price. The Lezyne Decadrive 1500XXL sells for under $100.
http://www.masherz.com/products/lezyne/superdrive1500xxlheadlightblack.htm


1500XXL Negatives
-----------------
1. Can't swap batteries in the field. While it's not that difficult to
take it apart to replace batteries that have lost capacity, you would
obviously not do that while out on a ride. However their newer model,
the Decadrive 1500i (not the one I have) has an option for connecting an
external power pack
http://www.lezyne.com/product-led-acc-infinitelightpwrpk.php to extend
the range. Still, that's a lot more expensive than carrying an extra
18650 or 26650 cell.

2. DRL flash lumens is only 150.

3. Mode switch is difficult to get the light into the preferred mode.

4. Heavy at 267.6 grams (9.4 ounces).

5. Charger not included.


Oculus Positives
----------------
1. Swappable batteries.

2. Excellent beam, though I like the upward spill of the Lezyne better
because in my area there are a lot of low hanging trees near the road
shoulder.

3. Slightly lighter than the Lezyne, at 1/2 pound (according to one
review--specs not available on Oculus site), due to plastic construction.

4. High-current charger included.

5. Option to use either 26650 or 18650 battery.


Oculus Negatives
----------------
1. Plastic construction.

2. No permanent mount available, you have to strap and unstrap it every
time.

3. Unknown specs. If the specs are on that gawd-awful web site
somewhere, I can't find them.

4. Charger is not Micro USB, so a need to carry a separate charger on tours.

5. 50% more expensive.

I also have to say, with all due respect to Barry, that the Oculus web
site almost certainly scares many potential customers away. It's very
poorly done and unprofessional.

Specifically:

1. Lack of specs. What is the output at each setting? What is the
weight? How long can it run at full output before it automatically
reduces the output due to heat?

2. The claim that a U.S. patent is proof of anything is ludicrous to
anyone that knows anything about the USPO.

3. The video that starts playing immediately is annoying. The lack of
specifications is suspicious.

4. I feel like I'm on one of those infomercial web sites.

5. Testimonials are the weakest form of advertising, and scares buyers away.

h.
Sorting out the few items worth answering from within the rest of your irrelevant troll snottiness,

I'm quite familiar with the standard ways the German's make the SVTZO compliant beam shapes. Studied inside them closely when designing my STVZO optics.
Anyone know how many LEDs the B&M uses? Looks like more than one.
The beam in my video shows a much taller and wider beam than the German brands make.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_c...&v=SXuE3JmBclM

That B&M needs to go 10 meters downrange to reach two car lanes wide, and at an obvious dimmer brightness than the center. My Oculus STVZO design needs less distance downrange to reach that width, and keeps a near even brightness all the way across at the bottom of the beam.
It would be a more honest picture for B&M to show the point downrange where they claim their rated 100 lux measurement is taken. Best guess is at the 10 meter STVZO measuring point. 100 lux at 10 yards is doable with a tight concentrator to make the B spot bright enough that nowhere below that horizontal would be brighter, and stay at 2 lux at the H line above. That much concentration takes a toll on the brightness that can be put at the bottom of the beam, where STVZO only requires 2 lux at relatively narrow points sideways from the vertical center. the low horizontal is how these other STVZO lights pass, because most of the brightness can be made in only a short distance top to bottom.

There are no follow vehicles at the World 24 Hour TT's. At RAAM, my people consistently were, or say they felt, faster on curvy and fast descending sections where the follow vehicle couldn't keep up. Follow vehicles mostly have a mix of wide shorter distance floods and/or long pencil beams.
Empiracally, the best at RAAM and other ultra-events ask for my beams over any other light they could use and sometimes their other sponsors want to give them.
Oculus also gives a high powered blast of a safer Daylight Visible beam that the RAAM racers enjoy too, instead of a little blinking dot that other lights have.

I would love little better than to have an honest apples to apples side by side comparison my STVZO design included in those beam shots. I'll give you 10% of any royalties for the first 50,000 units or two years of any licensing deal you can get me connected with.

But are you up for being constructive by helping to get my STVZO beam into those side by side, equal exposure pictures? Will you stay obsessed with your current behavior so far of showing no ability to look good on your own merit without without trying to find excuses to put others down for taking risks and accomplishing dreams in life that you're own words indicate you're too much of a coward to dare try?


On Saturday, December 16, 2017 at 2:40:57 AM UTC-8, Sepp Ruf wrote:
James wrote:
On 16/12/17 13:59, Oculus Lights wrote:
On Thursday, December 14, 2017 at 7:14:57 PM UTC-8, James wrote:
On 14/12/17 17:04, Oculus Lights wrote:
On Tuesday, November 21, 2017 at 2:34:34 PM UTC-8, James wrote:
https://www.bike24.com/p2144878.html

-- JS

oops forgot to answer questions. The ray trace is from design
software called Zemax. Every other ray trace has some red center.
This beam is so even that it has early no red anywhere.

The Nasa Lunar Resource Prospector development unit has a few
Oculus mounted on it in a layout that resulted from trial and
error til we made a light field with virtually no variation in
the region the robot "sees". The light field dimensions aren't
public info so can't say, but you can probably make a rough guess
from the picture. The new Roverscape indoor area with synthetic
lunar "soil" and "moonrocks" is mores secure than they can get me
a clearance for. Latest update is they're moving ahead with
their algorithms based on how my lights light up the region for
the vehicle's cameras. Maybe once this baby sends back the first
pics of the Dark Side (small south polar region) of the moon, an
aerospace giant will buy up my patent and I'll finally get to
cash in instead of scraping away with a flashlight and bike light
industry that doesn't like new guys or technology that would make
them change their tooling and infrastructure.



You could try to reply to the message where I asked these
questions.

If I could find your original mixed in a few days of digest, else,
here's your reply, stop being an asshole about it.

Learn to use a newsreader software, spammer -- and take your meds!

A ray trace projected on to a surface perpendicular to the light
source is not representative of how the light will be used in the
real world. Hence, your picture is of no practical use.


All beams are designed to ray traces. You also have that picture
from the NASA grounds showing the beam on ground. "Hence" go ****
yourself and you bull**** character attacks. Stay the **** on topic
here of get the **** off this forum.
That's very cute, Barry Shortfuse. AFAIR, and still expressed in the
subject line, the topic of this rbt thread was Bumm's two-year old IQ-X lamp
which Barry is not nearly as familiar with as one could expect from a
normally functioning small competitor.

I thought I was fairly clear, but obviously still misunderstood. I'm
sure B&M use ray tracing light simulation software too, however their
beams are shown with the light mounted at the fork crown and projected
on to a surface that is representative of the light on a road. See here;

https://www.bumm.de/en/technologie-detail-en/iq-iq2-iq-premium-41.html

Investing just the cost of two Fedex parcels if he's too paranoid for USPS,
Barry could, for years, have gotten these kinds of graphics and their "wall"
measured versions for his actual product. Though Jeff's simplified method
of expensive "road brightness" measurements from the rider's eye position
still seems advantageous for user purposes, given a camera providing
sufficiently realistic data.

They also have real world beam shots, but of course no competitor's
lights for comparison. Note that the headlight I have illuminates the
wall in their photo out to 45m ahead.

Butbutbut the Real Athlete's question is: Can it overpower the horribly
distracting shadows under your tired eyes that your bike is producing in the
powerful beams from your RAAM support vehicle closely following?

https://www.bumm.de/en/products/dynamo-scheinwerfer/produkt/1752qsndi.html?

Except for the grassy, uneven ground that does hide beam defects that can
more easily be spotted on tarmac, this is an okay six-in-one comparison of
battery Bumms with Philips and Supernovae:
https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/81RNDIsaUJL._SL1600_.jpg

Now you resort to colourful language, insults and such. Well, you
certainly know how to self destruct!

Alternatively, he could just "pull" his latest, what, fifty? usenet and
forum posts. How much TNT do you need for the job, Barry?

--
"Pretend to have learned the rules like a pro, then pretend to be a master
artist breaking them."

Didn't I read somewhere that Usenet was not intended for commercial
posting, advertisement and other such activity was frowned on?
--
Cheers,

John B.


Tech discussions sticking to first hand fact are always welcome and on topic. Problems happen when people refuse to get first hand facts straight, choosing to imbed declarations of ulteriorly motivated false fact within a statement, then declare a false conclusion based on their bad data and assumptions.
Problems also happen when forums are sponsored and moderated by pay for play sponsors and advertisers, like what Francis Cebedo's MTBR and RBR sites.
One huge plus for this forum is that its neutral. But we still get trolls like Sepp Ruf trying to stoke flames of intolerance with his vitriol. Will he admit that the quote he cross posted of a very selectively disparaging misleading edit from a disgruntled Kickstarter backer is bogus?
IF he asked for accurate first hand fact, he would know that the Kickstarter backer was removed and banned by Kickstarter for many violations of their terms of service. KS also sent me a statement verifying that the disgruntled backer's claims have no basis.
Will Sepp Ruf now admit he got it wrong and apologize? Lots of other material on the internet could have shown him he got it wrong.
Also, a general post mortem about Kickstarter I posted that's been around the internet for over a year, iirc its been linked to on this list before,
https://jnyyz.wordpress.com/2016/12/...ight/#comments

Well, Frank bought one, and I would like to hear his unbiased review. I have to admit, though, that there are aspects of the design/logo/website that scream home-brew -- which goes to show you how much window-dressing makes a difference these days, often for the worse. There are a lot of lipstick wearing pigs these days. But if I were running the company, I'd spend a few bucks on graphics and product design.

The fit and finish of my L&M for example is impressive. The battery life on my little Urban 800 is not impressive, and the beam is adequate for my purposes but it is certainly no trail light. I would want something more robust for a full speed descent of HWY 9. https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_c...&v=lpFCHTcAaEI (I used to descend that at night full speed .. . . in an ambulance. Never on a bike.) On the Urban, beam shaping is non-existent, but I do like the pulse flash for non-injurious conspicuity. For a sale-table light of $49, it was a great deal and fine for daily commuting.. A multiple setting, high lumen light with long battery life and a reasonably shaped beam would be great. I leave it to others to decide whether the Oculus is that light.

-- Jay Beattie.

Home Brew?
Ever have an idea in the back of your mind that won't leave you alone til you do something about it? Have a hobby that takes over you life and turns into something much bigger?
Same as Tom Carrol at Nite Rider might tell you. My journey shows what every bike light company, and other innovators in any industry, suffer and endure, overcome critics and fight off competitors hoping they fail, on the way to becoming profitable and being merged or acquired.

Oculus is my design and creation, patent, and enough out of pocket into design and testing to put a sizable down payment on a house, before Angel investors came in to make this go up to a consumer product and functioning full time business. Its still mostly a one man operation that I need to choose my time wisely.
There's two sides to Oculus.
1. The product I make and sell.
2. The patent and technology, separate from how its currently packaged and sold.

So I am both growing and operating the business at the same time. Some of you know the toll that the demands of doing that can take on a person's life.

This didn't start out wanting to make and sell my own lights. Objective was always to have someone else make and sell them, with me in a design or CTO role.

The long term goal remains to design and license for others. MY STVZO design is at the behest of one of the major players who found that, yes, my design beats the Supernova that most of the e-bike makers are selling on their bikes now, and can be sold for a sufficiently lower wholesale margin than Supernova does.
No one else wants to take on the ambitious self contained battery + field replaceable + internally rechargeable design + unbreakable mount + highly efficient long-burn circuit concept all in one product.
A tactical rough duty version with the current 3000 circuit and optics would easily outsell Colt's Magna Carta. Firemen have asked about firefighting approved packaging. Robotics and self-driving car navigation systems get an advantage with these vs other onboard lighting. Police use it now as their "you've been drinking mister" and " more serious "stop or I'll shoot" light when they stick their necks out doing a job that most of us would be scared ****less to even put the badge on for one single day on duty.

Think of the current Oculus as huge bang for the buck. It does have places that aren't bad now but I know, and some users suggest, see can still be better.

Better at what cost? If it can be done, without needing to charge more, then I either make improvements when I run out of hard parts and need to order more, or change the firmware on the fly as needed.

Oculus 3000Extreme is the big risk that came about with a combination of suggestions, combined with needing to order more circuit boards, allowing for a circuit redesign and new firmware.
Big investment, some meltdowns and failures in testing til I got it right, and now it works and makes more money than the 1800.
Sitting here on a table tonight, a 3000Extreme on the same brightness as the 1800 burns for 2 hours 10 minutes, lasted 2 hours 42 minutes. The 'long burn' power table cuts power settings ~7% lower but nothing the eye notices, lasts 3:10. One step lower is where the racers at the World 24 Hour TTs got 6:30 burn time, so they needed only one battery change, at brightness that they could ride at 20+mph speeds, all night long, 450 - 500ish lumens.

About other brands:

L&M makes nice finished packages, but as you observe, something has to give to make those low cost Urbans. A $2 cheaper battery can make the difference.
The Urban's and Taz, and most small NiteRiders, can be opened up with some careful screwdriver and fingertip manipulation. Replace what's in there with Panasonic 3400mAH rated 18650, and you add up to 50% longer burn time.

At the Google winter bike safety employees event, with Light and Motion selling lights side by side with me, people got to compare Oculus side by side with the Taz 2000 and Seca 2500. Most who did, and did buy a light one or the other, bought Oculus.

The LEDs in most cheaper L&M and NiteRider lights can also be replaced with brighter LEDs. Cree XPG can be replaced with Cree XPL-HI. Both brighter and longer burn times.