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#81
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Battery Replacement on Lights with Internal Li-Ion Batteries
On 2018-02-10 16:22, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 2/10/2018 3:54 PM, Joerg wrote: On roads and also in towns where people tend to not pay enough attention to cyclists I ride with full lumens, day or night... I would not ride one mile in traffic without those. We know. "Danger! Danger!" This is a classic example of you falsifying quotes. I wrote, quote "I have installed diffusor lenses so people won't be blinded. I would not ride one mile in traffic without those". Out of courtesy to _others_ and not me. Ever heard of brackets and dots to do a legit snip? And even then you'd have been at tabloid quality. -- Regards, Joerg http://www.analogconsultants.com/ |
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#82
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Battery Replacement on Lights with Internal Li-Ion Batteries
On 2018-02-10 18:25, John B. wrote:
On Sat, 10 Feb 2018 19:25:57 -0500, Frank Krygowski wrote: On 2/10/2018 4:03 PM, Joerg wrote: Everyone installing a high-powered LED light on a bicycle, front or rear, should walk towards their lit bike during daylight and then again at night. If the light is annoying, do something about it. I agree with this. But I'd add, before buying high powered LED lights, check out any more ordinary lights you have in a similar way. Have a friend ride your bike as you observe. I've done this many times with friends. Contrary to current myths, you do not need super-powerful lights to be plenty visible. Any headlight that shows the road sufficiently will be perfectly visible to motorists, and taillights need far, far less power to make you safe. I had plenty of opportunity to compare StVZO tail lights versus the over there "illegal" lights such as PDW DangerZone or Radbot. HUGE difference in visibility. This was as a motorist in Germany. Since I am also a cyclist I paid particular attention to bicycle equipment because I wanted to know. I also wanted to see if the purchase of some lights from there would make sense since those wouldn't need electronics up front to connect to the 8.4VDC power bus on my bicycles. My conclusion was that it does not. I've read the comments about blindingly bright bicycle lights and always wondered about it. Basically, sitting on my bike my eye line is higher then the driver of a Toyota - ... Unless you are sitting in an americanized Toyota Tundra with extra big tires :-) ... I've checked this a number of times - thus a light that was blinding to me, sitting on my bike, must certainly be blinding to a guy driving a Toyota.... which doesn't seem like a good thing to do, at least blinding the other driver seems counterproductive to being seen. What I've always done with bar mounted lights was to set the light horizontal which puts the beam at almost exactly the same height as the stop light lenses on my example Toyota Taxi. So far, at least, I've had no indication that auto drivers didn't see me, or see me in a timely manner. The trick is, when you walk towards your bicycle, move a bit towards the squatting position, just enough to get to the typical seat height of a sports car like a Mazda Miata. If it doesn't blind then, you are ok. -- Regards, Joerg http://www.analogconsultants.com/ |
#83
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Battery Replacement on Lights with Internal Li-Ion Batteries
On 2/8/2018 12:08 PM, Joerg wrote:
Ye olde 2.4W + 0.6W with a dynamo? When riding at a good clip, meaning north of 15mph, those never lasted much longer than a month for me. Even if they didn't blow their filament right away the bulbs turned black inside and became dimmer than they were already to begin with. When I was a teenager I started equipping my bikes with what the automotive industry already understood over 100 years ago, brighter lights, a battery and charging system. Soon the German police wanted to give me a ticket for "non-standard" lighting. Luckily by that time I was a Dutch resident and they had to let me go. LOL, in the U.S. I think the police are so thrilled that a cyclist has a light at all that the last thing they worry about is if it's as bright as a vehicle light. However, a couple of months ago my son was home from college and driving my car and he got pulled over. I had replaced my 7443 incandescent brake light bulbs with these https://www.superbrightleds.com/moreinfo/tail-brake-turn/7443-led-bulb-w-brake-flasher-dual-function-1-high-power-led-wedge-retrofit-car/925/ which flash prior to going solid. They were not illegal so he didn't get a ticket. I don't know what the real reason they pulled him over was. Those 2.4W bulbs were a joke. My bikes (after my teenage years) always had better lighting than that. Now it's all LED on my bikes but the real stuff with more than 500 lumens. I recall that the lights back then came with a clip to hold a spare bulb. Then people began coming out with home-brew protection circuits. |
#84
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Battery Replacement on Lights with Internal Li-Ion Batteries
On 2018-02-10 16:57, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 2/10/2018 3:27 PM, Joerg wrote: On 2018-02-08 16:50, Frank Krygowski wrote: Then I realized my bottom bracket dynamo had snapped on because of the jolt. It was a near-perfect test of dynamo drag. Riding with it on cost me one mile per hour. Big deal! If you are willing to give up 1mph this easy, fine. I am not and I have found a much better solution. Joerg, your arguments are monuments to inconsistency. You've rhapsodized about stopping to smell the flowers, stopping to pet the dogs and horses, taking time to find a nail and rock for a Flinstone-style chain repair instead of using a chain tool... Yet now, being slowed one mile per hour is somehow critical?? In the valley, yes. As you should have figured out by now riding along major thoroughfares, even if they have bike lanes, is no fun at all for me. I want to get that behind me and the faster the better. Vrooom, vrooom, Diesel stench, yuck. Horses, dogs and so on are not to be met there. They are met on singletrack here in the hills and on MUP in the valley. Even on the long MUP along the American River I am sometimes in a hurry when on an errand run. To sum it up: _I_ want to be the decision maker on how fast the journey goes, not some poorly engineered piece of equipment. So is that the only place you ride?? You give the impression of oh-so-gnarly riding. Once again, your song changes wildly depending on your argument. If you had followed more carefully you'd have know that there are two places I ride a lot: Here in the hills and then down in the Sacramento Valley. As I wrote many times that valley is huge and very flat. Nearly all errand rides have to head in that direction because that's where nearly all stores are. Yes, and you've given photos and videos of hilly off-road trails, and said that your mountain bike has to be super-rugged to survive them, so you've reinforced racks, built stout battery boxes, choose heavy tires etc. because weight doesn't matter to you. Weight indeed does not matter, sturdiness is all that counts for me. So I have modified the MTB and to some extent the road bike (some of our roads wouldn't be considered roads in the east). On the MTB I do not care much if a ride on singletrack takes 15 minutes longer. As happened on Wednesday where I spent 15mins with a horse and then 5mins with another down the trail. Also watched a hawk who did fun aerobatics which is a rare sight. I looked at the time at a particular point where I'd normally barrel through at 1320h and it was already 1335h. So what? When I use the road bike and have to be at a meeting at a particular time that is obviously different. Perhaps you'd make more sense if you took notes on what you've already posted, then reviewed them before the next time you post. Perhaps. No, it would make more sense if you paid more attention to detail. Some of us are not restricted to same old same old when it comes to riding. Some of us have a road bike _and_ an MTB, and they use both kinds of routes. The riding is _very_ different and so is the terrain turf. You might also try to grasp the difference between utility rides and fun rides. -- Regards, Joerg http://www.analogconsultants.com/ |
#85
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Battery Replacement on Lights with Internal Li-Ion Batteries
On 2018-02-11 07:59, sms wrote:
On 2/8/2018 12:08 PM, Joerg wrote: Ye olde 2.4W + 0.6W with a dynamo? When riding at a good clip, meaning north of 15mph, those never lasted much longer than a month for me. Even if they didn't blow their filament right away the bulbs turned black inside and became dimmer than they were already to begin with. When I was a teenager I started equipping my bikes with what the automotive industry already understood over 100 years ago, brighter lights, a battery and charging system. Soon the German police wanted to give me a ticket for "non-standard" lighting. Luckily by that time I was a Dutch resident and they had to let me go. LOL, in the U.S. I think the police are so thrilled that a cyclist has a light at all that the last thing they worry about is if it's as bright as a vehicle light. ... Though I am waiting until I get stopped because from a distance one of my rear lights (there are two) looks like the flashing lights on a police cruiser or fire engine. ... However, a couple of months ago my son was home from college and driving my car and he got pulled over. I had replaced my 7443 incandescent brake light bulbs with these https://www.superbrightleds.com/moreinfo/tail-brake-turn/7443-led-bulb-w-brake-flasher-dual-function-1-high-power-led-wedge-retrofit-car/925/ which flash prior to going solid. They were not illegal so he didn't get a ticket. I don't know what the real reason they pulled him over was. Those 2.4W bulbs were a joke. My bikes (after my teenage years) always had better lighting than that. Now it's all LED on my bikes but the real stuff with more than 500 lumens. I recall that the lights back then came with a clip to hold a spare bulb. The ones I knew didn't but many riders had spare bulbs wadded in tissue stuffed into the empty space of the shell. Both 2.4W and 0.6W because when the front blew at high speed the rear was usually gone a second later. Then people began coming out with home-brew protection circuits. Or in my case real electrical systems such as cars had them for decades. Though I was surprised how few cyclists do this and that still holds true today. Most just have blinkers with some tiny AAA cells in there. The designers of those things usually weren't even smart enough to integrate a low-battery warning so I often see riders where the rear light has fizzled to the power of a glowing cigarette tip. -- Regards, Joerg http://www.analogconsultants.com/ |
#86
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Battery Replacement on Lights with Internal Li-Ion Batteries
On 2/8/2018 4:25 PM, Joerg wrote:
On 2018-02-08 16:01, Frank Krygowski wrote: On Thursday, February 8, 2018 at 4:14:47 PM UTC-5, Joerg wrote: On 2018-02-08 12:20, AMuzi wrote: On 2/8/2018 2:08 PM, Joerg wrote: Those 2.4W bulbs were a joke. My bikes (after my teenage years) always had better lighting than that. Now it's all LED on my bikes but the real stuff with more than 500 lumens. For years with a Margil cover or, after a Krygowski mod with O ring, and without a switch (always on) I have no complaints about function or longevity. YMMV. How much does that O-ring reduce the drag? In the old days (with a real power bus on the bike) I often rode the first miles with the dynamo off because of the drag. I only put it back to the wheel when the "steam gauge needle" (remember those?) got too close to the red range. First, the terrors of dyno drag are mostly a myth. This article deals with it: http://www.myra-simon.com/bike/dynotest.html "the slowing down has more to do with psychology than the actual power required to turn it." and "All of the generators were easier to turn than riding up a 1 in 300 slope. Another way of putting that is a rise of 18 feet per mile; and there's quite a cluster of sidewall and hub-driven models around the 1/500 line, or 10 ft per mile." Well, take another look at your link. I routinely ride at 30km/h at which bottle dynamos waste 15W or more. That is nothing to sneeze at. I find it odd that a guy routinely tells us weight doesn't matter to him, but is afraid of dyno drag equivalent to riding a 1 in 300 slope. Hint: In the flatlands and with a nice high tire pressure weight doesn't make much of a difference. In hilly terrain it's tougher to get uphill but you win most of that back going back down on the other side. The only time I feel weight is when I buy something at the brew supply place or hardware store in the valley and then have to schlepp it up 1300ft. Regarding the O-ring solution - that is, cutting a groove in the dyno drive wheel, snapping in a suitable O-ring and running that on the rim sidewall instead of the tire - it makes the dyno almost silent. That should greatly reduce your psychological stress, Joerg, but it probably reduces the drag a bit, too. The deformation and scrubbing of the contact patch between the tire and the dyno's roller is responsible for a significant portion of dyno drag. I think the O-ring has a lot less scrubbing and a lot less hysteresis loss. Yeah, I should give that a try. Still got a dynamo on the road bike from the days when I had NiCd batteries which didn't have the capacity of Li-Ion. Only issue is, it's a Soubitez dynamo where the wheel is not removable. I'd have to figure a way to grab it at its outside diameter with a hose or something and then drive that hose with a power drill at a speed the dynamo can stomach for a while, then hold the corner of a file to it. Also, my last front Gatorskin is still on there and those have paper-thin sidewalls. I'd have to mount another tire. The drag on bottle dynamos and roller dynamos is significant, though I have only owned Sanyo roller and Union bottle, not the high-end German bottle dynamos. For the hub dynamos it's hard to quantify the difference. I rode my Dahon yesterday which has an SP hub dynamo (rebranded as "Joule") but it'd be hard, without special equipment, to run it with the original wheel, and measure the difference. I have a high-end LED light on the Dahon, but like most StVZO compliant, European, LED lights there is no DRL flasher. My back-up dynamo light on my commute bike has a DRL flasher, but it's too weak to use by itself. Have to look at this one: http://www.chainreactioncycles.com/us/en/exposure-revo-dynamo-light-only/rp-prod110884. You're absolutely right regarding waste of excess power, and there's no reason for this with a better design. A dynamo charging a 2P Li-Ion power pack with a buck switcher would solve this problem, at least until the batteries are fully charged, but then you could choose to disconnect the dynamo from the load. |
#88
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Battery Replacement on Lights with Internal Li-Ion Batteries
On 2/11/2018 7:45 AM, Joerg wrote:
On 2018-02-10 16:22, Frank Krygowski wrote: On 2/10/2018 3:54 PM, Joerg wrote: On roads and also in towns where people tend to not pay enough attention to cyclists I ride with full lumens, day or night... I would not ride one mile in traffic without those. We know.Â* "Danger! Danger!" This is a classic example of you falsifying quotes. I wrote, quote "I have installed diffusor lenses so people won't be blinded. I would not ride one mile in traffic without those". Out of courtesy to _others_ and not me. Ever heard of brackets and dots to do a legit snip? And even then you'd have been at tabloid quality. Every time Frank can't respond to an argument with facts and logic he resorts to "Danger! Danger!." I am subjected to more and more Frank-like non-logic lately, and my Usenet experience was good training. |
#89
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Battery Replacement on Lights with Internal Li-Ion Batteries
On 2/11/2018 8:19 AM, Joerg wrote:
snip Or in my case real electrical systems such as cars had them for decades. Though I was surprised how few cyclists do this and that still holds true today. Most just have blinkers with some tiny AAA cells in there. The designers of those things usually weren't even smart enough to integrate a low-battery warning so I often see riders where the rear light has fizzled to the power of a glowing cigarette tip. Those AAA cell lights are really annoying. My favorite tail light is the CatEye TL-LD1100 which uses two AA cells. It also is one of the few tail lights that still has side-pointing LEDs as well are rear pointing LEDs. Still available from Asia. https://www.aliexpress.com/store/product/CATEYE-Bike-Bicycle-6-LED-Rear-Tail-Laser-Light-Bike-Back-Red-Light-Safety-Warning-Flashing/434036_32786881487.html. |
#90
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Battery Replacement on Lights with Internal Li-Ion Batteries
On 2018-02-11 08:25, sms wrote:
On 2/8/2018 4:25 PM, Joerg wrote: On 2018-02-08 16:01, Frank Krygowski wrote: [...] I find it odd that a guy routinely tells us weight doesn't matter to him, but is afraid of dyno drag equivalent to riding a 1 in 300 slope. Hint: In the flatlands and with a nice high tire pressure weight doesn't make much of a difference. In hilly terrain it's tougher to get uphill but you win most of that back going back down on the other side. The only time I feel weight is when I buy something at the brew supply place or hardware store in the valley and then have to schlepp it up 1300ft. Regarding the O-ring solution - that is, cutting a groove in the dyno drive wheel, snapping in a suitable O-ring and running that on the rim sidewall instead of the tire - it makes the dyno almost silent. That should greatly reduce your psychological stress, Joerg, but it probably reduces the drag a bit, too. The deformation and scrubbing of the contact patch between the tire and the dyno's roller is responsible for a significant portion of dyno drag. I think the O-ring has a lot less scrubbing and a lot less hysteresis loss. Yeah, I should give that a try. Still got a dynamo on the road bike from the days when I had NiCd batteries which didn't have the capacity of Li-Ion. Only issue is, it's a Soubitez dynamo where the wheel is not removable. I'd have to figure a way to grab it at its outside diameter with a hose or something and then drive that hose with a power drill at a speed the dynamo can stomach for a while, then hold the corner of a file to it. Also, my last front Gatorskin is still on there and those have paper-thin sidewalls. I'd have to mount another tire. The drag on bottle dynamos and roller dynamos is significant, though I have only owned Sanyo roller and Union bottle, not the high-end German bottle dynamos. For the hub dynamos it's hard to quantify the difference. I rode my Dahon yesterday which has an SP hub dynamo (rebranded as "Joule") but it'd be hard, without special equipment, to run it with the original wheel, and measure the difference. I have a high-end LED light on the Dahon, but like most StVZO compliant, European, LED lights there is no DRL flasher. My back-up dynamo light on my commute bike has a DRL flasher, but it's too weak to use by itself. Have to look at this one: http://www.chainreactioncycles.com/us/en/exposure-revo-dynamo-light-only/rp-prod110884. Nice but I am not willing to pay $200 just for a front light when I can buy a fully adequate one for under $20. Swapping the lens is needed but done in minutes. You're absolutely right regarding waste of excess power, and there's no reason for this with a better design. A dynamo charging a 2P Li-Ion power pack with a buck switcher would solve this problem, at least until the batteries are fully charged, but then you could choose to disconnect the dynamo from the load. That is how I used dynamos in the past and would like to do that again. However, in the US it is hard to find a reasonably priced complete front wheel with a hub dynamo and I don't want to spoke up my own. So it'll have to be a bottle dynamo (rollers went the way of the dinosuars) and then I'd like to try Frank's mode with an O-ring and run it on the brake surface nstead of the tire. -- Regards, Joerg http://www.analogconsultants.com/ |
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