For the last few week have been udnertaking some designs and concept idea's but thought i'd see what people think before i make a prototype.
The baasic concept is beams of LED light strips are built into the handlebars with the batteries directly mounted in the bars themselves which can be recharged. With a neat switch on the bars.
The design can also be transferred to a seatpost.
If it can be made to work sounds a neat idea. brake gear cables might get in the way a bit.
Its still in design stage, but its got to be neater than having big bulky lights on your bars.
Only design issue currently is getting an angle so the light is visible from the side. I think all of the issues are things we can work around though!
Will keep updated
Would they be surface mounted or would they 'weaken' the bars by drilling holes ?
Are they 'get yourself seen' or 'light your way'?
Little extra bar end lights - on the battery caps should fix sideways visibility ?
Thanks Q's out 
They would be directly drilled/into the bar so its flush with the bar,
in terms of weakening the Titanium bar, this is what the consultency with many engineering firms and designing to protect this.
The bars will be a "Light your way" jobby and are intended for a high price range quality market.
If $$$ -Maybe with a locking stem bolt - to stop it getting pinched ?
might not be a bad idea
How will you alter the beam angle ie how far it shines down the road? Can you get enough batteries in the bars?
sounds an interesting idea but I am dubious about the size of the holes needed in the bars for the optics. Te smallest optics are 1cm+ across are they not?
I can see this working for a light to be seen by -= then you could use 5 mm leds with no optic but for a light to see by?
Didn't some one do a battery in a Pace rigid leg-
Cable up the the disc hose to a 'XPG' bolted to the bars?
sounds like a solution looking for a problem IMHO.
i think it's going to have to be fairly engineered to be strong while having big enough holes, as above.. going to be tricky to fit stuff in that confined space too, and allow for repairs while keeping it watertight etc. initial thoughts are that you want the batteries to be easily removable and charged away from the bike (and when you know you won't need lights)
As TJ says, for lights to see with, if you want it all inside the bars with no protrusions, the holes needed for any decent optic would seriously weaken the bar (in fact I'm fairly dubious that there's actually space inside a bar to fit an LED and optic - I use some of the smallest available and they wouldn't fit).
And as above, how will you charge the batteries? Bring the bike into the house? What about when you don't want to carry some heavy batteries around with you?
Is a bolt on lamp that you buy from ASDA or even a more expensive enclosed lamp/battery of which there are many, actually that much of a problem? I personally don't think they're bulky or a problem.
What about cooling issues?
and in daylight? i wouldn't want to carry the weight of battery etc during a daytime ride and i won't want to swap bars just for a night ride, Ti or not a battery and light filled bar is going to be heavier than an empty one
a seatpost version is a more interesting prospect to me though and as this would just be a "see me" light it might be easier (smaller hole/battery)
Main problems I see are:
Rep ing the battery for charging. That would be a show stopper for me.
How do you change where the beam is shining? Twist the bar? Fine if it's a totally flat bar....
I like my clip on lights because I can transfer from bike to bike, take inside for charging, redirect easily and take off in daylight.
Doesn't work for me. If it was purely a commuter light then I could possibly see it working, but not a powerful light.
As above:
1. How do you change the beam angle? One rider prefers a different angle to the next.
2. What about brake and gear cables that tend to run infront of the bar?
3. What about cooling, modern lights are now 1800 lumens + and therefore chuck out alot of heat...I guess you would have warm hands in winter
4. How the heck do you get the battery performance you would need in to a bar?
5. How do you charge the lights?
6. What about riding in the day time when you don't want the extra weight of the bar?
7. Are you getting a custom bar made, or just butchering existing ones?
8. Are they going to upgradeable when new techonologies come around?
However, if you thinking about doing commuting lights that are built in to the bar and seat post, I imagine you might have quite a good niche product there.
First of all I like the fact that you are thinking about new ways to do lighting, the key drawbacks with your idea have been pointed out already
altering beam angle and getting reasonable optics into the limited housing space seems like the biggest issue to me, just about everything else can be accomodated in a 31.8 bar I reckon....
My own though was why not look at other ways of integrating lighting into the controls, (if this isn't watering your ideas down a bit) integrate the lamp into a stem face plate, maybe with a bit of angle adjustment possible...
to go a bit further with this, why not have your batteries still mounted in bar end caps (will an 18mm Dia - 18650 fit neatly in the end of a normal 22mm OD bar?) and in order to do away with the clutted of wires, have 2 contacts at the centre of the bar (with 2 coresponding contacts in the back of your stem face plate/lamp unit), possibly a clamp on (Loc-on?) switch unit with similar connecting contacts local to each grip?
this would of course require a bit of clever design to get the wiring loom and contacts built in neatly, but as we're into integrating things there's no reason any of this couldn't be done, just cost/time/complexity...
It might well be worth considering composites for the bar construction whichever concept you pursue, you have alot of things to integrate and it may help barter the weight down...
The Seatpost idea would work nicely as it's a "Be seen" light and many of the concerns raised for the Bars don't apply, if this is for a Uni/School project that might be the neater project to follow up...
Good luck....
Yeah - as above, I think it's a good idea but there are some major issues that I am not sure could be solved, most mentioned above. Even if they could be solved, would people want the solution over a 'normal' light?
1) First of all, is it a product people will want? Generally people have a preferred bar, or they know they want an X wide bar with a certain rise or flat or weird shaped.
2) People adjust the bars to fit their riding. How do you then adjust the lights if you like your bar rolled back a bit more than the normal position or a bit forward?
3) Will there be room for all the controls on the bar, but still space for the lights to shine? Things like remote fork lockout, dropper seatpost control, cycle computer?
4) Can you get LED's, electronics & batteries into a bar? Is there enough room for batteries, decent optics? Where is the on/off switch?
5) Not everyone has power in their garage/shed. How do you charge them?
6) What is the effect of heavy bars on the 'feel' of the bike? Particularly if the heavy batteries are placed outboard towards the grips?
7) Heat dissipation? A cylinder is a fairly efficient shape in terms of low surface area - how do you dissipate heat, especially with hands & grips covering ~200mm of bars, plus all the other things clamped in place?
8 ) What if I have 2 bikes? Do I have to buy 2 pairs of 'premium' illuminated bars or would I just have normal bars & detachable lights?
I could see this being a good idea for a 'be seen' light, perhaps with a number of small LEDs on each side of the bars. You could have clip-in batteries that double as bar ends, so you just unscrew them when you need to charge. You could have an LED in the end of the battery to provide some side illumination.
Or as mentioned above, I think - could you design a stem with an internal battery pack & an illuminated face plate that would act as a 'be seen' light?
Stumpy makes a good point Re: peoples bar preferences...
Thinking about it further, would limiting your integrated lighting to a Stem only design be acceptable?
That would dodge a few of the main issues with integrating things into bars.
Personally, I think that stems should have an industry standard mount on them, which you can bolt accessories to ( be it lights, computers / whatever )
A bit like bottle cage mounts, but much closer together.
Pointless idea, far less convenient than current QR mounting brackets and zero advantages.
(will an 18mm Dia - 18650 fit neatly in the end of a normal 22mm OD bar?)
A couple of, I hope useful, questions:
- How do I charge the light without leaving my bike in the middle of the kitchen?
- Can I take the batteries out of the bars in daylight/summer as I don't want to carry the weight of my batteries around with me 24/7?
- Can I swap batteries mid-race when doing a 12 or 24 solo or just team racing between laps?
- On race day, where do I put my number and still leave myself able to see???!!! If you're going for "high end" you're going to get a lot of people wanting to do events/challenges.
- If the lights are in the centre of the bars, where do I mount my comoputer, GPS, HRM etc.? If the lights are to the outside, won't my cables just get in the way? I like my cables, but not enough to stare at their shadow all night. If I'm buying a high end bike, I'm probably going to have a GPS etc. to put on it.
No, I don't want to have to swap bars several times a year, getting grips on and off is a right royal pain and lining up controls is too much if a hassle in itself. I also don't want to buy a set of lights for each of my bikes. If I'm buying a high end bike, chances are I own several bikes.
most of the reasons not to have this have been covered but why not try and see what can be done .
here is one of my early lights. which took over 24 hours of hacksawing and filing to make
driver in the stem with a power socket to plug in the seperate battery. on off switch in the top cap when it got finished
worked a dream but took a lot of getting the angle correct .
problem then is all stems are differing bolt patterns and angles,
I like the looks of that Trout Its the old problem of making it for the masses of different stems etc ;-/
Also on the angle for the beam.. shame you could design something that could adjust the beam like on a car??
Good effort!!! anymore pics?
Another pic of it working
and the adjustable MK2 version
Blimey Troutie that does look interesting
I like your thinking but if this is a 'be seen' light then it's pretty much aimed at the commuting market. Problem with that is that most commuters don't commute on high end bikes so are unlikely to buy a 'high quality high price' Ti bar for their bike.
If it's only a be seen light then the bar space would be taken up where you would normally mount proper lights.
For those reasons I'm out.
It's a very good concept, but the practicalities are that most people rotate the bar slightly for fit and I don't see how you'll retain the strength in the bar once you drill a hole in it.
If you continue with the bar concept, then some sort of moulded structure makes more sense as you can easily reinforce certain areas of it - carbon is the obvious route, but I don't know how you'd cool it.
The stem is a much more obvious candidate for mounting, as Troutie shows with his prototypes.
A friend of mine looked into a similar thing and bought some LEDs online. His solution ended up looking very much like the Hope lights, with a trailing cable to a battery pack suspended in the bottle mount. The other option would be to use a common or garden cable hanging out of the bar end...
I have considered this idea myself but the main reason I discounted it was that if you made them bright enough to light the trail then the back-shine off cables etc would dazzle too much.
It's a neat idea but it's a solution looking for a problem.
Working my way down the thread I was going to mention Trout's stem face plate light.
As Trout and others have pointed out.
There are inherent drawbacks.
The crash scenario where being part of the bike, the light is going to have to withstand the entire force of any impact.
A bar mounted light may well break away during an accident allowing the light to live for another day. Save for a new bar clamp.
Another one is multiple bike ownership. Much easier to have a light which attaches to any bike for being fully detachable.
If you want longer runtimes, then you will need some sort of "piggy back" battery set up.
Handle bars and stem aren't the most efficient heat sinks. Its not like they have max'd out surface areas.
Most modern lights aren't that big and bulky.
The Liberator has a fairly low profile and is centrally mounted over the stem.
Bar integrated lights of the light my way variety, isn't for me.
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