Finally found my old lupine lights (passubio xl’s) that had been in storage for 18 months, and it looks like the bulb has gone. After a quick google I can only find a spot (12 deg beam) to replace it, and at almost £30! My question is can I use a generic halogen bulb, and if so which ones, or are the lupine replacements a particular size? Seems like light tech has come on somewhat since these were the latest and greatest but I’m still loath to ditch these as they have served me well and would be fine for my needs. Or how difficult would it be to put an LED set up in the casing, using same battery…

What bulb is it? I am not familiar with those lights, but if it’s the same size halogen as Lumicycle lights (mr11) just order them from the Lumi site or Google mr11 halogen. Plenty of places sell them.

6 volt MR11 I believe. 16 watt

I’m in the same situation, mine has just gone pop after a while in storage.
I can’t see why a standard 6 volt MR11 with the right beam angle wouldn’t work.

Lumicycle do MR11 bulbs, here:
http://www.lumicycle.com/product/213/halo_lamp/halogen-dichroic-lamp.html

I’ve replaced the Lumi ones before with ones from the internet. The Lumi one I did buy once was branded GE anyway, so it’s not like they are anything different to what you can get in B&Q…

BULBS BULBS BULBS

I got a bulb from Maplin for under £3 for my passubio.

The beam wasn’t quite as nice but it does the job.

I think they’re all 12v Stumpy?

rocket have a look on this thread;

http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/hope-vision-2-lamp-unit

Make sure you get the right voltage bulb though. My passubio (XC) was 6V and it seems 12V is much more common.

If the bulbs are the same as the Lumicycle halogen would this mod to LED’s be possible?

http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/lumicycle-halogen-led-kit-vote

For the Lumicycle lamp the convertion is pretty easy if you can solder or i believe Trout can do the convertion for you for beer tokens of course.

wwaswas – Member
I think they’re all 12v Stumpy?

Does that matter? It’ll just run dimmer won’t it?? So just get a 32w instead of a 16w??

Or am I talking rubbish…..?

Rusty Mac – Member
If the bulbs are the same as the Lumicycle halogen would this mod to LED’s be possible?

http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/lumicycle-halogen-led-kit-vote

For the Lumicycle lamp the convertion is pretty easy if you can solder or i believe Trout can do the convertion for you for beer tokens of course.

Would troutie’s heatsink fit into the body of the light? I googled the lights and the housing looks more tapered than the Lumi cylinder shape.

Also – I just looked for black cat tech drivers on ebay & can’t find any…..which is a pain, as I want to buy some new ones……. 🙁

Thanks all for the responses. Just checked and battery is 7.2V, implying its an over-volted 6V bulb (stop me now if this is a bo11ocks assumption). Guess that’s quite important to know. Just had a very quick search and can’t find anything above 10 watts for a 6V, and I think the old one was 22 watts.

Cheers for heads up on the thread wwaswas – the title kind of hid its content a little! Would be really interested in a trout conversion. Did you email him? I’ll drop him a mail as well…

rocket – I haven’t yet, inertia on my part. Someone else said they would though and, tbh, until he’s actually seen the lamp unit he might not be able to say one way or the other anyway.

stumpy01

Driver for the Lumicycle (buck driver) light would be different from the Lupine (linear driver) light as the batteries are different. Lumicycle battery is 14.8V where Lupine is 7.2/7.4V?? as trout describes better than me in

http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/hope-vision-2-lamp-unit

As for the internals of the Lupine lamp I do not know as I have not got one. I would guess that if trout got some interest he may be able to turn down a few of the Lumicycle heat sinks to fit. The reason they are the size they are is that there is not much metal in the can on a Lumicycle lamp so if there is more metal in the can then reducing the size (tapering to fit) of the heat sink should be fine.

I have just searched my emails and have an address for BCT. If you email me (address in profile) I could pass it on and you could see if you are able to get hold of him that way. Otherwise a TaskLED BFlex driver would work for the Lumicycle lamp.

Hi RustyMac. Thanks for finding out the e-mail address for BCT. I think I have an e-mail from him buried away somewhere, but I probably won’t be able to find it.
My e-mail address is in my profile. I’d appreciate it if you could send the address over.

Yeah, I thought that the taskLED BFlex driver will work, but I don’t really want that level of sophistication or expense (£30 from Cutter, compared to about £6 for the BCT one), so I’d prefer to get some Black Cat ones if possible.
I have also designed my own custom cans for running the 830mA BCT driver and so would have to modify these to fit the taskLED driver in.

EDIT – oh, and yeah you are right about the driver requirements being different for the Lupine battery. Forgot about that…..

20W 6V available here:

http://www.sjscycles.co.uk/mr11-twin-pin-fitting-light-bulb-unit-20-watt-gh235-for-blt-prod4361/

An upgrade to LED does sound tempting though!

I heard BCT had stopped making the drivers and not seen any on his ebay shop for a while

Hope he hasnt stopped

anyways some drivers here not to bad priced

stumpy01

YGM

may be pointless if what trout said is true.

+1 for hoping he hasn’t stopped

Cheers for the link Troutie. I will look into those, although at first glance they will be too long for the housings I am having made up, and they are not high/low switchable which although not essential, would be nice.

Hmmm, I hope BCT hasn’t stopped making the LED drivers. I will drop him a mail, although his eBay shop says he’s away for business so expect delays.

Cheers Rustymac…I’ve mailed you back…..

Hi Guys, Thought I’d just drop in here as I’ve had a few people contact me asking about the drivers. I’d been intending to discontinue them as sales had become very slow and there seemed to be a surge in cheap Chinese alternatives. Also, I’ve not been able to find the time to develop any new products so I felt what I had was falling behind the demands for the latest generation of LEDs.

To top that off, I ran out of the lower current driver boards so couldn’t build any more of them.

Based on the fact I’ve had a fair bit of interest recently I’m intending to build up another batch of 980mA ones and possibly some 830mA ones as well. We’ll see how things go beyond that, I might be able to bring out a new 1.2A one and do have some prototypes of the lower current one with reverse input protection but I’ve not had time to test these yet.

The main problem at the moment is that my day job has got very busy so I’m struggling to get any time off to catch up and to top it off I was sent away last weekend at short notice so have ended up even further behind.

Hi BCT – it was me that e-mailed you earlier, regarding the LED drivers.

I bought an 830mA driver off you a while back, which my OH managed to blow up when soldering it (battery polarity incorrect)…..
I then bought another one with an urgent plea message to get it sent out to me asap (this was towards the end of July). Thanks for getting it sent so quick!!
But, I erm……blew that one up too (my fault this time), although I did get a few hours out of it, before it got cooked…..

I remember previously your concerns about the 830mA driver & up in the Lumicycle cans due to the lack of adequate heatsinking. I think that so long as you are moving, then the light stays cool enough, but as soon as you stop it either needs turning down or off.

I am getting some custom housings made up to help with the cooling issue. I would definitely be interested in some drivers; probably the 830mA, but maybe the 980mA you mention above too….although to be honest, I think that will be serious overkill running two triple XPGs at 980mA!!

If you need an idea of quantity – I would be after at least 4 and probably six so I could keep a couple as spares.

Thanks for the quick response & for taking the time to post up on the board.

Oh, and I suspect with the nights closing in there will be a renewed interest in your drivers as people convert to LED or just want to rejuvanate what they already have!

I’ve got a couple of lumicycle halogen lights – one with a bulb just gone that I was going to replace. I’ve no technical expertise whatsoever in electronics, soldering, etc … is anyone currently carrying out conversions to LED units? If so would appriacte any info on who to contact.. cost for upgrade.. and how much better the lights could be than my current system (12W / 20W halogen).
Cheers Mark

Troutie (from here) was doing conversions a while back. Not sure if he still is…..

To upgrade to LED you’d need an electronic driver for each can, as well as an LED board and some kind of heatsink to keep the LEDs from overheating.

If BCT does some more drivers – see my post above – they are about £7 each, but he mentions only doing the higher output drivers which do make the Lumi cans get quite toasty.
You can get drivers from other sources fairly cheap too…see troutie’s link above…..
LEDs are about £25/board for a triple LED XPG board that will fit the Lumi can.
Heatsinks – most people seem to have cobbled their own together. There used to be a RC car flywheel that was the right size and just needed a slight mod to, but you don’t seem to be able to get that anymore.
There’s a few other bits you need like potentially a new switch if you have a driver that can do off/low/high output like BCT’s do.

Sorry, not a very specific answer….

With regards to light output, my original conversion is a 670mA driver with an XPG triple LED. It puts out a similar amount of light to the 20w halogen, but uses about half the power (I think). I did one for me & one for a mate to see how we got on with them & I ran them both on high power to see how long it lasted – it was about 7hrs 20mins with the endurance battery (the big one I don’t think Lumi do anymore). For comparison, the 12 & 20 halogen would last about 3hrs, I think.

mukerji

To add a little to Stumpy01’s comments trout has done the conversion for people in the past and may be able to do it for you now depending on his workload for his own lights.

Last year Trout produced a heat sink LED package with Cree XPE LED, see the tread about Lumicycle Halogen to LED kit vote above. I have used this package in combination with a Black Cat Tech 830mA driver board to really good effect. Never had the lights tested but they seem brighter than before with the halogen bulbs and battery lasts way longer.

As Stumpy said the three main things you will need to get hold of are

1 LED & heat sink package (available through trout http://www.troutie.com/)
2 Buck driver board (available soon hopefully through BlackCatTech eBay shop)
3 New switch depending on the driver board you go for (available soon hopefully through BlackCatTech eBay shop)

Trout is a really decent guy, drop him an email trough his website about the possibility of the conversion and I’m sure he will get back to you with a quote.

I still have about 20 of the heatsinks and XPE triple led boards in stock
but no optics

I can order some more optics no problems if there is still interest in them

700 ma driver is about ok for the lumi can the higher power is ok if traveling fast but you only need to forget when stopped and an overheat can kill the board .

All this cheap chinese lights make it not as viable an upgrade now though 😥

Thanks for the info guys – really helpful. I’m still interested in upgrading the lumi unit – as it’s been a reliable set up.. if there’s enough interest from others to order required optics please get in touch with a quote for the upgrade trout. Ta

Maybe not the most appropriate thread for this but I’ve just had an eureka moment for the overheating issue. Well, sort of anyway! Rapid Electronics do a range of thermal switches:
http://www.rapidonline.com/Electronic-Components/FC-P2D-Series-thermal-protectors-122894

These could be connected between the ‘C’ and ‘2’ terminals on my driver and when the switch temperature is exceeded it will automatically drop the driver to half power mode. You could still use the normal switch functions as well.

The only issue is that on the 50C one is in stock, any higher temperature you’d have to back order 100. That said, 50C is maybe a sensible limit (for the case) anyway – when riding air flow should keep the temperature lower than this and when stationary it doesn’t matter if the output drops to half.

Hi mukerji, and all,

i have the same scenario, twin 12W/20W Lumicycle halogen lamps (one actually has their old straight-swap LED unit but it’s not that bright) and I would love to switch to LED. Plus the wiring, power connectors and other internals are in less than stellar condition so could do with a revamp.

However I have the electronics & soldering ability of a penguin so would prefer to pay up some green to have it done.

I missed out on all this cool stuff that originally went on a year or so ago but I’m sure there are others out there who would also like to go down this road.

Cheers
Andy

BlackCatTech

Thermal cut out sounds like a good idea to me as long as it is not a one shot deal, maybe you could ask trout what his thoughts on 50 degrees would be.

Could the thermal switch be wired into existing circuits? I have 2 of your 830mA drivers curently.

ficklewhippet

I just aquired another pair of lumicycle halogen lamps so will try and do some beam shots of what the latest mod achieves. Don’t hold your breath on this one as it will be the weekend before i get back to my flat to get all the lights together.

BCT for 60 degree thermal cut out would either of these work?

http://uk.rs-online.com/web/p/resettable-thermal-fuses/1769126/

http://uk.rs-online.com/web/p/resettable-thermal-fuses/2047398/

Cheers RM,
I’ve bought a Cree torch which I’ll cobble a bracket for, so at least I’ll be able to see where I’m going in the interim.

Bike lights – it’s like an arms race on the cycle path nowadays!

Maybe an old thread isn’t the best place to post this but I’ve finally got around to doing another batch of drivers which are now available via my eBay shop. Only 970mA and a few 830mA ones but I’m also preparing some 670mA ones based on the larger PCB.

Regarding the thermal cut-out, I’m afraid my initial enthusiasm was not well placed. I overlooked one small detail – the circuit opens when the temperature increases so when cold it keeps the driver dimmed…. It is possible with a transistor and few resistors to invert this but it isn’t an easy thing to do.