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I think there'd be a use for it, I'm obviously not the only person to have conceived of the idea of speed sensitive lights. For a lot of typical rides, I think it would be useful.
Often, it's not so much a change in brightness you need as much as a change in beam pattern. On a slow-speed technical climb, you might need a lot of light focussed close to the front wheel, whereas on a high speed downhill you'd want the beam to penetrate a lot further down the trail. Being able to adjust beam pattern with speed is therefore as relevant as being able to adjust brightness.
With an integrated GPS unit, you could even have the light unit remember settings for sections of your favourite ride or night laps of a 24 hour race.
Be good to have a "volume knob" to control the brightness so you could adjust it to what you need/want.
I'm sure Trout could do one that goes to "11" Spinal Tap stylee 😉
I'd like a joystick with 600ish lumens, 8 hours burn time and a switch that is easy to operate with gloves on.
yes surly the tech exists to do speed sensative control
the beam focusing would be quite difficult as to alter the beam with leds would mean some sort of flexible optic as they dont work like an incan bulb where moving the reflector does the biz .
Yeah, I've thought about the 'volume knob' interface too, but it's the old pick any two from three: small, sealed and cheap. I think it would be a great way to do a user interface, but could be easily replaced by up/down buttons.
With current technology, for 600 lumens and 8 hours runtime, you're looking at six Li-ion cells. 3 LEDs for cool white, 4 for wamr white. In a joystick format, that would need to be about six inches long and 1.5 inches in diameter. Quite a chunky joystick, but do-able. With cool white LEDs, you could almost double the drive current for approaching 1000 lumens and 4-4.5 hr runtime. Could operate as a stand-alone unit, or in conjunction with external switches or management units. Food for thought.
I was thinking of doing variable beam pattern by having emitters with different beam optics and varying their relative intensity. Feasible?
DR Rac, yeah, i think that sort of idea would work quite well.
I would say the simplest thing would be to tap into the speedo signal and uses those pulses in a control circuit for the speed / beam pattern.
hmmmm lots of ideas .... but i'd never get round to them.