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Bah, LEDS! I'm a single speeder. I use carbide lights.
🙂
I am just in the process of replacing my Lumi halogen bulbs with the LED units that Lumi are selling for retro-fitting into the halogen cans. Costing about £40 and appears to be going to produce about the same amount fo light that the halogens did, but with a [b]20 hour[/b] battery life. I'm mainly commuting on them, and if I go out on the mtb at night it's by myself so no arm's race effect, so they'll always be under-powered by modern standards, but the spares back-up and the fact that Lumi are still there at the end of the phone, re-conditioning batteries and keeping my rather neat system ticking over gently is really very cheering. 🙂
I've just replaced my 5 year old HID (one of the trailtech ones that were all the rage back in the day) with a Airbike from On one. Cost was £135, my HID was £240 ish IIRC, used it for the first time last night, and wasn't going any slower in the singletrack, so all is good, plus it doesn't flicker like my old HID used to.
I've gone from a reasonably heafty battery/ light set-up to a pretty small and light set up, that lasts as long, and in real terms has cost less. OK I could have saved even more money, by buying from dealextreme, but I needed my light now rather than in 10 weeks time, and if anything goes wrong, then I'm dealing with a UK company with a decent reputation, and not some faceless internet trader the other side of the world.
Costing about £40 and appears to be going to produce about the same amount fo light that the halogens did
The lumicycle 1W LED spot ones?
They will be about a 3W halogen equivalent. Be alright for road riding maybe (although I don't like fast descents on unlit roads using such a dim light), but blimey you're going to be riding by moonlight off road? Isn't that a massive downgrade from the halogens? I'd keep at least one halogen bulb in for off road.
Joe
Noted Joe. I'll experiment. I've not tried off-road or a side-by-side comparison yet. 🙂
trout - MemberLumis head will struggle to upgrade as the XRE leds stop at the R2
so they will need a rethink for an upgrade .
Couldn't they just fit the 35mm Xpgs in the Lumi head? Can't see no reason as long as they change the optic too?
When I spoke to Lumi about their lights earlier this year they said upgrades would be available as / when new LED's came out. No boffin but would have thought it's a new PCB, LED's and optic. Driver, switch etc. stay the same?
Somewhere in Trout's thread on his new light he details exactly where the costs are in his light, and as it's easily upgradeable by me, just by unsoldering and replacing the LEDs when new spec ones come out, I really don't mind paying what Trout asks. I have a DX Bike light which is astonishing value, and a SSC P7 torch as well, but I want a real high power one but I don't want to spend more than neccessary. The battery is often the really expensive bit, Smudge's battery for Trout's light is £70. The cost of Lupine lights is way too much, IMHO, but the likes of Hope I think are reasonable, given developement costs, wages, profit, etc. Trouties or Luminous' homebrew lights are perfect for the likes of readers on this forum, who understand something about homebrew lights, whereas the commercial lights are always going to have a market in riders who want and are willing to pay for a quality light from small manufacturers but who never ever go on forums like the weirdo's who inhabit this one. Horses, as they say, for courses.
Davegr, I reckon the mr11 pcb "Cutter-XPGMR11T" and cute optic "Cute-3-XP Triple XPE Optic" would be all you need! There are even some mr11 quad pcb's appearing on the cutter site too! 😀