Trout light mk2 – good idea or a waste of time

I was gonna keep this one under my hat untill it was done but I cant keep a secret
and I am having a meet up with deesta to discuss cool ideas for him to machine up .
and in view of these mega cheap dx lights was wondering if it was a waste of time .

or if there was any interest in us doing a run of these when the design is finalised.
I am going to use this one to get it working and then get Steve to work some machining magic on it If he is up for it .:D

it is pretty fugly at the moment but is only an experimental prototype to get everything in as small a case as possible

it was going to be just a double XPG so 650 lumens on full , But then as the size is dictated by the size of the 2 18650 cells it seemed 3 leds was the obvious choice.
so 1000 lumens on full and a better drive solution for a maxflex.

I still need to attack it with a belt sander to lose some metal and ovalise it .

the light on the right is a Hope Vision 4 just for size comparison

And a Big thanks to Smudge for the battery pack to use in the R&D

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looks good but depends on the price really. With the dx light coming in around £50 then you’ve got serious competition. What would the run time be – around the 2 hour mark?

With the dx light coming in around £50 then you’ve got serious competition

Well that rather depends on the actual performance of the £50 P7 light. It depends if it’s a slightly leaky, badly assembled, badly thermally protected light with poor quality batteries, or something more refined.

Cheers Gary .
I would not even try to compete with that DX light .
As the title says am I wasting my time

Yes 2 hours on full is the projected figure depends on how it is configured
but say like for like with the cheapo one on real lumen count
then 3 hours on full is doable

looks very neat, but as said all depends on price, and with it running off just 2 cells would be very versatile.

Ok then put a reasonable price on a light like this

Well obvioulsy brant, but if people want a cheap light they buy a cheap light. Trouts will be better quality but if it’s twice the price then people will still buy the dx.

How much does it cost to make trout, you could use it as a loss leader. Real them in with a cheap light then sell them the trick stuff 😉

is it to be used as a bar or helmet mount? if the latter how will it be tilted and mounted?

cost + 10%?

trout, i use a p7 on my bar which i love but i have been keeping an eye out for a good helmet mount for the winter.

If you could manage around the 50 quid mark. no offence its just a rough figure then i think you could sell a few. I love what you are doing here. And i would rather support you along with getting a great product if it came in at a reasonable price.

Keep up the good work mate.

I bought a Troutlight, and paid him (eventually) more than he asked me, as I think we need people like Trout making cool things in their garages.

And fwiw Troutie, I’d follow this guy’s business model.
http://www.el34world.com/Misc/bike/BikesLights1.htm

I wouldn’t sell anything for less than twice what it cost me to make it (including time).

If you could manage around the 50 quid mark. no offence its just a rough figure then i think you could sell a few

1000 lumens with a self contained battery for £50?

ARE YOU ON CRACK?

Well the problem with this is that trout has compared his light to the £50ish dx light so it was fairly obvious someone would come along and say £50.

i did say it was a rough figure. id be willing to pay well above that. Maybe i typed that without thinking!

Well if it’s a wel made product the 100£ mark would be reasonnable.
But it need a few things to convince. First one being the convenience of the battery to be charged. The second should be the battery running time, and finaly the third should the the overall finish.
It doesn’t have to be a 1000 of lumens, if you can bang 750/800 lumens with a nice beam it will be plenty enough to be honest.

I hope it help trout…
Keep us updated…

P.S brant aren’t you meant to be a northerner? Why dont you have an accent… That was quite a shock

I’d pay a heck of a lot more than £50 for something of troutie’s quality.

I’d also be interested in a kit for DIY, but it would need to come with good instructions! I’ve no problem soldering but I wouldn’t know one end of a maxflex from another

Surely one of the issues here is product “half life”. Most riders are gonna ask why pay they should pay over the odds for a light which will be surpassed in 12 months time. Think of what that £50 DX will be like compared with last years £100+ lights. And for most folk, it’s only used for a few months of the year anyway.

So you need something that can be upgraded each year to the latest and greatest LEDs…. the housing, charger and batteries aren’t going to change much.

Or alternatively, have we nearly reached the point in the LED arms race where most lights will have sufficient power and what you are paying for is build quality, reliability and backup? Dunno, anyone who understands economics like to comment, in a way this sounds like an interesting case study.

Well LED tech is evolving the way computers and digital camera have evolved a few years back.
So you have 2 options:
Wait until next year to have something better for the same price. But then you might as well wait another year and so on…
Buy a kit that will suit your need when you need it. Wait until it dies and then buy another kit that will meet your need etc etc.

Lets face it, twice 750 lumens is way enough. Not sure more will make that much difference.

I think for a UK made light you are looking at around £100 but it will need to be able to compete with the big boys in terms of reliability, power and run time. The ability to upgrade would be a key competitive advantage

As your price creeps up then the reason to buy established brands increases

I wouldn’t compete with the DX because you can’t

Do what Brant suggests, calculate your costs (for a batch of say 100) and aim to achieve £50 per light, charge £100. You will need to sell them fast to enable you to keep up with the competition.

Offer LED/ Battery upgrades when appropriate

I want him to make me some lights like this –

is it only for balding people?

I would be interested! Be about time to swap my big lead acid battery lights 5/10w with something a bit more bling.

Is it possible to think about being able to attach the light to a headstrap to make a powerful headtorch? So a long battery wire for the pack to go in bumbag and some way to attach the light to a headstrap.

I do night time fell races during winter months and a guy from hope runs in them and has sold a load of hope headtorches to runners. If a guy is behind me with a hope light and I have my Petz, I just can’t see anything for my shadow. Be nice to fight lumen for lumen and not go with the crowd.

Would also open up your lights to a different market as they are lumen vs weight obsessed as well!

I’m currently all ‘lit up’, but £100 for a self contained 1000 lumens and made in the UK, you gotta be kidding. Why can Hope charge £200+ for less than the same light and you think you can’t.

£100 is an absolute steal, what else on the market can you compare it against at around the same price? The USB newt, get out of here, anything under £150 would be a steal for this light.

I just got in from a job and am amazed at the response .
I will try and answer the posts when I have read the thread again .

First off I was not comparing it with the crap out of china it was just that it was buzzing around on the forum .

this is comparible with the Exposure stuff only smaller and as bright if not brighter.

all the major light makers have got old stock of old leds to sell before upgrades are possible .
This led which makes the tiny sizes of these lights has not been made yet but Cree dont do vapourware and say production in july so well in time for our winter.

I am not proposeing to sell these built up more get it out as an easily buildable kit . to keep the price down .
but yes I will do some built for the folks who dont want or cant diy but will obviously want some beer money for the labour.

A quick scan over the thread and one point is I dont need to keep up with the competition , as my product is as good if not better than most of the big players .
They need to catch up with us DIY peeps.

The technology is P**s simply and the big guys have been creaming dosh out of us for ages now

Thats all for now lunch break over .

There will be a full cnced version out by mid to end of august .

sq225917, you make the mistake of comparing someone’s shed to an established brand.

trout:I agree, riders are being ripped off, the manufacturers will only move slowly as they want to maintain the price point for their top-end lights and the accountants will not want to dump a load of LED’s or HIDs. But you can’t pitch at their price point and expect to sell any volume.

someone I know has bought the DX if it works for a few months then its £50 quid from my pocket buying one. I don’t care if only lasts 1 winter as its only £50 and no top end equivilent is going to be going well in 5 years time

could it be designed with futureproofing built into it? When new leds come online, simply disconnect the front end of the unit and plug in the new uprated version?

I would defo be intrested in buying a “Trout” light, I like the sound of this guy and his setup, small, personal and helping people who love the sport and are sick of being ripped off by corporate brands.

Bit of a Naive question, I know nothing about Trout lights (MK1) and lumens etc, Im from the “Darkside” and pile in the winter miles at night on the road and use a Hope “ONE”, I also MTB 2 times a week as well at night and this light is fairly good for this as well.

Who does this Hope light compare to the Trout (Hope light costs me £ 80 + batteries and has been very reliable) Cheers.

ive got the troutie 6xpe light and by god is it bright, ive yet to see anything that even comes close to it…

i for one would heartily recommend anything made by him, an awesome product and top service.

still havent got round to the online stw review but i will at some point!!!

sick of being ripped off by corporate brands.

lol.

I really don’t think that the corporate brands are ripping anyone off. Distribution channels, custom molded connectors and batteries, warranty (not slagging your warranty/back up Trout)…

That all multiplies the price up.

My trout light came in a box, without instructions, without any way of fixing it to my helmet – I had to cut up straps and bits of old grip and all sorts.

Now that’s fine for those of us that want to do that, but for manufacturers to offer a more “friendly” package – and the channels and costs that incurs – that’s not RIPPING anyone offf.

You can make your own alcohol from potatoes, but it don’t mean I’d sit around drinking it.

Just to clarify, are people questioning the reliability/longevity of the P7’s.

I have used mine all winter in really bad conditions including lakes downpours. It hasnt given me a moments grief. Its now doing its duties on minimum setting when i go camping. Lasts for hours 🙂

I know others have had problems but my P7 has outperformed mainstream lights quite easily so far.

I’ve been posting up on the £50 DX thread, and I will be ordering one in the next day or so. However, I have been following Troutie’s light threads with great interest, especially the new light based on these forthcoming LED’s, and I’m seriously interested in getting one as well. It it could have some sort of modular ‘future proofing’ built in, ie swappable LED’s when the tech moves on, then Trout has my money for sure. It just makes a lot of sense to be able to swap out LEDs like you can any domestic lamp, maybe with the LEDs mounted in a block that has a connector on the back that plugs in like a pc motherboard? I dunno, I’m no expert, but I can often visualize a solution to a problem like this, but I don’t have the engineering/electronics knowledge to actually fabricate something myself. Over to you, Mr Trout, sir, is such a thing feasible?

I have used mine all winter in really bad conditions

There was a guy posting on here who’d been through two or three, all of which needed to be returned. Your experience ain’t everyone’s experience.

Mr Agreeable – Member

I have used mine all winter in really bad conditions

There was a guy posting on here who’d been through two or three, all of which needed to be returned. Your experience ain’t everyone’s experience.

Ive bought and sold over 40 P7’s, and only had one faulty light that had to be sent back for replacement!

Back in from trying to earn a crust now to try and answer a few questions

Count zero & Rooley
The leds can be swapped out for newer / better ones but not just a straight plug and play more like 20 minutes with a soldering iron

Hobo
there are no problems with the P7 leds and because they are underdriven in most DX lights will last , my problem is the lieing about the output claims that most of them do.

Brant
Thanks for the comments and advise .
Yep it came without instructions and not in fancy packageing
but so does a lot of stuff from Chainreaction.
also the straps 🙁 I still have not found any good ones yet. but we are working on a better solution.
I managed to sell 42 of the lights to all over the world . ok not huge
but it funded a new milling machine to play on. and had some left to carry on inventing.

also thanks to the guys who have one of my lights for the support.

Kingkongsfinger.
you can see most of the Trout Frankenlight family here – http://www.troutie.com needs updating when I get a round tuit.

Ajf.
Are you around the skipton area as I could lend you a tiny Hope killer
even on a hope headstrap to try out.

back to Brant .
I like the little one on each side certainly doable .

Big and daft.
thanks good points .

Juan & Chris s
Good points led progress has slowed quite a bit in the last 12 months
and yes I have been guilty of Lumen wars which was good fun what I did learn from that is there comes a point when more lumens dont add anything to the experience.
Now there is the ability to get the 700 ish lumens from much smaller packages and optics so making smaller but quality lights
the only thing we need now is smaller higher powered batteries .

to round up a pic of progress so far .

I am hoping to keep it under 200 gms including mounting solutions
but I am sure that Steve the CNC will do a great job of converting my bumling into a great housing.

Compete and advertise.
If people are comparing the trout light to £50 dx lights then it begs the question what can trout put together for that price? if people are willing to pay £50 for a light & batteries and you offer a better solution than the competition for the same price and make sure people know about it your onto a winner (on this forum at least).

Also, they will be high quality 2.6Ah Li-Ion cells inside.

The only real way I could see him competing price wise would be for him to have them made in bulk in the Far East, But he’s a pretty patriotic guy and like to keep things British 8)

to echo Brant’s comments – the bigger players aren’t looking to rip anyone off, they’re trying to make a living. the smaller players in the market won’t have quite the same overheads, but will have to do the same marketing/packaging etc, but will to some extent price according to what the market will stand of course. everyone has to make a living, cos if they don’t, all that warranty and backup you prize so highly disappears with the defunct company.

anyway, i’d like a bar mount and either 3 hours runtime or an ability to plug in a booster pack please. our nightrides are 2 hours start to finish. at least 1/2 an hour to the meet, and 15-30 mins ride home from the pub, depending upon number of beers consumed. build in a bit of margin for mechanicals.

priced according to how much you want to be paid plus heat, tooling, materials, etc. etc.
don’t sell yourself short – so long as you have folk who will stand up and say ‘mine broke but Trout fixed it for nowt and returned it in less than a week’, then wheel them out the woodwork and let’s have testimony.
reliability and service wins over outright power, but having said that it has to be equivalent to, or more than, HID, for reach AND spread – and not an HID that’s done three winters service ).
if you can do all that for less than 2/3 of the best LEDs ( inc pack/charger ) from the market leaders you’re onto a winner for sure. price more closely and it’ll take time for it to grow because trust has to be built, and if you’re trying to adopt the latest tech and make that your USP, you haven’t got time for that – though maybe you have if you keep the design such that you’re just plugging in the latest stuff every time a new LED comes out, but that’s going to push out test time, which will slow down your product turnover again.
all IMHO.