This guy has some wild ideas too.
http://swhs.home.xs4all.nl/fiets/tests/verlichting/dynamo_led_driver/index_en.html I was thinking along the same lines. I'm quite capable of designing the electronics (I'm good on resonance anyway, from my days in audio design, big, dangerous tube amps and huge bass horn speakers) but I found perfectly good prebuilt buck circuits on Ebay for prices that wouldn't even pay for the components. I was thinking about two lamps together, a first series Cyo and something with a shorter, wider throw, maybe a LED built into a MR 11 or MR 16 shell simply because I have experience of those, the latter turned well down to give me peripheral vision, which is important where I ride. As I say, I was distracted by BUMM making e-lights, with stepdown and control circuits built in. BUMM's circuits and heatsinking appear to me good, even if their optics are a retrograde step. I'm not so much interested in more light -- though I grasp that the offroaders are keenly interested -- as in better-distributed light.
There's a problem about optics, which I once discussed with the team that designed the front end of the Citroen SM (a big Maserati-engined coupe, then and in many respects still, the most advanced car in the world, such a favourite of mine that I owned no fewer than three at one time or another -- nothing else would average 100mph from London to Nardo in the boot of Italy in such cosseting comfort, not even the later Turbo Bentley which in many respects "replaced" it); they told me the Cibie engineers stated the obvious as a killer fact of lighting design: the more functions you try to make a single reflector perform, the worse it will perform any and all of the functions. Apparently the Cibie ideal at the time, leaving aside signalling and daylight running lamps, was five discrete and preferably separate reflectors per side: dim lights, standard legal throw, long range speed throw, flood for side throw or better still a lamp tied in to the steering and moving with it, fog lamp for wet or obscured conditions.
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I might try the Philips Saferide next, now that they make a pedelec version, rather than another BUMM light, which on their track record is rather too likely to leave a sour taste in the mouth, especially at the stupid prices BUMM has announced for their next "improvement". i've had years of niggling dissatisfactions with BUMM lights. Despite the general attitude among my cycling compadres that a BUMM lamp is beatified at birth, I can only cite three BUMM lamps that were clearly the best dynamo lamps in the world in their time (first series Cyo R, D'Toplight Plus, current Toplight Line Plus, and the latter two are rear lamps, and one of them was conclusively beaten by a battery lamp, the Cateye TL LD-1000 and 1100, and the Cyo's "nearfield" promise was a lie). That may be a fabulous record for some little, obscure manufacturer, but it isn't so hot for a maker with BUMM's reputation. That hot spot in the latest Cyo/Fly's throw is the final straw for me -- it is extremely distracting even on my short rides, and for a tourer it will be maddening.
Andre Jute
