Installing a LED light on my winter beater bicycle
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- Опубліковано 28 січ 2022
- A Chinese LED light arrived at my doorstep. Let's install it on my winter beater bicycle, and test it out.
LED light: www.banggood.com/custlink/vmD... - Навчання та стиль
It's all about being seen and your upgrade looks after that. Cheers 👍🏼
You are right about that. Today's light pollution is enough light most of the time.
The output of the dynamo is AC and it looks like the LED lamp doesn't mind this, but it is almost certainly only working on half of the AC cycle. So it is lit for less than 50% of the time. Therefore you would get more light out of it, more of the time, if you put a bridge rectifier in the supply from the dynamo. If the dynamo has 2 wires coming out of it, I would put the rectifier back there before any of it gets connected to the bike frame. Connect the negative output of the rectifier to the frame. An alternative is to put the rectifier in the lamp housing, but that means interrupting the ground spring contact to the bulb, which is a nuisance.
I'm not an electrician, and I must say electrons confuse me, I never seem know where they are :) But based on old car dynamos and newer car generators, I thought bicycle dynamos would be A/C and hub generators D/C. I must say, I'm not disappointed with the light from that chinisium led. But that constant whine of the old dynamo is bothering me. So I'm planning to replace it with a 2.7v hub generator that I have. And that probably means installing another 2 wire lamp and a battery operated rear light. The current setup is 3volt with the negative wire running trough the frame.
@@RolingRandom I think you should regard it as a success - led lamps are such an improvement over hot pieces of tungsten that they make it practical to get good light from small energy sources, where in the distant past of my youth it was not. I couldn't live with one of those whiney dynamos on the rim: all I can think of is Bart Simpson with his light that goes on and off as he pedals. They put such a mechanical burden on you that even if the light is satisfactory, it spoils the ride. For me, battery + led is the way to go, but a hub dynamo is also a good solution and an led lamp will make the best of it. Add a small battery or capacitor and it could be better still.
I would not expect the name (dynamo or generator) to correlate with the AC or DC. (In fact a modern car 'alternator' outputs DC!) If your machine has no commutator/brushes or rectifier diodes, it's probably going to output AC. So do test yours with your meter to be sure.
I look forward to your future developments.
LEDs are definitely an improvement, the bright white light is more easily noticed by others. I made a rectifier for mine as it flickered like a crap disco at lower speed (dynohub) - bottle dynamos seem to have the advantage in that respect as any flicker is at a higher frequency and less annoying.
At walking pace the light is no longer flickering :) But I'm going to installed a dynohub on the winter beater. I'll try it out with this led but I will probably install a different lamp with a on/off switch.
Your headlight case has enough room to squeeze in a li-ion battery and a tp4056