The COtTBL

TimC said:

What do people know about HIDs? Wattage, expected lifetime
(MTBF), what is their mechanism for operation, etc?

They're *Shiny*.
I just got one of the trailtech helmet mount HIDs, which are US$130 +
shipping. After courier (+ duty, because I bought 2), I found
http://www.batteryspace.com , who of course will ship USPS (was it here
we were talking about battery space the other day?).

Anyway, the draw is 13W, of which 10 makes it to the light itself. The
other 3 is for the ballast. Output seems to be about the same as a 35W
halogen. It's definitey not as bright as a 50W halogen, but the HID
seemed to just have an edge on the 35W - the colour being a bit bluer
makes it hard to tell.

Life is specced somewhere, probably http://www.walamp.com.

As far as mechanism - it's a miniature arc lamp, like the bright
buggers used in warehouses. The ballast boosts the voltage to around
75V, which is sufficient to arc across the vapour in the lamp.

Quoted message said:

And when can I expect them to become affordable 🙂

Bloody Uni Students! :-)
Welch Allyn (who make the 10W lamps *everyone* uses) charge around
US$50 for the lamp, and US$50 for the ballast. Trailtech will sell you
ballast, lamp and a housing for US$100. I figured they knew what they
were doing, so sprung for the voltage regulator as well. Assuming you
have a decent 12V source, that's not too bad for a serious light. I'm
still using my 10W halogen for commuting though - I don't want to leave
the good light on the bike, but the $20 home made jobbie I'm not so
stressed about.

Dave - who scored a PB on the way to work, despite a red light
conspiracy.
--
Dave Hughes | [email hidden] | [email hidden]
"When all you've got is a nailgun, every problem looks like a
messiah..."
- Iain Chalmers

suzyj said:

Hi guys,

Thought I'd share some pictures of my new Completely Over the Top Bike Light, or COtTBL.

http://www.atnf.csiro.au/~sjackson/bikelight/

At its heart is a 3W Luxeon-III emitter, with narrow Fraen collimating lens and Luxdrive driver circuitry.

The switch at the back toggles between off, high beam (3W) and low beam (1.5W). It's able to be powered by anything from 5V to 15V or so. The driver just takes the appropriate power from the battery.

It runs for about 5 hours 40 on high beam, or 12 hours low beam from my stick of five 3Ah Sub-C NiHM cells, and should run for about 20 hours high beam or 40 hours low beam on my Li+ pack.

It's bright - really bright. At a guess (though I have no instruments with which to confirm this, it's brighter than my 5W vistalite light.

Regards,

Suzy

5W halogen is *bright*? Not where I ride.

I've got a cheapie Smartlite switchable 5/11/15 setup, the 11 is adequate for dark urban riding, 5 is a 'be seen' setting only. Maybe the light output is relative to the price I paid, but then, all I'm doing in the dark is commuting/occasional winter training. Stupid anal Audax 2 light regs., try that with a SLAB, grizzle, grizzle . . .

I suppose wattage is relative - lumens/lux/Cd (?candlepower) is really what counts. There's no easy equivalence, or is there?

What is the light *quality* like - bluish ? What sort of beam path/pattern do you get from the lens/reflector?

The hole in the front of the casing looked a bit small for a wide spread, is it more like a spot?

What's the reliability of the emitter like (lifespan)? I've heard some interesting overheat/combustion stories, but maybe the electronics are more sophisticated now. At least you'd have somewhere warm to put your hands while waiting for your brevet to be stamped 😉

M "waiting for the 'early adopters' to take all the problem 'kids' home . . ." H

quote='suzyj'Dutchy said:

pardon my electrical ignorance but do you need the
AC or DC 'LuxDrive BuckPuck 700mA LED Driver'???

DC. The AC one may be useful if you're running it from a dynamo, but I use batteries, so DC.

Regards,

Suzy[/QUOTE]
<nitpick> wouldn't that be an *alternator*? </nitpick>

M"picky" H

On Mon, 17 Jan 2005 at 20:53 GMT, Random Data (aka Bruce)
was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea:

Quoted message said:

TimC said:

What do people know about HIDs? Wattage, expected lifetime
(MTBF), what is their mechanism for operation, etc?

Life is specced somewhere, probably http://www.walamp.com.

As far as mechanism - it's a miniature arc lamp, like the bright
buggers used in warehouses. The ballast boosts the voltage to around
75V, which is sufficient to arc across the vapour in the lamp.

I hear that projector lamps sometimes blow up at the end of their
life. I hope the bike HIDs don't 🙂

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

And when can I expect them to become affordable 🙂

Bloody Uni Students! :-)
Welch Allyn (who make the 10W lamps *everyone* uses) charge around
US$50 for the lamp, and US$50 for the ballast. Trailtech will sell you
ballast, lamp and a housing for US$100. I figured they knew what they
were doing, so sprung for the voltage regulator as well. Assuming you
have a decent 12V source, that's not too bad for a serious light. I'm
still using my 10W halogen for commuting though - I don't want to leave
the good light on the bike, but the $20 home made jobbie I'm not so
stressed about.

Seems to be only 500 hours. I can see why you wouldn't commute on
them!

Course, that's only 42 all night MTB rides.

--
TimC -- http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/staff/tconnors/
Experiments must be reproducible; they should all fail in the same way.

Mfhor said:

5W halogen is *bright*? Not where I ride.

5W is bright by Audax standards. Remember ya gotta carry enough batteries to last through the ride. Actually once you're away from cars etc 5W is oodles bright. One of my more pleasant memories of the GSR last year was a descent of Lavers hill, 3ish am, 70 odd km/h, with 5W of halogen light illuminating my path.

Quoted message said:

I suppose wattage is relative - lumens/lux/Cd (?candlepower) is
really what counts. There's no easy equivalence, or is there?

Lumens are the most reasonable measure of the light itself, as the candlepower varies depending on the optics, and the wattage depends on efficiency as much as anything.

Quoted message said:

What is the light *quality* like - bluish ? What sort of beam
path/pattern do you get from the lens/reflector?

Not blue like a HID, but certainly not yellow. Just pure white. Not unlike fluorescent, really.

Quoted message said:

The hole in the front of the casing looked a bit small for a wide
spread, is it more like a spot?

It's a nominal 10 degree beam spread. The Luxeon emitter is very small (smaller even than the filament on a halogen etc bulb), so the optics can be made very small also.

Quoted message said:

What's the reliability of the emitter like (lifespan)? I've heard
some interesting overheat/combustion stories, but maybe the
electronics are more sophisticated now. At least you'd have
somewhere warm to put your hands while waiting for your brevet
to be stamped 😉

Like any solid state thing, it's MTBF is measured in hundreds of thousands of hours. Of course if the heatsinking is inadequate and it's allowed to get excessively hot, then that number comes down rapidly. Hence the big chunks of aluminium.

Compared to a MTBF for halogens and HID in the hundreds of hours, LED wins hands down. That's why new traffic lights etc all use LEDs.

I reckon under 5W, LEDs are now the clear winner over halogen and HID for bike lights. They're more efficient, and have much longer lifespan. Over 5W, halogen or HID still have an edge, but even then it's only a matter of time before they're displaced by LED.

Regards,

Suzy

Chesty said:

I'm curious about the lens you chose. How far out in front
of the bike do you have the light hitting the ground, and
how large the spot is?

Quoted message said:

I'm wondering if you end up with a really contrasty sharp
and harsh spot surrounded by blackness, or whether the
spot is softer.

The beam angle is around 10 degrees, so the spot is maybe 2m diameter at 10m. It tapers gradually, much like my Vistalite 5W MR11 bulb. I'm no fan of excessively narrow beams, like the Cateye micro etc.

Regards,

Suzy

"mfhor" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

suzyj said:

Dutchy said:

pardon my electrical ignorance but do you need the
AC or DC 'LuxDrive BuckPuck 700mA LED Driver'???

DC. The AC one may be useful if you're running it from a dynamo, but I
use batteries, so DC.

Regards,

Suzy

<nitpick> wouldn't that be an *alternator*? </nitpick>

M"picky" H

--
mfhor

Alternator is a proper word.
I've worked in a power station for over 25 years and NEVER have I heard the
word dynamo used. I think it's some sort of old fashioned word that still
hangs around.

Marty

On Tue, 18 Jan 2005 08:49:22 +0800, "Marty Wallace" <[email hidden]>
wrote in aus.bicycle:

Quoted message said:

Alternator is a proper word.
I've worked in a power station for over 25 years and NEVER have I heard the
word dynamo used. I think it's some sort of old fashioned word that still
hangs around.

Isn't dynamo for DC generation? Alternator is hardly appropriate for
DC generation. Certainly not a word you hear in power stations and
these days electronics recitifiers are cheaper than commutators so
there are less and less dynamos.

My first bike and my first few cars and motor bikes had dynamos.

Regards
Bruce

"Ned Sawanca" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

On Tue, 18 Jan 2005 08:49:22 +0800, "Marty Wallace" <[email hidden]>
wrote in aus.bicycle:

Quoted message said:

Alternator is a proper word.
I've worked in a power station for over 25 years and NEVER have I heard

the

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

word dynamo used. I think it's some sort of old fashioned word that still
hangs around.

Isn't dynamo for DC generation? Alternator is hardly appropriate for
DC generation. Certainly not a word you hear in power stations and
these days electronics recitifiers are cheaper than commutators so
there are less and less dynamos.

My first bike and my first few cars and motor bikes had dynamos.

Regards
Bruce

Yes you are right.

The problem with brushes as opposed to rectifiers (or rectum fryers as we
call 'em) is that the brushes have to be changed periodicly as they wear and
this has to be done on something spinning at high speed with live voltages
which makes it very dangerous.

Marty

On Tue, 18 Jan 2005 at 00:49 GMT, Marty Wallace (aka Bruce)
was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea:

Quoted message said:

Alternator is a proper word.
I've worked in a power station for over 25 years and NEVER have I heard the
word dynamo used. I think it's some sort of old fashioned word that still
hangs around.

That, and pulsar astronomers.

--
TimC -- http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/staff/tconnors/
"If you already know what recursion is, just remember the answer. Otherwise,
find someone who is standing closer to Douglas Hofstadter than you are; then
ask him or her what recursion is." -- Andrew "Zarf" Plotkin

TimC said:

On Tue, 18 Jan 2005 at 00:49 GMT, Marty Wallace (aka Bruce)
was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea:

Quoted message said:

Alternator is a proper word.
I've worked in a power station for over 25 years and NEVER have I heard the
word dynamo used. I think it's some sort of old fashioned word that still
hangs around.

That, and pulsar astronomers.

--
TimC -- http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/staff/tconnors/
"If you already know what recursion is, just remember the answer. Otherwise,
find someone who is standing closer to Douglas Hofstadter than you are; then
ask him or her what recursion is." -- Andrew "Zarf" Plotkin

So, nerd boy, nerd it up! Oops, you pocket protector seems to have slipped. Ngyha, Nygha. (Astronomers, spend too much time looking up at the Universe, unaware that the Universe is looking down on them)

Dynamos produce DC current, Alternators, AC, as I understand it.

M "disparages fields he knows nothing about with reckless abandon" H

On Tue, 18 Jan 2005 12:55:31 +0800, "Marty Wallace" <[email hidden]>
wrote in aus.bicycle:

Quoted message said:

The problem with brushes as opposed to rectifiers (or rectum fryers as we
call 'em) is that the brushes have to be changed periodicly as they wear and
this has to be done on something spinning at high speed with live voltages
which makes it very dangerous.

I think its the expense of winding the rotor with a commutator rather
than the brush changes that is the problem. Brush changes are not just
confined to DC generators Alternators need brush changes too and
(un)fortunately with OHS rules these days they are no longer done on
line -at least not where I work (yes I have worked in power stations
since the 60's though for the last 15 years I have added turbine
driven blowers to my repertoire being as every pure power station I
have worked in has been closed down) Though I think you are
exaggerating the danger, degassing alternators or switchyard
isolations always concentrated the mind far more than changing
brushes.

BTW I think large mercury arc rectifiers are the most beautiful
electronic devices ever made.

But I cycled to work nearly every day (to bring the message back on
topic)

Regards
Bruce

"Ned Sawanca" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

On Tue, 18 Jan 2005 12:55:31 +0800, "Marty Wallace" <[email hidden]>
wrote in aus.bicycle:

Quoted message said:

The problem with brushes as opposed to rectifiers (or rectum fryers as we
call 'em) is that the brushes have to be changed periodicly as they wear

and

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

this has to be done on something spinning at high speed with live

voltages

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

which makes it very dangerous.

I think its the expense of winding the rotor with a commutator rather
than the brush changes that is the problem. Brush changes are not just
confined to DC generators Alternators need brush changes too and
(un)fortunately with OHS rules these days they are no longer done on
line -at least not where I work (yes I have worked in power stations
since the 60's though for the last 15 years I have added turbine
driven blowers to my repertoire being as every pure power station I
have worked in has been closed down) Though I think you are
exaggerating the danger, degassing alternators or switchyard
isolations always concentrated the mind far more than changing
brushes.

BTW I think large mercury arc rectifiers are the most beautiful
electronic devices ever made.

But I cycled to work nearly every day (to bring the message back on
topic)

Regards
Bruce

The danger involved in adjusting and changing the brushes probably depends
on the setup. I know our guys don't like doing the lower ones on our
machine. We checked the rules once (due to an incident) and found that brush
gear work has some special clauses and exemptions in the rules.
I've ridden to work a few times but I don't do it normaly as the road to the
Power Station heads straight into the rising sun, making it a bit dangerous.
I used to ride more regular when I was on nightshift as I'd be riding home
away from the sun in the mornings.
We use old bikes to get around the power station due to the size of the
place.

Marty

On Tue, 18 Jan 2005 at 23:20 GMT, Ned Sawanca (aka Bruce)
was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea:

Quoted message said:

line -at least not where I work (yes I have worked in power stations
since the 60's though for the last 15 years I have added turbine
driven blowers to my repertoire being as every pure power station I
have worked in has been closed down) Though I think you are
exaggerating the danger, degassing alternators or switchyard
isolations always concentrated the mind far more than changing
brushes.

So you've seen this then?:
http://www.wiseguysynth.com/larry/day.htm

Oooh. In fact, these are even better!:
http://205.243.100.155/frames/longarc.htm

Quoted message said:

BTW I think large mercury arc rectifiers are the most beautiful
electronic devices ever made.

Yummy.

Quoted message said:

But I cycled to work nearly every day (to bring the message back on
topic)

And back off. I'm good at this, aren't I?

--
TimC -- http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/staff/tconnors/
Usage: fortune -P [-f] -a [xsz] Q: file [rKe9] -v6[+] file1 ...

On Wed, 19 Jan 2005 02:13:58 GMT, TimC
<[email hidden]> wrote in
aus.bicycle:

Quoted message said:

So you've seen this then?:
http://www.wiseguysynth.com/larry/day.htm

Good photo but it is more exciting when you are opening one manually
as you are actually almost underneath it and if it was live would get
showered with moltern metal. Strictly speaking this is not a switch
but an isolator they are operated after circuit breaker (which
incorporates devices to break the arc) has been opened. The isolator
merely provides a visable safe break to a circuit. Having said that I
have ONCE opened a live isolator by mistake - not a happy experience
involving several sets of underwear. Even opening a 'dead' one usually
draws a small arc due to induced currents. Working in HV switchyards
was not my favourite occupation. Wet misty nights were the worse
everything buzzed and crackled.

I am much happier with the C cells in my bike light

Regards
Bruce

On Wed, 19 Jan 2005 at 11:15 GMT, Ned Sawanca (aka Bruce)
was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea:

Quoted message said:

On Wed, 19 Jan 2005 02:13:58 GMT, TimC
<[email hidden]> wrote in
aus.bicycle:

Quoted message said:

So you've seen this then?:
http://www.wiseguysynth.com/larry/day.htm

Good photo but it is more exciting when you are opening one manually

I trust you saw all the movies? Mmmm, bzzzzt.

Quoted message said:

as you are actually almost underneath it and if it was live would get
showered with moltern metal. Strictly speaking this is not a switch
but an isolator they are operated after circuit breaker (which
incorporates devices to break the arc) has been opened. The isolator
merely provides a visable safe break to a circuit. Having said that I
have ONCE opened a live isolator by mistake - not a happy experience
involving several sets of underwear. Even opening a 'dead' one usually

For some reason, in physics, I always liked touching the tesla
coil. 'Twas fun. Then one day I decided to touch both terminals of
it. Probably why I am in my current state. Was fun, but an eye
opener. And arm jolterer.

Quoted message said:

draws a small arc due to induced currents. Working in HV switchyards
was not my favourite occupation.

I wonder, what does a substation sound like when an entire suburb is
brought on or off line suddenly? When one of the international
particle accelarators loses magnetic lock on the accelarating
subatomic particles, an amount of energy equilvalent to a truck
smashing into the walls, smashes into the walls. Distributed over 27km
of ring, but still loud enough.

Quoted message said:

Wet misty nights were the worse
everything buzzed and crackled.

All the insulators on all the power polls I pass on the way home buzz
and crackle on normal days - triply so when raining 🙂

Most guys are arsonists. I just like playing with high voltages and
currents. And blowing things up with said power 🙂

--
TimC -- http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/staff/tconnors/
"COGITO, EGGO SUM." I think, therefore I am a waffle.
.sig of Mr. Ska on Slashdot.org

"Ned Sawanca" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

On Wed, 19 Jan 2005 02:13:58 GMT, TimC
<[email hidden]> wrote in
aus.bicycle:

Quoted message said:

So you've seen this then?:
http://www.wiseguysynth.com/larry/day.htm

Good photo but it is more exciting when you are opening one manually
as you are actually almost underneath it and if it was live would get
showered with moltern metal. Strictly speaking this is not a switch
but an isolator they are operated after circuit breaker (which
incorporates devices to break the arc) has been opened. The isolator
merely provides a visable safe break to a circuit. Having said that I
have ONCE opened a live isolator by mistake - not a happy experience
involving several sets of underwear. Even opening a 'dead' one usually
draws a small arc due to induced currents. Working in HV switchyards
was not my favourite occupation. Wet misty nights were the worse
everything buzzed and crackled.

One flash and you're ash!
(Old electrical saying)

Quoted message said:

I am much happier with the C cells in my bike light

Regards
Bruce

"If you get electrocuted I'll have to give you mouth to mouth
resuscitation."
That's what we tell apprentices to make them work carefully.

Marty

TimC said:

So you've seen this then?:
http://www.wiseguysynth.com/larry/day.htm

so, I can 'light up' if I make a dodgy COTBL then? 😄
That'll keep them cars a wayz

Hey Suzy - How those CAD plans going??

Tom. 🙂

Casurina99 said:

Hey Suzy - How those CAD plans going??

Well, thanks to going home last night with "light cad file" written on the back of my hand, they're now on my website.

Have a look at http://www.atnf.csiro.au/~sjackson/bikelight/ for a bit of a blurb about the light, the pictures shown previously, and drawings of the case, both in Autocad .dwg format and Acrobat .pdf format.

Regards,

Suzy