Originally Posted by
Thumdar
Thanks for the warm welcome and all the great info, and yes ~ I am ADDICTED!!
So much to consider. The cyccommute Retinal Burner was very intriguing, but within that post he mentions the
Pond Scum system and that really caught my attention. It's waterproofing and integral manufacturing seems excellent. I'm wondering if I can use LED's instead of the Halogen? The only issue is the size and weight of the battery system he used, and this is what I'll be looking into next. Today I looked at a Night Rider TriNewt at the local bike shop and took a hard look at the battery system. It was lightweight, sleek and well manufactured. I'll have to research that system closer and find out what type of battery they're using.
The two or three Ultrafires concept is also growing on me. Maybe the idea of using rechargeable AA's and just rotating them is a wise idea ~ no extra battery case to mount. Still.., I do like the idea of actually building something custom.
Maybe I'll just mount
one of these on my Trek.
The Pond Scum light is a nice unit and is water proof but... The Optronic lights are made for driving lights on cars, i.e. to hang from a bumper in wind and water and gook. They are pretty waterproof in their own right
Something to think about in terms of light output: While lumens are a excellent measure of light, a single source of light putting out 600 lumens will carry further and be brighter than three sources of light putting out 200 lumen each. You still get 600 lumens with the three sources but each one's light is scattered and absorbed by the atmosphere separately.
Whatever you get, make sure you rig a helmet light or, at the very least, two sources. Stuff happens and you don't what to be riding in the dark because you forgot to charge batteries, broke a wire, dropped a light, etc. The helmet light is the most useful of lights, by the way.