Batteries for a winter night ride is getting out of hand
 

2 x heated glove batteries
2 x insole heater battery packs (DIY Blackberry phone case + duct tape holder)
2 x light batteries. 6 cell is overkill for my helmet light, but my 4 cell battery died.
2 AAA in the tail light
Phone
Camera
GPS

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You're trying too hard? What's the camera for?
I've never had a need for heated gloves or insoles, I wear thicker wool hiking socks which do fine and winter gloves which have never let me down. If I start to get cold I just pedal faster and in an easier gear and if its below 10* I stay in now, used to commute as low as -10* but don't ever see that kind of temp now that I'm downstate.
I now only buy lights with built in rechargeable batteries that are replaceable. 1750 lumen for 4 hours is longer then I care to ride in the dark anyways and with another 1100 lumen strapped to the helmet, vision is fine and I'd do the same for the tail light.
Course with the GPS, phone, and 3 lights are charging at once its the dining room accessory plug that's starting to look like a tentacle monster.

I like to take a few pictures each ride. At night this time of year I'll take pictures of Christmas lights. I tried keeping my phone out to take pictures last week and it conked out after an hour in the cold. I do like that I can grab the camera out of my back pocket and take pictures one handed on the fly even while wearing gloves.

For lights I wanted something with a ridiculously long runtime for brevets. I started with 1000 lumen Dinotte XML-3, then bought a newer one that is 2100 lumen, then sent the first one back for an upgrade to 2500. The newest one should run at about 700 lumens for 13 hours on a 6 cell battery.

Pedaling faster works for heating my core, but doesn't help with my hands / feet. With raynauds I need the heated stuff to keep my fingers / toes from going white and numb.

Impressive run time, best my 2000 lumen light will do is 6 hours at 700, I can run it off a pack but that's just more batteries. For 10hrs I'd have to drop to 500 lumen and pick between narrow or wide beam but not both so less than ideal.

What are the general weather condition when and where you do your nighttime riding? And, how long (time-wise) do your rides usually last? Just wondering if you really need the powered hand warmers and insoles, or if you could be by without them. For example…maybe a good shoe cover would provide the extra protection and eliminate the need for the insoles. And, the right gloves/mittens might do the same for the hand warmers.

Dan

Often I'll be out when its between -10 and -15C, frequently windy. I try not to go out much anymore when its below -20C. I'm usually out for at least 1.5 hours, often 2 - 3 hours.

For years I've gotten by without heated gloves, but would have intermittent periods of numbness on every ride. Usually worse towards the end of the ride where my gloves start getting damp and don't insulate as well. When I started using bar mitts my hands were better. My hands are so much better with the heat, its worth the extra hassle.

Heated insoles I definitely can't do without and have been using them for a decade. Even right around freezing with winter boots I'm only good for up to an hour without heat. The mechanics of pedaling seem to hinder circulation, as when walking my feet are rarely cold in the winter. I tried adding extra insulation to the outside of boots which didn't help much.

With raynauds your body over reacts to cold exposure and cuts off circulation to the fingers / toes. Without circulation they'll get cold fast regardless of how good the insulation is. I think there is a feedback loop to it, when they start getting cold more circulation is reduced, making them colder, reducing more circulation. Active heat seems to prevent that progression.

Gosh, if only there were a way to use your physical output to power some of these devices... :p

OK. That’s a little colder than I was thinking. Just FYI for other Americans reading along…-20C = -4F. So I guess you do in fact probably need the battery operated shoe and glove liners. I was thinking that you’re in comparatively more moderate conditions like the balmy 30sF and 20sF where I am southern New England.

Maybe you could get a single battery that mounts on the water bottle cage that could feed those devices. But really…if you’re going to be in extremes like that…I don’t know if there’s much else you can do beyond the way you’ve been operating.

Something like this: https://www.batteryspace.com/custom-...0aAlAAEALw_wcB

Dan

hub dynamos

Yeah, pretty big ones along with a (titanium?) panel box. :lol:

Dynamos barely generate enough power for adequate light let alone powering anything else. Assuming a generous efficiency of 150 lumens per watt, a 1500 lumen headlight needs 10 watts while a dynamo produces 3 watts. My heated gloves alone are 18 watts combined (though not drawn continuously), if I run them off a lower voltage USB battery I can run them continuously at 12.5 watts without them getting too hot.

I'm starting to like the idea of an electric fat bike and running everything off its battery. The fat bike trails are about 12 km from home and I almost always ride to and from them. Since I end up averaging about 13 km/h, I could use some help to up my speed on the streets. Last night I did 38 km and it took nearly 3 hours. I'm also jealous of the kinds of headlights you can get for ebikes, B&M has a 300 lux model with high beam, and a new one that self levels while leaning and shifts to the side when turning.

Lumens is a dumb way to rate bicycle lights, but I think I get why they love to use it (bigger numbers.) If a light isn't focused well, it needs to spray out a lot more light to accomplish its job. With the brighter and brighter LEDs available now, there's less incentive to do a good job of that.

100 lux headlights are pretty impressive, though, and can be powered by an ordinary 3 watt hub. If that's not enough for you, you must be riding a lot faster than me at night. Chapeau. ;)

yikes, 3 hrs riding in the cold, impressive!

Ditto

it's best to charge them after a ride, rather than before a ride, right?

if for no other reason than, if they aren't charged, you can't ride, until they are charged

I usually charge them well before the next ride. If the packs are really cold I'll let them warm up first.

I always forget to charge accessories for when I need them if I don't go ahead and do it right away. I hate starting a long ride with my bike computer already beeping at me!

batteries are a hassle.
getting ready for a winter ride takes longer than the ride.

had a working routine & a place for all my stuff. then the holidays came & some limited company & I had to move all my stuff out of our living / dining areas. getting ready for a ride after that meant more time hunting for stuff, etc. still need to find my bike computer, ugh. but I got out! :D

Exactly. If you have to tangle with traffic anywhere, dynamo lights are just insufficient in my view. At their very best, they're at the lower range of utility. Your math is right.

No kidding. I live in MN and I love to ride my bike. I like riding year round, but there are so many extra little pieces and clothing that it just wears me out by April. A lot of "gotta wanna" is required, not so much to go outside, but to spend all the time getting ready.

Which heated insoles are you using? I am looking to buy a pair and see lots of options.

The one's I'm using are a bit of a hack. I originally bought them as heated socks which came with 2 removable pads in each sock. The pads didn't go under the toes so I just taped them to my insoles and used them as insole heaters. This year they started disintegrating so I made a new heating pads. The heated socks were discontinued after the first year, as the wires in the battery holder had a habit of breaking loose from the switch. I fixed mine and moved the switch and batteries to a pair of Blackberry phone cases and have been using it that way for nearly 3 years now, duct tape and all. I like that the heating pads I have are wider than my boots so they wrap around the side of my toes.

You can buy similar heating pads fairly cheaply. The tricky part would be finding battery packs to attach to footwear. A battery exposed to the cold might need to be lithium polymer, some lithium ion batteries don't do well in the cold.

Any heated insole that is trim to fit, won't have any heating at the edge of the insole so that may limit their effectiveness at keeping toes warm.

https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...6b560d2a4b.jpg
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FWIW, I don't recommend buying from https://www.lightmalls.com/

by time the extra battery, which I ordered weeks ago, arrives, I won't need it!

EDIT it arrived the same day I wrote that. did a burn test w/ one headlight & it lasted a cpl hrs, then I charged it. 3 heads, 4 batteries, ready to blaze a night trail. if I can muster the gumption

What's the stranded rope like resistance wire you are using and where can one get some?

Lithium polymer is a type of lithium ion, and they don't like cold either. Was trying to fly some tiny RC planes and drones in the snow one winter, and even keeping the batteries in a shirt pocket they wouldn't run long one taken out and installed - the plane would get up about 30 feet and then cut out and glide in, drone would simply fall out of the sky. Lots of phone batteries die on people in the cold, too too especially when they're getting up in their service life.

The heating rope is 3 mm carbon fiber, that I got from https://www.carbonheater.us/ . The minimum order size / cost definitely makes it more expensive that a premade heating pad.

The rope is made up of 12 smaller ropes, for my heat pads I used 2 parallel circuits with 4 of the smaller ropes instead of the full rope. The full rope has a resistance of about 21 ohms per meter, the individual strands about 228 ohms. The full rope uses more power than I need in a particular application. Its a bit tricky tuning the heat output, in theory the rope and strands will achieve the same temperature at a given length. But with less strands you can pull heat out fast enough it never reaches that temperature. I've started calculating the estimated wattage to give me a rough idea of how warm a particular design might get at a particular voltage as I have 5V, 7.4V and 9V batteries that I can use to power them.

I recently started using 9V with a USB C PD power banks and a USB PD decoy. More consistent heat output than 7.4V batteries which start around 8.4V and drop over time causing the heat output to drop. USB delivers a constant voltage.