noglider 

Town Mouse is the company. Center Light is the name of the product. I’m not affiliated, but I’m on the kickstarter mailing list. It looks well made and well priced. And all the parts are replaceable, including the USB-rechargeable battery, so it could last many years.


https://www.townmousebikes.com/]https://www.townmousebikes.com/
​​​​​​​[/url]

Troul 

a little too big for my needs, but the battery life looks promising.

znomit

Looks good.
Battery is tiny and is located where the reflector or optic should be. Beam is probably too floody to be a good road light.

John Valuk

Several headlights from Fenix embrace a couple of appealing (to me) characteristics of this light:

• Use of a standard, easily-removable Li-Ion battery.
• Not very plastic-y construction.

The Fenix lights I'm thinking of - BC 30 V2.0, BC26R, and BC21R - are all substantially larger than the Town Mouse Center Light, and I think a lot of that is just a consequence of battery size.

Town Mouse has settled on a different compromise between size and capacity, and I can understand that the result will be appealing to some riders. More power to them!

znomit

More power to them.
Less power for them.

unterhausen

Does it have a good beam, or is it just whatever they thought looked good? Which I disagree with, btw.

Ubie

What was wrong with the first light this guy created?

Wiggle

Big fan of anything that uses li-ion in a standard sizing that can be swapped out. If you use a light hard you're only going to get maybe one or two years of *great* performance out of that battery before it starts to lose capacity. Especially in the case where you're using an 18350 which will be "reaching" more at those high amp draws.

That was one of the reasons I went for the BC21R (one of models you noted). Takes 18650 and can charge it in the light but also swap out. It also has a pseudo-cutoff which is nice.

John Valuk

I really like my BC30 V2.0. That does not have any ability to charge batteries in the light, but it uses a battery tray that makes it very easy to remove/replace the batteries.

I have other lights that use 18650 (flashlight; headlamp; lantern), so the two in my bike light are additional capacity in a pinch, e.g., extended power outage.

You might already know this, but if not, be aware that the Fenix Store can sell the handlebar mounts for these lights separately. I couldn't find it on their web site, but I contacted customer support, and they sent me a link that allowed me to add it to my cart. It makes it very easy to swap one light between two or more bikes.

tcs

Here's a tip for you electrical engineer-mechanical engineer duos with bright ideas for new bicycle lights: you need an optical designer to complete the team if you're serious in 2023.

You can also stuff a Panasonic 3400mAh 18650 in that BC21R...and carry a spare. All night light and higher quality & capacity than the battery most companies solder in place and make non-removable/replaceable in their lights.

Troul 

also, I think it'd be ok to develop an inexpensive headlight & taillight that has the function with battery tethered to the light body for allowing better mounting & a bigger battery with more capacity as well as having the central mount for the on/off function up front maybe for sharing the bottle cage mount.