I had my first night ride with my new dyno light yesterday. Mixed lighting conditions from extremely well lit (no headlight needed to see clearly) to quite dark (although never zero ambient lighting
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Hmm, I have the Lumotec IQ Cyo Plus - compared to my 1W dinotte, I would say the dinotte has a brighter peak brightness, but is _much_ more focussed. I find the Cyo will happily illuminate cars parked in driveways as I ride past them, for example
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My current mount gives me about 2mm clearance from the brakes in two different places (the horizontal brake cable between the arms, the edge of the travel agent when the brakes are applied). The original suggestion by the LBS gave me more clearance for the brakes, but unfortunately it hits the headset.
I was thinking of the IQ Cyo R Plus as a likely upgrade path, but I haven't looked into any alternatives yet. Flickering above 10km/hr definitely sounds like something isn't right. Has it always flickered, or is it a sign of something wrong with the supercap?
I'm not sure what to do about the mount. The cantilever brakes I have need a cable that goes straight up to the stem pretty much, so the light gets in the way if it's there. I think placing a piece of steel bracket to strengthen the mudguard up to where I mount the light is probably the go. I do actually like having the light a bit further forward, as less of the light ends up splashing onto the guard/wheel
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The internet suggests a (surprisingly, as per my comments below) large number of people mount their lights on the mid-fork braise (the one usually used for a front rack). I would think this would put the light too close to the ground (limiting the forward throw and making it less visible to other road users), plus I'd think spoke-shadows would drive me a little batty, but I concede I've never tried it myself
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Hmm, maybe I should try the mid-fork mount. I admit my thinking is much like yours, seems a bit low etc, but it is conveniently out of the way of everything else
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The reading I've done suggests that both R and non R use the same emitter at the same voltage, the only difference is in field of view (the R spreads the same power over a larger area
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Hmm, rectification is easy enough via 4 diodes (I was a bit worried about the power loss due to the 0.7v(? it's been a while) drop. You should be able to get whatever output voltage you need with a buck-boost converter. There's single chip solutions for that nowadays (even if there wasn't the circuits fairly simple). Maybe there's a problem with this I don't see - I bailed out of electronic eng into IT ;)
In my case the light controller (I bought a complete controller board rather than going DIY) incorporates a buck converter. I picked that over boost because buck is usually slightly more power efficient, and it's easier to get more total power capacity by adding extra batteries in series, rather than having to worry about putting cells in parallel.
Throwing a bank of batteries into the mix just gives you some power smoothing and standby light for free.
I'm not aware of any problems you haven't seen. Heat dissipation shouldn't be an issue (if it is the efficiency is probably too low to be useful anyway). I must concede my recollection of this sort of thing from studies is quite vague.
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I was thinking of the IQ Cyo R Plus as a likely upgrade path, but I haven't looked into any alternatives yet. Flickering above 10km/hr definitely sounds like something isn't right. Has it always flickered, or is it a sign of something wrong with the supercap?
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Throwing a bank of batteries into the mix just gives you some power smoothing and standby light for free.
I'm not aware of any problems you haven't seen. Heat dissipation shouldn't be an issue (if it is the efficiency is probably too low to be useful anyway). I must concede my recollection of this sort of thing from studies is quite vague.
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