so
It's Septermber, Summer is ending, September brings with it far fewer sunny days, more dark days.
I am fully back to work and It's been raining cats and dogs for three days.
Autumn and Winter days will have less light in the late afternoon since I don't have time in the morning, but I can only train after work, so after 6:00 pm, I will almost certainly return home with little light.
After the bad accident I talked about
here, which was caused also by not having a bright enough headlight on the bike, I would say that it is time to get a suitable one!
I found some light products that seem reliable and good for cycling on dark roads
- Garmin Varia UT800, see here
- Topeak Whitelite HP500, see here
- Vis Pro1000 Trail, see here
- ...
However they are very costly and limited by an internal battery.
After the incident, I found my wheel-set is gone, too damaged to be repaired, it must be replaced.
So, I would like to use a front dynamo hub for the new front wheel, and take advantage of its dynamo hub.
I have a 3 Watt one here, and it would be nice to avoid being limited to 1-2 hours of LED lighting due to an internal lipo battery, which you can not even replace.
-
So, I would like to build my own LED bicycle headlight, and I would like to build it as a smart lighting device, with an ambient light sensor and an accelerometer that automatically modulate the PWM.
Like
Garmin did with the
Varia UT800, but powered by the dynamo, and with full control of its firmware to avoid being frustrated as you can read in some product reviews, because users want to use the light in one way, and the
Garmin' firmware does not allow them to.
I would also like to add a button on the ergopower, to activate the boost mode, on the sections of road that are particularly worrying. In addition to the dynamo, I would also like to use super capacitors (from the material of a fake water bottle) to give extra current to the LED in the boost mode.
There are no problems for the electronic/firmware part, but I am a bit stuck on the optical part where to find the lens.
* * *
Which lens to get, etc. Do you know of anything I can use?
![Confused :-//](https://www.eevblog.com/forum/Smileys/default/confused0024.gif)