Very Bright 5-3/4" LED headlight

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Fast Eddie said:
Exactly.
Even lighthouse rely on their lenses.
Just don’t see how you could possibly expect a bulb to do that without a proper reflector and lens…
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Fast Eddie and Gforce.

I've seen bikes with fairings and no lens or headlight shell - just a hole for the light to squirt through. BMX bikers wear the Cyclops on the top of their helmets. Needs looking into.
 
If you find anything exciting Jim do keep us posted, but I’m not convinced.

Who knows what’s built into the units you described that are hidden behind farings?

Modern bicycle lights are indeed amazing! We have several in our house, although they don’t relay on lenses, they have got reflectors.

But moreover, as has been said in threads before, it’s not just about brightness (unless you‘re primarily interested in day time visibility), it’s the beam pattern that’s important. In a sealed unit I guess this is achieved by multiple well positioned LEDs.
 
@jseng1 most of them are projector beams

They consist of a very large magnifying lens in lieu of a large reflector - which allows them to get the package size down.

The lenses are expensive, but the performance is awesome.

Very Bright 5-3/4" LED headlight
 
gforce said:
@jseng1 most of them are projector beams

They consist of a very large magnifying lens in lieu of a large reflector - which allows them to get the package size down.

The lenses are expensive, but the performance is awesome.

Very Bright 5-3/4" LED headlight
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Except if you have a Ducati, and then most of the ones are shite.
 
gforce said:
@jseng1 most of them are projector beams

They consist of a very large magnifying lens in lieu of a large reflector - which allows them to get the package size down.

The lenses are expensive, but the performance is awesome.

Very Bright 5-3/4" LED headlight
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I’ve seen how bright these can be when looking at them in daylight. But do you know what they’re like in terms of lighting up the road for night time riding, light spread and distance, etc?
 
I had them on a Honda (car) in the 90s
Before the days of the HID and now LED lamps.
They were the best headlights I've ever experianced on a car.

The only thing to consider is that they are a single light unit designed for a single filament lamp.
The lens is tuned for the pattern and spread of light, so you cannot realistically use them for dipped beam/main beam situations - if you do, one of the fucntions would be a compromise.

That's why you usually see this type of light on a car in a twin headlamp conguration.

Very Bright 5-3/4" LED headlight
 
cyclegeezer said:
Ah, there's the answer. I was trying essentially that, but on the indicator feed instead of the bulb feed. I'll try your suggestion.
Update: it worked. Is 5amp the lower limit that works well? I ask because I have a 4amp diode but no 5amp diodes on hand.
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4 amps would be good up to 60 watts, so you're fine. I didn't know there was such a thing.
 
maylar said:
4 amps would be good up to 60 watts, so you're fine. I didn't know there was such a thing.
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Such a thing as 4 amp diode, or such a thing as 5 amp? What I have is a 4 amp bridge rectifier (from Radio Shack when they were going out of business), that I will only partially use. My testing was with a larger version of a bridge rectifier, but I'd like to avoid cramming all that into the bucket. The 4 amp version is much smaller. I guess the worst that can happen is it fails in use, leaving me with only low beam.
 
cyclegeezer said:
Such a thing as 4 amp diode, or such a thing as 5 amp? What I have is a 4 amp bridge rectifier (from Radio Shack when they were going out of business), that I will only partially use. My testing was with a larger version of a bridge rectifier, but I'd like to avoid cramming all that into the bucket. The 4 amp version is much smaller. I guess the worst that can happen is it fails in use, leaving me with only low beam.
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In my experience, for individual diodes (not a bridge), I've seen small signal (1N914 etc), 1 amp (1N4001 etc), 3 amp and 5 amp. 4 amps is kinda an oddball.
 
gforce said:
I had them on a Honda (car) in the 90s
Before the days of the HID and now LED lamps.
They were the best headlights I've ever experianced on a car.

The only thing to consider is that they are a single light unit designed for a single filament lamp.
The lens is tuned for the pattern and spread of light, so you cannot realistically use them for dipped beam/main beam situations - if you do, one of the fucntions would be a compromise.

That's why you usually see this type of light on a car in a twin headlamp conguration.

Very Bright 5-3/4" LED headlight
Click to expand...
What about a switch that would cut the voltage to dim it down?
 
@jseng1 a dipped beam is not a dimmer version of a main beam.

On a traditional headlamp, where the filament is positioned in relation to the reflector make it light the immediate road in front of you (dipped beam) or the road ahead (main beam).

The reflectors are curved to focus light, and the lenses have masked sections to direct the light and diffused sections to take glare away in places (i.e., so you don't blind oncoming vehicles)

When HID beams first came out on cars, the German ones were using small servo motor units to move the lamps in their holders to direct the light... all unnecessarily complicated, but actually quite effective.
 
gforce said:
When HID beams first came out on cars, the German ones were using small servo motor units to move the lamps in their holders to direct the light... all unnecessarily complicated, but actually quite effective.
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German engineering and unnecessarily complicated are often used in the same sentence.
 
gforce said:
@jseng1 a dipped beam is not a dimmer version of a main beam.

On a traditional headlamp, where the filament is positioned in relation to the reflector make it light the immediate road in front of you (dipped beam) or the road ahead (main beam).

The reflectors are curved to focus light, and the lenses have masked sections to direct the light and diffused sections to take glare away in places (i.e., so you don't blind oncoming vehicles)

When HID beams first came out on cars, the German ones were using small servo motor units to move the lamps in their holders to direct the light... all unnecessarily complicated, but actually quite effective.
Click to expand...
Since I usually ride at night with my high beam on all the time - I'm interested in a work around so I can at least dim the intensity on the rare occasion that an oncoming car flashes his brights asking me to dim down. So I'm still intrested in the small bright lens with a voltage dimmer. Its something I'll try myself if I get to it. First I need a long range LED with small diameter lens. More research to do when time allows.
 
jseng1 said:
Since I usually ride at night with my high beam on all the time - I'm interested in a work around so I can at least dim the intensity on the rare occasion that an oncoming car flashes his brights asking me to dim down. So I'm still intrested in the small bright lens with a voltage dimmer. Its something I'll try myself if I get to it. First I need a long range LED with small diameter lens. More research to do when time allows.
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Do what they did on some pre war bikes Jim, a little lever and some ingenuity And you could simply tilt the entire headlamp down for dip…
 
And for some more off-topic headlight chat, these are by far the best headlights I have ever seen/used in a car. They work exactly like the video demo. Absolutely clear, bright and superb.

$6k to replace. One.

 
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