6v is a bit limiting, but with a bit of fiddling you might be able to fit a p60 dropin unit to each lighthead. It'll take a little bit of machining to adapt the drop-in units, but if you hunt on DX they are there with a built in driver and will typically run with a voltage source between 3.7 and 7.4v. perfect for your batts if you wire both light-heads in parallel.

Good thinking.

P60 drop-in are up to 300(ish) lumens now: http://cgi.ebay.com/Superfire-Use-300Lu ... 3efd01e85a

Like slidecontrol said, it will take some fitting & you'll need to think about cooling as well.

two DX options ( bonus with DX having free[included] shipping)

brighter and better flood http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.32953

more throw and a bit cheaper http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.11836

danose wrote:who said you can have too much light - check out what eric@NL is working on

9 * XPG (so about 3600 lumens!)

I know a guy who got stopped by the Police and was told his bike lights were too bright

He had two big torches strapped to his bike – he doesn’t ride far and has very bad vision – can’t drive / Jam jar glasses.
I think he took one of the torches off.
I said – there is no upper limit for how much light a bike light can produce so the Police have no right to do that. Put the torch back on.

I've read somewhere (probably the candle power forum) about people fitting the 3 chip crees with 20mm optics in nightflux/nightsticks, but becasue the shells are resin they can't transmit enough heat away from the chips, so they cook in about 15 minutes at near freezing ambient temp.

You typically need 3.7v per chip, depending on what batteries you have you either get a boost driver, or a buck driver. If you are running 6v on 2 or 3 chips you'll need a boost driver. if your running 14v on 2 or 3 chips you need a buck driver.

My setup I built last year is a helmet light with 2xXR-E with cree narrow optics, driven at 1000mah off 6 AA batteries, and a bar light running the same chips and driver with celico narrow optics. Each light is about the same brightness as a DX light but much more focused beam.

This year I am going to build some 35mm triples with a diming driver, apparently people are using sepia chips to yellow things up a bit to get the contrast on the trails, LED lights flaten things out quite a lot.

FLATULENTFRIEND wrote:

danose wrote:who said you can have too much light - check out what eric@NL is working on

9 * XPG (so about 3600 lumens!)

I know a guy who got stopped by the Police and was told his bike lights were too bright

He had two big torches strapped to his bike – he doesn’t ride far and has very bad vision – can’t drive / Jam jar glasses.
I think he took one of the torches off.
I said – there is no upper limit for how much light a bike light can produce so the Police have no right to do that. Put the torch back on.

There is limits for cars in built up areas and when there is oncoming traffic, thus the dip function. I am guessing a bike has to comply to the same rules.

Slim wrote:

FLATULENTFRIEND wrote:

danose wrote:who said you can have too much light - check out what eric@NL is working on

9 * XPG (so about 3600 lumens!)

I know a guy who got stopped by the Police and was told his bike lights were too bright

He had two big torches strapped to his bike – he doesn’t ride far and has very bad vision – can’t drive / Jam jar glasses.
I think he took one of the torches off.
I said – there is no upper limit for how much light a bike light can produce so the Police have no right to do that. Put the torch back on.

There is limits for cars in built up areas and when there is oncoming traffic, thus the dip function. I am guessing a bike has to comply to the same rules.

Yeah, he probably had them angled up too much rather than it being about how much light was produced.

Slim wrote:I've read somewhere (probably the candle power forum) about people fitting the 3 chip crees with 20mm optics in nightflux/nightsticks, but becasue the shells are resin they can't transmit enough heat away from the chips, so they cook in about 15 minutes at near freezing ambient temp.

That would be the biggest trouble in doing a conversion on lights(housings) like that. I have a set of Cateyes of similar style that I was going to do a swap on. But unless I attack the rear of the housing to allow air flow to a heat sink they wouldn't last long at all and I just cant bring my self to hack them up.

Making a copy of the housing and using all the original bits was the other option. Prolly the reason I haven't done it yet.

Can someone please explain to me how the whole wattage thang figures into the equation...(1 joule per second... ). I'm tinkering with the idea of a MR11 star with 3 cree XR-Es on it, driven by a 1000mah buckpack, via 8AA batteries in a battery pack. If i sourced quality 2500mah batteries, what sort of run time should i expect to get.

The Idea being that AAs are easy to come by, the chargers are low fuss/low cost, and i can always buy AAs batteries as a last resort/forget to charge etc. If that all worked easy enough, I'd replicate the system with a different/complementary optic.

Sims wrote:Can someone please explain to me how the whole wattage thang figures into the equation...(1 joule per second... ). I'm tinkering with the idea of a MR11 star with 3 cree XR-Es on it, driven by a 1000mah buckpack, via 8AA batteries in a battery pack. If i sourced quality 2500mah batteries, what sort of run time should i expect to get.

The Idea being that AAs are easy to come by, the chargers are low fuss/low cost, and i can always buy AAs batteries as a last resort/forget to charge etc. If that all worked easy enough, I'd replicate the system with a different/complementary optic.

Batteries are 2500mAhr * 1.2V * 8 = 24000mAhrV
Leds draw 1000mA * 3.5V * 3 = 10500mAV

Divide the Batteries by the LED load and the mA and V cancel leaving hours runtime. Knock another 20% off for driver inefficiencies and you've got around 1.8hrs runtime.

But you'll need more than 8 batteries to keep three leds running as you need enough volts for the three leds + 2 for the driver, around 11V. NiMH AAs are nominally 1.2V but for most of the discharge they are 1.3 to 1.1V.

Many thanks! I think that makes sense...

So does my plan equal fail, or do i need to alter the equation. (with 'easiness' being the goal)
More AA, a different battery pack or less LEDs...

Hey I am looking for someone in the Auckland area to do small repairs to Bike lights such as re-soldering wires, changing boards, cables etc.

If you know of anyone send them our details.

Must be good.

Sims wrote:Many thanks! I think that makes sense...

So does my plan equal fail, or do i need to alter the equation. (with 'easiness' being the goal)
More AA, a different battery pack or less LEDs...

Well, you need to looks at what sort of riding you do and what runtime you need.

2 XPG will be much the same as 3 XRE and be plenty for a roadie and OK for the trails.

Another option is less 6AAs and a boost driver.



Kel are you offering a repair service for dirtydawgs cheap nasty lights?

Could start with a cutter "MC-E Kit"... See how i go from there. If it works out keep adding more lights and batteries...

LOL

znomit wrote:

Sims wrote:Many thanks! I think that makes sense...

So does my plan equal fail, or do i need to alter the equation. (with 'easiness' being the goal)
More AA, a different battery pack or less LEDs...

Well, you need to looks at what sort of riding you do and what runtime you need.

2 XPG will be much the same as 3 XRE and be plenty for a roadie and OK for the trails.

Another option is less 6AAs and a boost driver.



Kel are you offering a repair service for dirtydawgs cheap nasty lights?