- Location
- The TerrorVortex
I think Fossy meant that a charge won't last very long, as that light will pull a ridiculous amount of power.
What lights are best
- Thread starter Stu20031
- Start date
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dim
Guest
- Location
- Cambridge UK
it comes with a wall charger .... if the charge does not last long, I will charge it wherever I work during the day (my commutes in the dark are approx 35 minutes each way)
bikeman66
Senior Member
- Location
- Isle of Wight
OK folks. By some miracle, I have managed to copy and paste my mates analysis of cheap Chinese "Solarstorm" lights. As I mentioned previously, he is a highly qualified electronics engineer, working for an aerospace company. See what you think.
Aye oop guys and girls. This might be a bit of a chewy word-soup post, but please bear with me. Winter is officially here, which means some of you will be looking for lights. Let me get this out of the way first.
DO NOT BUY CHEAP EBAY LIGHTS!
NO,
NOT EVEN THAT ONE,
DON'T DO IT,
My bro took a punt on a £15 solarstorm x2 knowing it would be a knockoff and gave it to me to have a look at, just to make sure it won't burn the house down. In short, yes it probably would burn the house down, after about 20-25 charges, and that's if the POS was still working. I personally think it would do about 3 hours before the rattling would snap components off the circuit board inside. This would leave you stranded without a light at best, or smashing into a tree up the woods at worst.
Please please please buy a good light from a reputable company. They don't cost a fortune, if you buy a good one it will last you for years. If you are on a mega budget then something like this from fasttech would do the job.
https://www.fasttech.com/products/1...voy-s2-1-cree-xm-l2-t6-4c-996-lumen-2-group-3
This warning also stands for all 18650 lithium batteries and chargers you generally find on eBay. 99% of them are fake and downright dangerous.
For those still reading i'll now explain why these lights are so utterly shite, i'll explain from an electrical standpoint so duck out if you want to from here on in.
Let's start with the light itself. this one is a claimed 5000 lumens. It contains 2 Cree XML led's. These led's (depending on what actual XML you get) put out a maximum of 1000-ish lumens at full chat driven at 3 amps with adequate heat sinking. So the theoretical max for this light is 2000-ish lumens..... But..... The led's are wired in parallel, and the driver kicks out 850mA on full. You'll be lucky to get 600 lumens out of this light. Even worse is that the PCB the led's are on isn't even mounted to the aluminium body of the light, so they will get very very hot, when led's get hot the light output goes down. These led's are a very high colour temperature. i'd say around the 8000k mark which means they look 'blueish'. This colour of light is terrible for your depth perception and will glare/dazzle everyone you're riding with or cars coming the other way. The driver PCB isn't actually that bad, good soldering etc, but there's a nice fat inductor that's hanging in mid air, this WILL break off with the rough ride after an unknown amount of time. To try and stop this i've put a blob of silicone under it, and made a vague attempt at some thermal paste around the edge of the LED PCB.
So now the battery. Fu@k me the battery.
Right, this is an 8.4v 4 cell pack (4 x 18650) wired 2 in parallel 2 in series. good 18650 cells weigh upwards of about 50g each. This whole pack weighs 130g, cable and all. I'd be amazed if there's any electrolyte in them. On my RC charger it gave up a whole 1900mAh. A good battery this size should contain at least 4400 mah's worth of juice. From the box 2 of them were at 3.88v 2 of them were at 3.65v. That will make all you RC lipo guys shudder. There's a little protection PCB in there that makes the pack go open circuit above 4.25v per cell and below 2v per cell. There is no way to balance this pack, and the cells are already badly out of balance from new. Also the cable is only held in place by the wires soldered to the PCB, just a light tug would rip it out, or a twist would snap a wire off etc etc.......
The charger is not a charger. It is a horrifically bad switch mode power supply that kicks out 10v with no load (yes i know that's all a charger really is, with some fancy electronics attatched
). The battery should be charged to 8.4v maximum, any more and they can (and will at about 4.6v per cell) catch fire. The 'charger' relies on the tiny little pcb in the battery to cut the charge when 1 of the cells becomes fully charged, leaving the other one partly charged and weaker than the other one. I'd say after 20-25 cycles the battery would be unusable. the 'charge' LED that goes red/green etc is just a load indicator, when the little protection PCB in the battery goes open circuit the LED goes green. I wont even start on the soldering, or the uncut leads, or the 240v mains tracks that are less than 0.5mm away from the low voltage side of the board.
It makes me angry that this shite is on sale and people are unaware of the grenade charging on their kitchen worktop....
I've made LOTS of lipo battery packs for friends with these cheap chinese lights. The light heads themselves are not too evil. But the battery/charging setup is dire. If anyone wants advice i'm happy to offer some knowledge.
Well done if you've made it this far! Whoop whoop! Now get out there and shred the woods at night, its brilliant fun!
Aye oop guys and girls. This might be a bit of a chewy word-soup post, but please bear with me. Winter is officially here, which means some of you will be looking for lights. Let me get this out of the way first.
DO NOT BUY CHEAP EBAY LIGHTS!
NO,
NOT EVEN THAT ONE,
DON'T DO IT,
My bro took a punt on a £15 solarstorm x2 knowing it would be a knockoff and gave it to me to have a look at, just to make sure it won't burn the house down. In short, yes it probably would burn the house down, after about 20-25 charges, and that's if the POS was still working. I personally think it would do about 3 hours before the rattling would snap components off the circuit board inside. This would leave you stranded without a light at best, or smashing into a tree up the woods at worst.
Please please please buy a good light from a reputable company. They don't cost a fortune, if you buy a good one it will last you for years. If you are on a mega budget then something like this from fasttech would do the job.
https://www.fasttech.com/products/1...voy-s2-1-cree-xm-l2-t6-4c-996-lumen-2-group-3
This warning also stands for all 18650 lithium batteries and chargers you generally find on eBay. 99% of them are fake and downright dangerous.
For those still reading i'll now explain why these lights are so utterly shite, i'll explain from an electrical standpoint so duck out if you want to from here on in.
Let's start with the light itself. this one is a claimed 5000 lumens. It contains 2 Cree XML led's. These led's (depending on what actual XML you get) put out a maximum of 1000-ish lumens at full chat driven at 3 amps with adequate heat sinking. So the theoretical max for this light is 2000-ish lumens..... But..... The led's are wired in parallel, and the driver kicks out 850mA on full. You'll be lucky to get 600 lumens out of this light. Even worse is that the PCB the led's are on isn't even mounted to the aluminium body of the light, so they will get very very hot, when led's get hot the light output goes down. These led's are a very high colour temperature. i'd say around the 8000k mark which means they look 'blueish'. This colour of light is terrible for your depth perception and will glare/dazzle everyone you're riding with or cars coming the other way. The driver PCB isn't actually that bad, good soldering etc, but there's a nice fat inductor that's hanging in mid air, this WILL break off with the rough ride after an unknown amount of time. To try and stop this i've put a blob of silicone under it, and made a vague attempt at some thermal paste around the edge of the LED PCB.
So now the battery. Fu@k me the battery.
Right, this is an 8.4v 4 cell pack (4 x 18650) wired 2 in parallel 2 in series. good 18650 cells weigh upwards of about 50g each. This whole pack weighs 130g, cable and all. I'd be amazed if there's any electrolyte in them. On my RC charger it gave up a whole 1900mAh. A good battery this size should contain at least 4400 mah's worth of juice. From the box 2 of them were at 3.88v 2 of them were at 3.65v. That will make all you RC lipo guys shudder. There's a little protection PCB in there that makes the pack go open circuit above 4.25v per cell and below 2v per cell. There is no way to balance this pack, and the cells are already badly out of balance from new. Also the cable is only held in place by the wires soldered to the PCB, just a light tug would rip it out, or a twist would snap a wire off etc etc.......
The charger is not a charger. It is a horrifically bad switch mode power supply that kicks out 10v with no load (yes i know that's all a charger really is, with some fancy electronics attatched
). The battery should be charged to 8.4v maximum, any more and they can (and will at about 4.6v per cell) catch fire. The 'charger' relies on the tiny little pcb in the battery to cut the charge when 1 of the cells becomes fully charged, leaving the other one partly charged and weaker than the other one. I'd say after 20-25 cycles the battery would be unusable. the 'charge' LED that goes red/green etc is just a load indicator, when the little protection PCB in the battery goes open circuit the LED goes green. I wont even start on the soldering, or the uncut leads, or the 240v mains tracks that are less than 0.5mm away from the low voltage side of the board. It makes me angry that this shite is on sale and people are unaware of the grenade charging on their kitchen worktop....
I've made LOTS of lipo battery packs for friends with these cheap chinese lights. The light heads themselves are not too evil. But the battery/charging setup is dire. If anyone wants advice i'm happy to offer some knowledge.
Well done if you've made it this far! Whoop whoop! Now get out there and shred the woods at night, its brilliant fun!
carcharodon
Active Member
I am pretty sure Xeccon use Panasonic or Samsung 18650's in their battery packs.
The light unit and battery packs are cheap AND high quality.
Cheap stuff can be very good.
They are a Chinese brand.
The light unit and battery packs are cheap AND high quality.
Cheap stuff can be very good.
They are a Chinese brand.
This thread seems to have been going for light years, but a couple of points to add:-
- head lights are very confusing to on coming motorists (me anyway). The bouncing pattern it makes does not register in my brain that it is fact a cyclist. More like a pedestrian.
- always have two front lights and two rear lights (& spare batteries). You never know when one is going to fail, fall off or you forgot to switch it off when you parked the bike in the morning.
- Cateye (my current favourite) use brackets that have been the same for a few years and later models have been compatible. Some of the Halford range seem to come with slightly different brackets with change of models. If you run more than one bike, it is good to get the extra brackets so lights are easily swappable.
- Have used a "Blue" flashing rear light in the past. May not be legal, but I had several (friendly) motorists stop and comment how effective they where and asked where I got them from.
- Finally, reflective slap bands on wrists and ankles are one of the best buys you can do.
- head lights are very confusing to on coming motorists (me anyway). The bouncing pattern it makes does not register in my brain that it is fact a cyclist. More like a pedestrian.
- always have two front lights and two rear lights (& spare batteries). You never know when one is going to fail, fall off or you forgot to switch it off when you parked the bike in the morning.
- Cateye (my current favourite) use brackets that have been the same for a few years and later models have been compatible. Some of the Halford range seem to come with slightly different brackets with change of models. If you run more than one bike, it is good to get the extra brackets so lights are easily swappable.
- Have used a "Blue" flashing rear light in the past. May not be legal, but I had several (friendly) motorists stop and comment how effective they where and asked where I got them from.
- Finally, reflective slap bands on wrists and ankles are one of the best buys you can do.
carcharodon
Active Member
Sharky:
a blue flashing rear light?!!
That's confusing for motorist....they may think your a pleece.
a blue flashing rear light?!!
That's confusing for motorist....they may think your a pleece.
They often slowed down and gave me a wide pass, so quite effective.
ACS
Legendary Member
- Location
- Just below the snow line
I asked a similar question on the Audax Ecosse FB page in 2009 and it was suggested that a set of Ay Up road lights would meet my requirement. Not cheap I give you that but I have used them twice a day, 5 days a week, 48 weeks a year since, never missed a beat. Driver friendly in flash mode, bright enough for a very rural commute and can last through the dark hours in an early season 400km on low power setting.
(no connection to the company, just a satisfied customer)
(no connection to the company, just a satisfied customer)
tincaman
Guru
- Location
- Chudleigh, South Devon
I have in the past used one of these blue led wrap around lights attached on the inside of the rear wheel around the hub
