I was wondering if you could provide any more information about the gold-plated connector you use to connect the x-light II to the power source. Is this something avaliable commercially or did you fabricate it yourself? (I imagine it has to be commercial, I don't know many people with gold plating equiptment in their house :). What kind of connector is it? It sounds like something like a 1/8" audio jack but I'm not sure. A part number would be great if you have it, but even a brief description of how you installed it would be extremely helpful.
It must be over 6 years since I made the X-light II now. At that time I was working at the Univeristy of Trondheim, division of physical electronics (NTNU).
The connector is custom made. I found the gold-plated pins at work. I had help from Kolbjørn, who makes instruments etc. at NTNU made the connector based on this, some aluminum profiles and insulators (don't know much about what kind of insulator he used). Since I did not make the housing myself, it is a bit hard to describe how it was made.
The male pin is just about 1 mm in diameter. Time and wear caused the gold to dissapear over time, so after about a year or so, the connector began to fail. I fixed this by adding a standard bannana female connector to the housing. It has worked well since then.
The battery has lasted for more than 6 years and has began to show signs of "getting old". I'm not longer able to ride to work and home again with the 20 W bulb turned on all the way. So I'm using the 2 W secondary light when riding slow in places with good lightning.
I have modified the system so that when I attach my Burley, I also power a LED backlight on the Burley from the bike. The LED backlight is a long LED light intended as an extra breaking light for cars (about 30 cm long with lots of powerfull LEDs).
Could you email or regular snail mail me the all the specifications (Al tube size, bulb model number and part number, battery specifications and model number etc. ) to make an X-light of my own?
I'm working with an electrical diagram that will show how things are connected. A part list will also be available (the problem is that many of the parts does have other numbers in other contries). Stay tuned.
I presently have a 5 Watt system that I like because the beam is very wide in the horizontal direction. I like this because I use the light to be seen, not to see. Could you tell me the width (in degrees, for example) of the beam that comes from your light? I assume it is a standard 20-Watt halogen that can be bought in the hardware store.
As far as I know the bulb is available in 15 and 35 degree beam angle and you can buy it at any hardware store where they sell lightbulbs (otherwise it's a bad store!). I use the 15 degree type. The light is amed to hit a point on the road about 5 meters ahead. A 35 degree beam would be very annoying to oncomming cars and cyclists. Sofar, no cars have flashed with theire lights to tell me that my light is too bright.
Battery life. You are using a 3.4 Amp-hour battery and a bulb that will draw 1.66 Amps. The amp-hour rating applies to a 10-hour discharge rate (i.e. 10 hours at 0.334 amps) and you will get much less at this high discharge rate. I am using a 4 amp-hour battery at 1 amp, and get something like 2 hours out of it (which is enough to last me a week). If you only get 1 hour out of a charge that could be a problem. Please let me know how your battery does.
I have not performed a test on the battery yet. I have plans to do a test where I first charge the battery before I store it in the refrigirator over night. Then, without taking the battery out of the refrigirator, I will connect the light to the battery and begin to discharge it. I will also connect a data-logger to the battery to get the discharge characteristics. This test will tell me how much I can get out of the battery.
The reason for not using a bigger battery is both weight and that I don't need to run the light for more than 20-30 minutes each day (normal travel time to work is 10 minute and about 15 minute home again).
What's the price in US $??
The battery cost me about NOK 250,- or about USD 40. The price on the bulb is unknown, since I have had it for several years. It is the spare bulb for my Night-Sun Team Issue. I also used a few bucks on a switch, wires and other things. I think the total is somewhere around 60-70 USD.
The light looks great. I look forward to more construction details. I'm especially interested to hear what it cost you to make, in U.S. dollars if you can! Or at least a comparison to the cost of a comparable Night Sun system.
The X-light perform just as good as the Night Sun system.
Do you sell these lights?? How much are they?
Sorry, I don't sell them.
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