has anyone else had problems accessing the web site with the full set of photos taken during the building process? Excellent article all the same

seemed ok to me.

I've made a batery pack using the same cells but wired them together rather than tag directly to tag. Does this affect the performance greatly? Also I'm after the bulbs mentioned in the article, does anyone know of somewhere in the Leeds/Bradford area that stocks them? Cheers, great article. Olly

Seams a hell of a lot of hassle when you can pay an extra £60 and get a pair of cracking lumicycles delivered to your door.

some people dont have £60 to spare, some people like to do it themselves, bodgetinker etc with stuff and some like to buy for looks, guarantees etc etc.

It's all horses for courses innit!

plus, my home made lights whop my mates lumis, on brightness and runtime. : )

ok they are pretty heavy, but you hardly notice it in a camelbak

David it should be tertl@fotopic.net

not tertl@fotospot.net

seems an expensive homebrew system.
www.multicell.co.uk do a 13.2v battery pack for £46.
~£10 for two dichroic lamps is very expensive.

In defence of the author, the batteries themselves cost in the region of £35, the order form BudgetBatteries includes a charger. The rest of the bits and bobs to assemble the battery pack are the sort of things that anybody considering this type of build would probably have left over from previous projects anyway.
Dichroics can be bought for less, I've had some for £1, but you get what you pay for. Branded bulbs from Philips or Osram are brighter and whiter than the cheaper options.
My own version of home made lighting (in my case to make a helmet mounted lamp) used the bottom half of a hair mousse aerosol. The base is drilled & ground out to leave a recess for the bulb which was glued in. A bit final, but I can’t see myself changing bulbs so why bother making a potentially leaky joint? The open end had the cap from the mousse can stuffed up it and again glued in place once the switch and wiring is in place. This produced a compact and lightweight housing which has served me well through four 24 hour races to date.

I agree - You get what you pay for with lamps to a large degree. I've got a 10W good one and a 10W cheapo in my setup and it's not worth even switching the cheapo one on. You can't even tell it's on if you have the good one on already.

What capacity did the multicell pack come in and where did you get a price? I couldn't find either.

Wish I'd had this info before I started my 6V system :( 6V bulbs are much harder to source and make dearer packs.

Jim.

Got to agree with Mike - full marks for innovation and bodging acumen, but when you can get a Lumicycle system with a single 35W mid lamp for £127.50 (or the full system for £149.99) it hardly seems worth it as a money-saving exercise when you factor in your time. Mind you, as a hobby project it looks fun.

Sorry about the duff address - I have a tertl.blogspot blog and a tert.fotopic gallery, and the 2 got crossed!

I did it initially to save money, but then got more interested and just wanted to see how it would all go together. Regarding 'similar priced' lumi systems, the battery capacity is larger on my system and I have a fast charger, rather than trickle charger. I'd compare it with their £180 system, rather than the budget one.

I'm going out tomorrow night with Al et al, and some of them have Lumis, so we can compare then. Let you know how they measure up.

Brilliant article ancient mariner. I can remember experimenting with a butchered torch and RC car battery packs over 10 years ago! Created a very good, cheap system at the time, especially considering the schoolboy errors made.
Plastic reflector cone behind crypton bulb melted evetually :-( Not to mention my mates water bottle encased battery pack wich went into melt down whilst on fast charge.....

Any plans to adapt your design for 5W luxeon LED's? You could potentially get double the battery life. Go for the blue option and get a whopping 500lm with a class 2 eye safety warning.

james...

goto www.singletrackworld.com and do a search in the forum.
there has been lots of discussion in recent weeks.
the pack uses the same cells as lumicycle/niterider, i.e. 7/5AF. one poster on STW stated that MC would soon have the 4.5Ah version of the 7/5AF cell

Well done AM - don't listen to the "wingers" after all most of my bike tools don't realy save me money - I could get the LBS to do everything for a few quid more - but where would be the satisfaction in that - I have lumis and an going to build another set just for fun ( and helmet mount!!)

David, I'd like to try an LED sometime, but the units are quite expensive (£25) and still use 5w. I also actually prefer the warmer colour of Halogen lamps, compared to the blue-white of LEDs. I bought a small cateye unit for road 'in betweeny' bits, and although it's bright, details are much less clear for my eyes.

I'm presently wondering about overvolting - a 20% increase will nearly double light output, although you only get 10% of the bulb life. However with the bulbs being rated at 5000 hours, then that's still quite a bit of night riding for me.

B@stard bulbage botched brilliantly!

Nice job AM.

Which charger did you use? i can't find it on the budget batteries page.also where are the photos i can't find them either. does anyone know what the range on the leds is? I'd always thought that although they were bright they didn't go far - too diffused

Anyone tried using the mr11 bulbs? 35mm diameter rather than the mr16 bulbs 50mm diameter that are used here.

Hi Tom, I've just finished my first setup and have been testing it for about a week commuting.

My setup uses a single 20 watt 26 degree MR11 - 35mm bulb which is great on dark country lanes. The MR11 bulbs seem to fit perfectly into a push fit plumbing coupling from B&Q which cost 58 pence! I will be playing around with another bulb unit and different bulbs soon.