Hey everyone!
For a college project, I’m working on designing a better bike light specifically for long-distance riders and bike campers, and I’d really love as much input as possible. I made a quick google form (around 5 minutes) that asks questions about biking and bike light features. https://forms.gle/9bnUvzz9SSJg34hTA
by ronanhartwig
1 Comment
I really like your thoughts on making a bike light more useful around camp. Lightweight isn’t as important if I don’t have to carry an additional flashlight. Consider that I don’t want to carry extra parts to make this happen. I would want that all in one.
Designing an awesome rear light may be hard because of the Garmin Varia radar. It would be hard to compete with that technology. Most of my riding is off road, but I still use a Varia because not all my riding is off road. I would focus on the front light.
For reference my front light is a Lezyne 1400+. I chose that light for the long run time and super brightness when I need it. However, the medium setting competes with cars, so I use the medium most of the time. The long running daytime flasher is a huge plus to me because I can run that and not worry about draining my battery much. There are better models from Lezyne that I would go for, but this one is enough.
These lezyne macro drive lights are solid to me because they are easy to mount over cables. I can take it on and off easily for charging, literally seconds. It stays on and in place without issue (ever have a light fall off your bike because you hit a pothole? I have). Runtime, runtime, runtime. Durable, dependable, usb-c. Etc.
Now you had some cool ideas, make it a lantern. Especially one that I can hang in my tent. Around camp I find a headlamp to be the most useful, but a lantern gives comfort.
Bright is cool, great for when you need it, but runtime is more important to me. I tend to run my light on low/medium at night. I don’t want a hard to use interface. For example, my light had this race mode that I accidentally get stuck in, just make it simple. Flash, low, med, high.
Sorry for babbling! You got me thinking! Good luck with your project!