Dynamo hubs

@alialias
I've heard that the fancy Lumotec with the USB is now sealed in a way that the first one wasn't. I've just got on one order from Starbike. Not sure how soon I'll be able to report on it having been utterly soaked on a ride, but hey this is England. Shouldn't be long.

@M_A_X so I went for the brakey light thing. All The Fancy LIghts Will Be Mine.
I'll find some time to come and see you, been working totally nuts lately. Have a weird thing I want you to build, like I said. PM me yr phone?

I leave on my trip in a few weeks so I think I'm just gonna bite the bullet now and buy it too. I feel like the sensible option might be to get a standard headlamp and the fully waterproof sinewave revolution...
Getting the brake light too, it's less than £20!

@Skülly @alialias Really keen to hear how you guys get on with the lamps. Was leaning towards the Lumotec, but have no idea about a rear light. A brakelight does sound pretty excellent though.

Is starbike the cheapest place for the B+M stuff at the moment?

@tyeness Similar prices to rosebikes, yes.

The brakelight idea is pretty naff but I dig it. Here it is at rosebikes.

So nerdy!

http://bike-channel.tv/film/b-m-brake-plus-das-bremslicht-fuers-fahrrad

Shame it doesn't come in a seat stay mount option. I like it.

I agree, a smallish seatstay / mudguard mount version would be great.

I think the horizontal line diffuser is another of their innovations on this light (320 degree visibility apparntly, I can't see how that works!), but it would be great to have the brake function on the other designs.

I can't see how that works!

At least just about everyone else can...

Is there any reason not to go for this wheel: http://www.sjscycles.co.uk/700c-front-wheel-shimano-alfine-wh-s501-v-24h-rim-with-shimano-dynohub-6v-05a-3w-in-black-prod37210/

Seems absurdly cheap, the hub itself appears to cost that much normally.

Then I'd only need the lights, right, or are there other things needed - wires etc?

@andy_k @skinny

So this http://www.cnc-bike.de/product_info.php?cPath=25_307&products_id=14780

and this

and I can charge my Exposure during the day and the Garmin during the night?

I'm not sure if the exposure can be charged from a dynamo but yes.

I'd also suggest using a cache battery then charging from cache battery so any power spikes don't mess the internal batteries up.

So I run the Sinewave in a battery pack http://www.amazon.co.uk/TeckNet®-External-Lightning-Sensation-Blackberry-black/dp/B000UH46YY and the Garmin and Exposure from this battery? The Exposure charges from USB mains, will test charging it from the 3700mAh Portapow.

How long to charge a 7000mAh battery pack with your setup?

At a rough guess I'd say it charges around 1000 ma/h. Given it takes about 1h30 to charge my iPhone. But that's a guess.
And you wouldn't need a big 7000 pack. Just get something smaller.

I forgot about waiting for your thoughts on the light and just went and ordered one, and a Secula fender-mount rear.

Love the look of the brakelight, but not going to be using a rear rack often (if at all).

Used Rosebikes in the end, were a few euros cheaper once shipping was added :)

Most people in this thread seem to be using fancier dynamos. I've got a shimano one, but haven't wired it up yet so can't tell you whether its actually any good! I think it's basically gonna take more of your watts to output the same power, if you're happy with that, fire away!

I have a Shimano one on my commuter (albeit the lighter fancier 3v they do) and it's good. Shimano are the bog standard and they're excellent.

Exposure just confirmed charge light to full mains USB at 1ah only 1h longer then mains charger at 1.4ah and using a power pack as cache with 2a output should not damage it. As well it should work with minimal battery power left while loading so be in fact a dynamo light?

The sinewave will give enough power for this; what do you think?
As well which cache battery have you got, for my setup the magic word seems to be pass through charging? Was thinking of http://www.amazon.co.uk/Zendure-A2-Portable-Charger-6000mAh-Silver/dp/B00ICYOUCK/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1413537966&sr=8-1&keywords=zendure+a2

I don't see any reason the sine wave wouldn't do exactly what you want. Mine works flawlessly.
I wasn't happy with the battery I had before. But I've read good reviews on some anker batteries. You might have to try a few until you find one your happy with.

This depends on what you're doing/how much nightriding your doing/how often you want to post cool photos on the internet and watch cat gifs but my thinking is...

Joystick (essentially glorified battery with a big LED on the front) can charge from the Sinewave/Kemo/Plug etc. but NOT directly from the dynamo. Do this during the day.

Use the Joystick a bit a night.

Joystick turned off and then used to charge iPhone/Garmin while sleeping (cable available from Exposure or you can whip something up with a soldering iron). Plug the Joystick back in to charge when you set off after breakfast...

If you want to charge Garmin or iPhone on the go, you can use the Sinewave/Kemo etc. but if you go slow (mountain biking yay!) the output switches off and your phone will buzz and light up or your Garmin will beep to say it's unplugged. This might not be a problem, but can be a bit annoying. If you want to make things slick and painless, then running a small cache battery will keep the devices charging until you pick up speed again. If you have the Plug there is a cache battery you can stuff up your steerer tube, so you don't have to worry about the on/offness but I think it's a fair bit more £££

Obviously this doesn't work so well if you need to ride during the night and need the Joystick blasting fullpower all the time then sleep during the day to avoid the heat or something...

There shall be not too much sleep so will try the sinewave cache battery. If not good I can always buy one of these horrible German lights or save for the Revo.

Fair enough, I guess this is for PBP?

cheers -yeah that's always been my experience with pretty much everything shimano. nice one

My strategy was going to be to have two 5000mAh USB batteries:-

At night:-

• Dynamo powers front light
  
• GPS kept topped up by one cache battery, swapping to second one if necessary
  
  

When the dynamo isn't powering the front light:

• Dynamo charges one (via Sinewave or eWerk or similar)
  
• GPS kept topped up by the other cache battery, also topping up 'phone
  
  

(This assumes a cache battery cannot be charged and used at the same time. If it could then I'd go for one USB cache battery with double the capacity.)

That way I'd never worry about going slowly affecting 'phone or GPS: sometimes my Edge 705 GPS will enter computer mode (it pretends to be removable media and doesn't function as a GPS/bike-computer) when USB power is provided, which terminates the current track and means I have to faff to get it on again, so flicking on and off as the speed drops above/below some threshold would be even more annoying.

The two USB batteries also provide a bit of redundancy. I'd also plan on never relying on the battery inside the GPS, which would mean it is available for emergencies or when I forgot to plug everything in.

For PBP 2011 I had two 5000mAh USB batteries but no dynohub to charge them and tiredness meant that I didn't do the right thing to maximise their use. My 'phone used up too much of the cache batteries as I kept on forgetting to put the 'phone in flight mode between controls, and the rural nature of some bits of France meant that it kept on chewing through its battery using full power hunting for a non-existant signal. The signs on PBP were good enough that I didn't need the GPS for navigation anyway. (If I'd had a PowerTap on the bike I would have probably wanted to keep it going to record that but I wasn't fussed about getting a full GPX tracklog.)

Should be arriving soon: SP 28 to go on HED Ardennes rim I got from @noBlakes a while ago.