additional data point: My Luxos U never worked. Luckily, the Herrmann jam I bought instead is totally fine as a commuter light.
What’s a Hermmann jam
Though it depends on whether you make your own wheels or not. If you’re in $450 for a dynowheel, yeah, maybe, but if you’re scraping the barrel for $100 to build your own finding something like the little Avenir shaped-beam light at $25 is certainly worth the time.
I dunno, whatsahermannjam with you?
that joke doesn’t work well in print.
Herrmann is a dyno light manufacturer. A little ways upthread I spoke positively of their Black Pro model. It’s about as pricey as a Luxos U, but is maybe better?
I did like this video they made for the Herrmann:
Makes you think about all the overpriced battery powered lights out there that just solder a surface mount LED to a PCB, toss in a 5 cent conical reflector and call it good.
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True but I’ve already got the wheel, its been on my fat chance all summer, and was on my xtracycle before it became the pink cagro, so whatever money I put towards that feels long since accounted for.
Time to spin the bottle and buy a cheap dynamo
I was just thinking of this the other day - it’s kind of shocking that the Luxos hasn’t been revisited, as far as I know, in the past ~5 years. Seems like there have to be some lessons from the myriad reported failures and countless hundreds of thousands of hours of use.
I’m not that surprised. The Luxos is big, and that is a downside in a world of teeny little headlights.
But it makes good use of that volume to effect a beam pattern, right? Is there a way to get the shape the light projects in a smaller package? My knowledge of optics extends as far as a mandatory natural science course in college, so this is a serious question on my part.
I am surprised because they could make some small changes to the Luxos and sell another few thousand units to people with perfectly functioning lights who want a new thing, as well as fix some know problems such as water ingress.
I don’t see how dynamo light size matters from a market(ing) perspective. In their local German market, lights are mounted at the fork crown, and randonerds mount them to a front rack hidden under a bag. In neither of those cases does the Luxos size cause a problem. For handlebar-mounted, a smaller form factor is nice, but what civilized person mounts their front light on their handlebars?
ME
I have a modern road bike, so no fork crown hole, and also velcro-attached bags instead of a randobox, so no rack. B&M sells a nice light attachment bracket that sets the light about an inch below (or above, if that floats your boat) the bars.
I might not be civilized, though
You’d think, yes, but it’s not the only big light that’s shown up and languished in obscurity while the little lights are continually upgraded and improved.
Luxos is already up to their third generation with a couple different solutions that haven’t completely perfected the light.
Fred and I ordered ours from Germany as soon as they came out back in 2013 when they had the 4 terminal headphone jacks:
yeah the currently-shipping version is either the third or fourth manufacturing revision
and I suspect that they’ve made more running changes to the firmware in between
it’s a tough problem, and despite their issues it’s still the most universally decent USB charger gadget
I personally don’t actually care about the USB charging or remote button, the charm for me is that the internal buffer battery makes the standlight amazing. I wish they’d include the 100mAh LiFePo battery circuit in the Luxos B which has the same beam just flickery and dim when slow or stopped.
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I 2nd that. USB dynamo charging was fun but ultimately USB battery pack density has rendered this feature unnecessary for most people. The remote button is fun but not a necessary feature either. Floodlight is barely detectable since normal mode is plenty bright.
I bet the failure rate on Luxos B lamps is really low.
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#SP_chat
Was at the Brompton shop yesterday getting some parts for supbiek and he told me that in 2019 Brompton is dropping Shimano dyno hubs as the base level and upgrading to SP
he already had one on a demo bike - it looked more angular/machined than the versions I have
Oh noes, is it down? https://swhs.home.xs4all.nl/
hmmm… but this is up: https://swhs.home.xs4all.nl/fiets/tests/verlichting/achterlampen/BM_toplight_line_brake_plus/index_en.html
Whoops, should have just saved this url: https://swhs.home.xs4all.nl/fiets/tests/verlichting/index_en.html
somebody should invite him to tarck