Geek Gadget: Vizy 360 Rear Light

I'm working weekends in a bike shop along the GAP Trail in Confluence, PA, and I get to see some really nice geek-gadgets. This is one of a series of posts about the gear that shows up in the doorway.

Today's geegaw is a rear light that looks (to me) like it should be transporting uranium isotopes or frozen bio samples.

Vizy is a rear light from the Tern Bicycle people. It sends out a bright light (60 lumens) behind the bike for cars to see, and also sends a 360-degree circle of light around the bike to make it more visible and recognizable for the people around it.

It's very reasonably priced as lights go. USB rechargable. website

Wrenching Results: Mounting Rear Lights

02/04/12 #237 0m

I am not a good mechanic but I do enjoy wrenching and find great satisfaction in those events when I accomplish small results without permanent damage, resorting to professionals, or trips to the emergency room.

My Jannd Expedition Rack does not offer a mounting platform for a rear light - which would be insufficient anyway, as I wanted to mount two rear lights.

I am enamored of both the Cateye TLD1100 and the PDW Radbot1000 and so to use them both I kludged a DIY solution using seatpost mounts and PVC pipe (see photo at left). This was a completely functional and yet decidedly inelegant solution that was completely discordant with the LHT aesthetic.

In fact, it was a cry for help, a call for intervention, and I could ignore it no longer.

I found out that on their respective websites, both Cateye and PDW offer "small parts" that offer alternative rear rack mounting options, so I ordered rear mounts and then faced the problem of how to affix them both to the Jannd racks.

Inevitably, Google had the solution to my problems and when I searched images for "L-shaped support brackets" I came upon the image to the left, which was obviously a rear bicycle light support bracket that somebody had re-purposed as a curtain rod bracket.


These brackets were not too expensive, strong, and black (all good) and with a bit of hacksawing and drilling and just a few hand-to-head moments, I had usable brackets to mount above and below my rack. Also, I learned that the ubiquitous and universal bike bolts are "M5 .8", knowledge of which pleases me greatly.

One factor in the change is that the seatpost mounts allow you to rotate the light to ensure a truly vertical alignment, while the rear rack mounts require that the bracket/rack combo deliver the correct angle. Fortunately, we were OK on that.

The new install is stronger and less likely to fail, weighs less, is less conspicuous, and offends the sensibilities sucks less.

		2/04/12 Week 5    this week: 67 miles		1st Qtr 308 miles mi/dayQTR		2012: 308 miles
		Weight: Sun:236 Sat:237 Trend: BAD

Securing Rear Bike Lights on Bicycle Racks: Bring Me My Windows 3.1

01/14/12 #239

19F and snowing today, and so I permitted my superior judgement to permit my superior skillz to take the day off.

There's a Phoenix bicyclist that I enjoy reading at http://onespeedgo.blogspot.com/, he seems a well-composed and thoughtful person, and when I saw a recent post headline I became quite excited: Rear Rack Taillight Standardized Mounting Dreams Made Real.

Could it be true? Have the stars aligned? Is it a foreshadowing of the Mayan end times? Mounting bicycle tail lights on a rear rack has been a vexing issue for me.

Unfortunately, the blog post did not bring news of an emerging industry standard. No, we did not adopt the Euro rear light/reflector mounting standard. The writer had taken tools in hand and fabricated his own (and fairly elegant) kludge, and (rightfully) he considered it an accomplishment.

Generally, we end up with people with really nice bikes who hand-fashion one-off solutions, which often involve fashioning a support that appears to be a seat tube, since all the lights provide mounts for seat tubes:


It's crazy to me that you can spend $50 and up on a rear light that will not reliably affix to your rear rack. Yes, you might zip-tie it and you might clip it onto a bag strap or a coat or a messenger bag, but then the now-remarkable optics will be askew and you'll end up projecting a powerful beam of light up into the air and not into the eyes of the truck behind you.

I really want Them to fix This. I'd like to have one or two templates for what the mounting points on the back of a rear rack might be, and then have higher-end lights be compatible with those templates. I think it might help me to avoid being killed, or at least to maximize the Guilt upon the Driver who does kill me.

This morning I contemplated the great buggery of it all, and then it struck me: I've seen this problem before. When 8086-PCs first came out, none of the devices/software could work together; you needed drivers to intermediate the process. It was a goat-rope; your WordPerfect 4.2 might not have a driver for your HP DeskJet+ if you were still running DOS-5. Every software producer was chasing the swirling range of hardware, and every hardware producer was flummoxed by the upgrading versions of software, and it didn't work very well. It was very frustrating.

Then we got Windows 3.1. Not only was it a graphic user interface, but it provided a standard platform; if your hardware worked with the Windows 3.1 specification, and if your software worked with Windows 3.1, then you could be assured of functionality (UGMT- usually, generally, most of the time).

The hardware people and the software people now only had to worry about a single dimension of change; what would Windows change? And there was really a great improvement delivered by the all-promising Windows.

As happens, after ten years the solution becomes the new problem 2.0, and we've forgotten how glad we were to have Windows 3.1 back in the day.

Somehow, I find myself wishing for Windows 3.1 for my rear bike light / rear rack interface. It's a curious turn of events.

---

Since I'm fantasizing, I also want to see a standard for a bicycle electric supply. Bicyclists are carrying AA, AAA, recharger packs for proprietary batteries, USB dongles (both mini-USB and USB-2, btw), hearing aid batteries for the new LEDs, and none of them work with each other. I've got three four different power sources running on my bike: AA, AAA, hearing aid, and proprietary.

I'd really appreciate a standard platform that allows me to operate all my lights, either on batteries or on a dynamo circuit. I would pay a premium for an electric/light platform that offers some robust diversity in power sources - yes, you can run your dynamo, and if the dynamo craps out you can use your rechargeable AAs or your solar panel- and all your lights would have compatible connectors. I would really like this.

And if you were using rechargables, they should all accept the same mini-USB jack as cellphones do; every traveling cyclist is already carrying a cellphone charger.

Please.

		1/14/12 Week 2    this week: 78 miles		1st Qtr 143 miles 10.2 mi/dayQTR		2012: 143 miles
		Weight: Mon:241 Sat:239 Trend: good

Rear Bike Lights: Cateye TL-LD1100 and Radbot 1000

11/16/11 #238

On rainy days we may blog about equipment and the rationale of selection.

As the hours of daylight dwindle to a precious few, bicycle lights are more important than ever. Rear lights are important because you're relying on them for cars you're not looking at; you're unlikely to steer your way out of a overtaking-car collision, even thought they're not the majority of night time car-bike accidents. I'm using two rear lights, a Cateye TL-LD1100 and a PDW Radbot1000, and I think they make a good team.

One of the primary decisions about lighting, front or rear, is power supply; where do the electrons come from? The "serious cyclist" answer is a front-wheel hub dynamo powering the lights, but the range of lights you can use is limited (there are some recent developments that offer increased choices). The "green-commuter" answer is rechargeable batteries, often built into the device, that (increasingly) use USB connections to recharge; this often involves removing the lights for charging. The "Fred" answer, and the choice I ended up making, is AA and AAA batteries, which can be purchased at most convenience stores; these present an ongoing expense and an environmental impact.

I've added a Radbot 1000 to my rear light array in the last year because it's one of the best lights in a new category: the LED strobe. The Radbot1000 from Portland Design Words is passive-aggressive; it's a combo passive reflector and an extremely bright, occulting strobe light. It's annoyingly bright and suitable for daytime use. It uses two AAA batteries and the mounting clip is compatible with the mount from the PlanetBike SuperFlash, which is its primary competitor.


My other rear bike light, and my mainstay rear light for a decade, has been the Cateye TL-LD1000 which used two AA batteries. This light contains 10 LEDs, in two rows, wrapped across three surfaces of the light - in other words, two LEDs facing left, six facing the rear, and two LEDs facing right. It's an excellent, sturdy reliable rear light.

In the last year, my TL-LD1000s (I have one on two different bikes) have become problematic: when they get bumped around they turn themselves off. I suspect the battery springs lost their tension. I sent Cateye an email a few weeks ago, they sent back a reply asking me to ship them the two TL-LD1000s, and the mailman just delivered a package containing two of Cateye's most recent offering, the Cateye TL-LD1100.

There are a few upgrades in the 1100 version: the overall design is the same, but the LEDs are twice the brightness of the 1000, the battery sleeves seem to provide for easier replacement, and the case locking mechanism seems more robust. I'm very impressed that Cateye replaced two 10-year old lights with an upgraded model gratis, no questions asked. It makes me feel better about buying another Cateye light the next time I'm shopping.

Taint Paint - New Bike Seat Discomfort Product

5/3/11 #231

Team JVA (Jens Voigt's Army) has released a new product to relieve bike seat discomfort, previously only available to professional European teams. The product is applied to the chamois pad of bicycle shorts, or in extreme cases it can be applied topically to the affected area.
(click for details)

An Effective Rear Bicycle Light