Dynamo lighting system recommendations & thoughts

[ersakus]

I dont KNOW but it is probably because the dynamo will let the light know that your bike is moving anyway, so you dont need a sensor. The sensing ability for detecting light and dark will often be done by the front light and normally (at least with those sorts of front light) the wires for the back light come from the front light.

Or another way of looking at it is that you need a battery for automatic and if you already have a battery, you dont need a condensor.

That is one thing I don't like about the B/M rear light. It is not 100% maintenance free. The batteries are the weak point (unlike the front which has its condenser). I'd prefer the rear to work just like the front.

But it is my second day and I am really happy with what I bought. Very powerful system now even able to charge my gadgets and I never will have to think about my lights. I just always have them on!!! The bike became truly usable/useful at the moment. I can't be happier.

[NUKe]

If you have the senso front light you can connect to that so you don't need the senso rear and then you can use the toplight plus or toplight flat plus with standlight from a condensor bit late I know with that piece of information

[ersakus]

I do have the toplight senso rear connected to senso front but the rear will either turn off completely as soon as I stop or (if in on/senso mode meaning position II or III) it will use the battery to activate standlight for 4 minutes. This eats up the batteries, and I believe also the detector circuit in the rear unit constantly uses the batteries to "sense" movement or light? If this is the case it is a bad design. It would be nice if the unit could charge its batteries but I doesn't.

In any mode rear will turn "on" as soon as I move whether batteries are flat or not which is good. Dynamo takes over as much as possible from the batteries which also is good.

There is no way of using the front condenser for the rear as far as I see. At least in my case. Perhaps I made the wrong choice with the rear light.. Anyway this is not too important. Only a "would be nice to have".

[PeterBL]

I think you indeed have chosen the wrong rearlight for your wishes. A Toplight Flat Plus would have been better.

I'm a bit interested in your experience with the CYO frontlight, ersakus. From my understanding, there has been some complaints regarding the "Senso" function in the regular Cyos (without daylight mode). The problem has been a to high sensitivity of the sensor, so it would only switch off in the brigtest sunlight, thereby proving itself rather useless in this darker place of the earth (you could just as well leave it on "on").

How does the sensor in your light fare? Does it switch between the two modes at appropriate times or is it on night mode to often?

[meic]

The sensor does err slightly on the over sensitive side.
However it doesnt do any harm for the lights to come on and this is not an issue with a bottle dynamo. Also I saw a review of the various hubs and the Shimano 3N80 has less drag above 15 kph (or mph I cant remember which) with the lights on than off!
Some internal eddy currents to blame.

[ersakus]

To be honest I have not had a chance to test that. Surely in the night it is at night mode and lights the road. When I come to a stop, I see that the lower, "day time" leds only are lit. I think even during the day (cloudy so far) main light is on as well as lower day time leds. Not sure if this is what is supposed to happen! According to the manual it seems there is an intentional 8 second delay in sensor response to day/night mode switch. So a simple wheel turn might not result in day time sensing as one can't exceed 8 seconds of turn? may be..

Mine also has daytime mode(T) so if I'm not happy with the sensor performance I can override the sensor and keep it running at daylight mode any time I want.
I will test the sensitivity and let you know.

[PeterBL]

From their website, in daylight mode the main light i glowing only a little bit, while the "signal leds" are on full power. In night mode, the main light runs full power, but the signal leds still have some light. May take some testing to know the exact difference.

Are the signal leds the only lightsource, when you stand still?

[ersakus]

From their website, in daylight mode the main light i glowing only a little bit, while the "signal leds" are on full power. In night mode, the main light runs full power, but the signal leds still have some light. May take some testing to know the exact difference.

I will have to let my other half do a test ride then

Are the signal leds the only lightsource, when you stand still?

Yes they are indeed

[ersakus]

I have tried the daytime and night modes and it is not easy to see the difference during the day when you are riding. When I spinned the front wheel manually in our dark garage and switched between day and night modes using the switch, I could see that the strength of the four signal leds were changing. The 4 signal leds, do come on always whether it is day or night but in different strength. I thing the main led also comes on regardless but in different strengths. So the system is working when I use the manual switch. The sensor sensitivity is still to be tested but I think this is difficult to test and also probably too academic to me..

[andrew_s]

The sensor does err slightly on the over sensitive side.
Also I saw a review of the various hubs and the Shimano 3N80 has less drag above 15 kph (or mph I cant remember which) with the lights on than off!

The less drag on than off review was of the old Shimano NX10 hub. The NX30 was better, and all the recent 3N70, 3N30, Alfine etc hubs haven't been much worse than a SON28.

On thing I've noticed with the Senso function on my Edelux is that there are only 2 switch positions, Off and Senso. If you slide the switch past Senso to "On", all that it does is cover over the light sensor.
I just leave it in Senso all the time, even if it does sometimes stay on all the time on dull winter days. I don't notice the drag, it's not going to burn out the bulb, and it saves worrying about whether it's dark enough to need light at dusk or when passing trough trees.

[ersakus]

I did a test and the wheel turned for 70 seconds when all lights were off. Both lights on it took 40 seconds for the wheel to come to stop.
I know when riding the bike (with momentum of a 85kg mass) this is negligible. I leave the senso on as well especially on these dull days. I don't notice any drag

[chris1959]

schmidt every time with led front and rear, an absolute bombproof setup.

[songsforpolarbears]

Check out my order! Wooooo. Exciting.

Many thanks to everyone who has widened my horizons upon this issue. It helped me make an informed choice.

[ersakus]

I'm sure you'll like it.

[ersakus]

I have finally had a chance to hook up the e-werk to my GPS and go for a 17mile ride.

For those of you who wonder if e-werk+GPS+lights on would work with SON20 (or SONDelux) on 700C wheel, here is the a little field report:

The bike:
700Cx37 tourer
SONDelux dynamo hub.
B&M Cyo RT front dynamo light
B&M toplight rear dynamo light

The ride:
Distance ridden:17miles
Average speed:13mph
Both lights on
PDA GPS unit on with GPS and mp3 music software fully running. Processor = Auto

I have found that when the GPS backlight is on, the dynamo system is barely able to top up the GPS battery. In first 40 minutes of the ride the battery level went from 48% to 44%.
I then decided to turn off the PDA's backlight (which is normally how I rode when I did not have the dynamo). In the second 45 minutes of the ride, the level went from 40% to 45%. As I always left the device on even at the banana breaks, I expect the e-werk to top up approx 10% per hour which is great. After a whole days ride I expect a totally flat GPS battery to be 100% due to being attached to e-werk. If I turn the lights off, this should happen even much faster.

The GPS battery is a mighty 3000mAh one and it is impressive to see that SON delux could top up this even when the bike lights were fully on.
Next step is to hook up my Nokia mobile phone as well and see if the phone+gps+lights will be working/charging. If this combination works, I will be able to ride truly unsupported in terms of gadget-energy!!!
In the night, I expect the light beam to get worse (which I have not tried yet). Amazing thing was that I did not feel any drag from the wheel despite the load.

Looks promising at the moment even for crossing continents on the bike..

Is there anyone out there with the long distance experience of SONDelux/e-werk system?