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DesignShine... WOW!

66K views 230 replies 36 participants last post by  adams22 
#1 ·
I just got me a DesignShine taillight... and it is astounding. :eek: I never though I'd see such a thing, but somebody has just bested the venerable DiNotte 400R. I put them side by side outside, the difference is plainly visible.

I'll post a video shortly, but first I have some work-type work to finish, a very unfortunate circumstance. I'll get to play with my new toy this afternoon.

I also got the DesignShine front light. But I can't really put it to work until it gets dark.

More in a few hours... including a waterboarding. :arf:
 
#203 ·
I've been waiting for my DesignShine lights since November, hopefully they will ship this month. I am very much looking forward to them as I feel they are the best daytime / nighttime combo out there today.

As for a horn, I was born with a loud booming voice and a properly yelled "STOP!" has always had the intended effect. Works on pedestrians too.

- Roger
 
#205 · (Edited)
Progress Update



Hey "C"
Currently finishing up assembly on all the "build #2" hardware. All of that hardware is sold, and I only have a handful of units left to finish up and ship out. Thanks to some delays in the machine shop, I was able to work with George on the new programmable flash modes for the Maxflex and get those incorporated into build 2. In fact, I now have a custom "DesignShine" firmware load that pre-defines the flash modes, so they can always be restored by doing a system "reset."

The other new modification to allow the user to remove the lens cover and swap out lenses seems to work well. This allows a taillight that has been configured for vertical operation to easily be switched over to horizontal operation.

Also added a couple of offset mounting holes on the bottom of the headlight housing so it can be mounted closer to the center-line of the stem.

I had strapped the lights to the top of my son's RC truck so I could drive it around and get some impressions on how I liked the patterns. Here's a short video of that setup and a demo of the preferred nighttime flash modes for the head and tail.

DesignShine_Flash_Patterns.mp4 - YouTube

Here's also a table describing the new modes, excerpted from the user's manual.

I'm working on getting a limited number of new housings for build #3. Probably on the order of 35 taillights and 15 headlights (although the ratio may end up changing). Then that will be all for 2012. I'll probably work on building up some stock after that (slowly) and maybe do a "limited edition" for 2013.
 

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#208 ·
Well, yes and no.... but first, a bit of history.

This last year I took the opportunity to make some nice refinements to the housings and work with George a little bit on the new programmable flash pattern capability on the MaxFlex driver. The housing updates required switching to a full CNC process vs. traditional machining techniques. Finding a shop in the US to do the work at a price point that was realistic in low quantities (less than 200) was an exercise in futility... that is until a cyclist and machinist-extraordinaire from California contacted me about the lights and offered some sample pieces (thanks Robert!). Long story short, there were a lot of setup pains and delays involved since he was in the middle of moving his shop equipment. Meanwhile, I was taking reserve orders as we were waiting to start cutting metal. Eventually, I had to make a determination on a final quantity and cut-off the order taking process.

So at this point in time (Nov 2012), I'm actually right in the middle of the build process for that set of hardware (104 taillights and 36 headlights). So you can see, for some of the folks who are actually now receiving the hardware, it's been quite an unusually long wait. Because I still have the last half of the 2012 reserve list to go through, there may be a few orders that drop out as I make contact with folks to re-confirm. Consequently, I'm still putting together an "alternates" list of names to jump in and fill any of those spots that may become available.

For any future production (which is TBD at this point), I will definitely pre-assemble all of the hardware and have it ready to go before I announce it's availability, although I may need to hold a few sets of hardware back for custom jobs.

Thanks so much to everybody who's had to wait so long to finally get their orders filled!
 
#207 ·
Hi AWDfreak,

Aspirations to DesignShine ownership inevitably means you need to wait. It's a Dharma thing! Pethelman can explain.

It's worth it of course! You get a tiny matchbox sized thing that rival an aircraft landing light. But as I've indicated, spiritual preparation is required...

Savvas (glowing in the dark!)
 
#209 ·
Thanks for the reply!

I'm glad that there's the small crowd that cares about being SEEN (especially with crazy vehicular traffic). As someone mentioned previously, the light companies are busy with the headlight lumens wars, while the taillights are left as an afterthought.

Finding this thread was quite a relief that someone has put traffic safety as a high priority. Seeing at night is great, but it's pointless if the cars flying past won't notice and possibly injure/kill another cyclist.


Keep up the good work! I greatly appreciate the hard work you do! (I'll get around to ordering a taillight someday, broke from spending on parts on bikes though)
 
#210 · (Edited)
Updated Build 3 DS-500 Picture

Thanks "AWD," you're too kind...

Selfishly, I started out building this light for my own safety, but once I saw how good it was, I just had to make a few more. Wish I had the capability of making a lot of them at a lower price, because I really do believe they could help prevent a senseless accident. I haven't posted this picture very much yet, but here's a shot of the new taillight, showing the lower-profile integrated lid. And yes, for any of the DIYers out there working with the triples, those are custom made clear silicon o-rings that you see around the edge of the lenses. Had to order 1000 of them just to get my hands on them.... Dooooh!:madman:
 

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#212 ·
There may not be a future waiting list :( .

I inquired as well. The response wasn't promising.

I'll W.A.G. and say Stephen would probably have to double the price in order to make it worth his while. Maybe higher.

It's hard to compete with the Chinese!
 
#218 ·
WOW Lights

I've finally seen this light in person and it most certainly lives up to the hype. Here's a bike light seller wishing he had one of these babies. A lot of thought has gone into this light. There is no doubt you will be seen in the day with this light.

If "nasty rumors" are true that Stephen may stop building these DS lights, it will be a massive loss to the night riding community. These rear lights are worth every cent when you compare them to high end lights. So support this guy if he needs to increase the price a little to keep the brightest rear light on Earth going. I will put my order in if Stephen will commit to at least another 3 more builds.

Attaching pic of size comparison of the DS and Geinea rear light. Bikes on the street is approximately 140 meters - DS500 is on the left.
 

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#220 ·
penthelman if you're reading what i would really like is a light that has a sort of a "high" beam for day use and a "low" beam for night use. i would like both to be maximum brightness but the "low" beam should be wide and without a hot spot. the "high" beam should be narrow and with a bright hot spot. and i should be able to use either one or both.

your light has a beam designed for both day and night use. dinotte has separate day and night lights in 400R and 400R daytime red ( which is brighter but narrower than 400R ) but what would really be awesome is the ability to simply switch the mode on the light.

so for example have 4 LEDs on spot optic and 4 LEDs on flood optic, and separate drivers for them.

that would be way cool !
 
#221 ·
penthelman if you're reading what i would really like is a light that has a sort of a "high" beam for day use and a "low" beam for night use. i would like both to be maximum brightness but the "low" beam should be wide and without a hot spot. the "high" beam should be narrow and with a bright hot spot. and i should be able to use either one or both.

your light has a beam designed for both day and night use. dinotte has separate day and night lights in 400R and 400R daytime red ( which is brighter but narrower than 400R ) but what would really be awesome is the ability to simply switch the mode on the light.

so for example have 4 LEDs on spot optic and 4 LEDs on flood optic, and separate drivers for them.

that would be way cool !
Interesting thought. It could also be a cluster of different types of LEDs that are designed for throw and spill as well as the optics you mentioned.
 
#222 ·
Hey guys,
Love the way you think....
Yes, I agree, a mode-specific beam pattern would be super cool. However, it would require a total re-design on the driver and/or the topology of the light. In practice, the combination spot/elliptical really does make a nice beam pattern, day or night.

The feature of the DS-500 that makes the light usable at night is that the control electronics can remain stable down to very low driving currents. In fact, the lowest power mode (designated the "limp home" mode) only drives about 70 milli-amps through the LEDs. At this extremely low power consumption, the perceived brightness is similar to the 3W Magicshine taillight, but at a fraction of the power consumption.

The other factor is the extremely efficient wide-angle (but flat) dispersion of the elliptical lens. It makes a nearly constant output across roughly 45 degrees. When you take into account all of the "spill" light that gets broadcast through the lens cover, the taillight is highly visible at night from practically any angle, even when viewed from 45 degrees facing the FRONT of the bike.

I'm pretty sure I posted this image somewhere else on the boards, but just for comparison take a look at this shot showing both the DS-500 and the 400R on HIGH and pointed at a white fence at night from about 15 feet away. Each one of the fence sections is about 8 feet.

What you see is that in addition to the penetrating hot spot, you also get a very wide beam with very little wasted light. In real life, the difference between the two lights is much more striking. Accurately capturing pure red is very hard in general, but at night it's especially tough and almost never conveys a "real world" approximation of what your eyes actually see. The center hot spot is starting to "saturate" the camera, although to the naked eye, it looks light the same "color" red as at the wide angles. The artifact from the camera makes it appear "yellow."

DS-500 top
400R bottom
Red Darkness Colorfulness Orange Room


The much bigger problem for me at this point is that I can't continue to make these lights myself. They're inherently time-consuming to build and with a full time engineering job and young family, the extra hours just aren't there right now. As all of my customers can attest, the wait times for me to get these things built can be agonizingly long. I've got about 25 more left to build, and since I started this crazy idea almost 3 years ago, I've managed to put only about 250 lights into the hands of a few cyclists all over the world.

If I were to continue building these lights, I'd have to get some help AND try to re-vamp the design to be a little more friendly for manufacturing, but still, there's just no getting around them being expensive with everything built in the USA. I almost laugh when I see the Chinese light sets selling for 50 bucks, when I pay almost that much just for my bare housing!

One thing for sure...the community of cyclists out there looking to put a light like this on their bikes is made up of some of the nicest folks you'd ever want to meet. I hope I can continue to pursue this venture again at some point in the future... and yes, I've already built the next generation version (80 to 1000 pure RED lumens) in the same form factor, just to keep in my back pocket.;) If I manage to keep doing this at some point in the future, it will be the taillight only, and it will be sold as the light-head only, to be used with any pre-existing and readily available li-ion 7.4V (nominal) battery pack.

Cheers
 
#225 ·
and yes, I've already built the next generation version (80 to 1000 pure RED lumens) in the same form factor, just to keep in my back pocket.;) If I manage to keep doing this at some point in the future, it will be the taillight only, and it will be sold as the light-head only, to be used with any pre-existing and readily available li-ion 7.4V (nominal) battery pack.

Cheers
nice !

maybe you can get Dinotte to manufacture, sell and service your lights as well as equip them with their batteries, chargers and mounts. simply have them pay you something like 20% of the sale price for design and engineering.

as "out there" as your light is, it is still more practical than their Daytime Red ( which can't even be used at night, according to THEM ) so i don't think they would refuse the offer based on the light being not marketable.
 
#228 ·
Daytime Red is $259 complete with 4 cell battery, charger, mounting hardware with quick release mechanism and shipping. Gloworm X2 is a comparable light in terms of the type of housing that it uses and the size of battery and it costs $260 which is exactly the same. I don't see the reason why DS-500 should be cheaper than those two if it is also sold as a complete system ( as opposed to just a light head ).

Red Zone 8 is a far more mainstream light which can be used by anybody from skaters to roller skaters to joggers to bikers to people walking their dog etc and it still costs $150.

DS-500 is really targeted mostly at recumbent bicycles which really need that kind of power ( because nobody sees them ) and a few cyclists who want daytime visibility. as such it is a niche product and a higher price is to be expected.

just my opinion.
 
#229 ·
Don't get me wrong, I absolutely didn't want to cheapen the product quality of Stephen's tech marvel, I only wished that with a kickstarter style campaign (in a few words, receiveng a couple hundred thousand dollars upfront from the backers, to buy/loan machines and pay workers) he could produce them as an almost industrial level, so for something like 1/10 of the time and the component price :)

Ps:I wanted to buy a ds-500 a few months ago, but they're never in stock...
 
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