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
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