LED Conspicuity Lighting

There are some cheap lights on e-Bay: 3w and 9w Eagle Eye LEDs, and 10w CREE LEDs. Anyone have any experience with the former - and will a pair of 10W lights overwhelm the CANBus on my R1200RT? Any advice welcomed.
Make haste slowly!

jamesevans said:

There are some cheap lights on e-Bay: 3w and 9w Eagle Eye LEDs, and 10w CREE LEDs. Anyone have any experience with the former - and will a pair of 10W lights overwhelm the CANBus on my R1200RT? Any advice welcomed.
Make haste slowly!

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Your subject line indicates you are more interested in being seen than in seeing down the road at night. Good for you. My advice is whatever LED setup you choose, make the lights amber/yellow. The brighter the better, the further away from the headlight the better to form a larger light triangle. For a real-world test of the amber v. white theory, go to any multi-lane highway during rush hour and look at the mass of vehicles, mostly with white lights, coming toward you--the lights that literally pop out at you are the amber/yellow lights; they are the ones seen first.

royce said:

Your subject line indicates you are more interested in being seen than in seeing down the road at night. Good for you. My advice is whatever LED setup you choose, make the lights amber/yellow. The brighter the better, the further away from the headlight the better to form a larger light triangle. For a real-world test of the amber v. white theory, go to any multi-lane highway during rush hour and look at the mass of vehicles, mostly with white lights, coming toward you--the lights that literally pop out at you are the amber/yellow lights; they are the ones seen first.

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You're right, Royce, I'm more intereted in being seen. Thanks for your comments on amber lights: I haven't seen any in the real world, and I had thought that the two colours might make it seem like two vehicles rather than one and hence less visible, but your experience is really useful

one word: Skene

I have these and I am very satisfied. Not inexpensive but you get what you pay for (most times).


http://www.skenedesign.com/

I like the Skene lights and the ADV Monster LEDs.

wvpc said:

I have these and I am very satisfied. Not inexpensive but you get what you pay for (most times).

http://www.skenedesign.com/

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Same here. The P3s on the front are at axle level; several non-riding friends have commented on them.

BTW James, in addition to my earlier comment about using amber lights, I should have added that I am using Clearwater Glendas on my bike mounted at the bottom of the fork tubes. The LEDs themselves are white, but they come with amber lens which can be removed in seconds if I ever want to use them for seeing down the road at night. Since I hardly ever ride at night, I have never used them w/o the amber lens, except for the initial test to simply see how they worked. I like the Glendas a lot and I like the amber lens even better. I even had a car driver once follow me and stop to remark about how much he noticed them. Said something like, "Wow! Those yellow lights really got my attention."

I first got the idea for amber LEDs on the front of my bike about ten years ago on a trip to SoCal. I was riding on the multi-lane freeway on my ST1100 between LA and San Diego and I was "leading the pack" (ie, in front of a pretty solid pack of vehicles) and noticed in my mirrors that the most visible, most obvious lights in view were four bright amber lights moving through the pack and gaining on me quickly. The rest of the mass of white lights behind me seemed to merge into the background. The lights were two CHPs on BMWs and they were the only things on the road moving faster than I was moving. Luckily, they must have been on a call and ignored my speed. This was an AHA moment for me; I have used amber lights ever since.