marcopolo
Active member
There's a thread over on ADVRider about Clearwater lights, including questions as to why they're the price they are. Clearwater's President responded to that thread and I thought his comments would be of interest to those here as well. I found his explanation about how the lights are "dimmed" to be quite intriguing. I recently bought a set of Glenda lights from them and had them installed on my R12RT. Other than that I have no connection with them whatsoever.
Thank you for the opportunity to respond to some understandable opinions. Not all products are equal. I established Clearwater in 1990. We have produced many quality products and have over 17,000 satisfied customers all over the world. Some of our customers include many famous brands that you are familiar with. Our philosophy is to create high quality and well engineered products that address specific needs. We are very proud of the products we produce and our customer service is second to none. Just ask one of 16,997 customers, (somehow we pissed 3 off somewhere). Also we have ton of fun here.
It is not possible to judge the quality and engineering of our products until you see and use them. It is sometimes difficult to tell until you see what is inside and behind the design.
ELECTRONICS
Our electronics are designed in house and manufactured in the USA. We have many proprietary parts in our products. There are no off the shelf parts in our products. We use strictly selected LEDs with a very expensive sorting process to achieve a consistent color spectrum. We could easily buy out-of-tolerance LEDs for a fraction of what we pay. In a flashlight or hobby item, one would never know the difference as multiple LEDs would not be displayed near each other at the same time. One of the reasons that our lights are so visible from so far away is due to the specific color spectrum we selected. Our optics are imported from Europe and our wiring used silver plated, Teflon coated conductors.
We use custom metal clad printed circuit boards (expensive) to mount our LED devices. This insures a proper thermal heat path to the outer housing which helps keep the devices in a safe operating temperature.
The dimming function of our lights is accomplished by a patent pending microcomputer which sends digital signals to each light. There are four individual programs in each control pot. We can choose between each of them for varied applications. When switched to low beam mode, our dimming circuit allows one to dim our lights from a low of 12% illumination to a maximum of 85% illumination. Once the high beam is selected, our lights are now told by the controller to latch to full 100% brightness. We clock each light at a rate of 250 times per second. As LEDs are essentially an “instant on” device, there is no lag in turn on time. By switching the lights on and off quickly and then changing the off time, we can fool the human eye into perceiving the lights as dimmed. One added benefit of this process is that when the lights are off, they use no power at all. By programming the dimmer control to match a human eye’s sensitivity, we can make the lights track the rotation of the pot and work in a linear fashion. Our new and even brighter Krista light uses some even more sophisticated electronics to manage life, temperature and dimming. Some electronic and aviation engineers have commented very favorably on the quality and construction of our products.
We have many hundreds of hours in programming and board layout on these products. Multiple iterations of design and prototypes have resulted in a very high performance and unique product that is simply not available anywhere else.
And a matter of fact, we DO have a rocket scientist on staff along with a few EE engineers and a physics major. J
MECHANICAL
There are many reasons our lights are priced the way they are. Every housing is
CNC machined (in house) on very expensive equipment. And each is inspected and sent off for hard anodizing. Then each housing is masked off with high temperature tape and then powder coated for extra durability. All hardware is high grade Stainless Steel and our brackets are either CNC machined aluminum or laser cut SS. You would be hard pressed to find another manufacturer who has the attention to detail that we do. Our mark up on our products is fair and in line with any quality manufactured USA company.
Sorry so long winded, but I just felt the time had come to say a little bit about Clearwater products. The posts on this site are not only some of the most entertaining, but they represent some of the most intelligent and well thought out information. We just hope to add to motorcycle safety and deliver high quality products that may save someone’s life someday. We take the quality of our products and our customer's input very seriously. Feel free to comment or PM me directly. And as always, feel free to call anytime for additional information. Thanks so much. Stay tuned for a special ADV discount on our new Krista light. And if you want to learn more about our efforts to further improve motorcycle safety, check out this link.
http://www.roadracingworld.com/news/...?article=40579
Thank you very much.
Glenn Stasky
President
Thank you for the opportunity to respond to some understandable opinions. Not all products are equal. I established Clearwater in 1990. We have produced many quality products and have over 17,000 satisfied customers all over the world. Some of our customers include many famous brands that you are familiar with. Our philosophy is to create high quality and well engineered products that address specific needs. We are very proud of the products we produce and our customer service is second to none. Just ask one of 16,997 customers, (somehow we pissed 3 off somewhere). Also we have ton of fun here.
It is not possible to judge the quality and engineering of our products until you see and use them. It is sometimes difficult to tell until you see what is inside and behind the design.
ELECTRONICS
Our electronics are designed in house and manufactured in the USA. We have many proprietary parts in our products. There are no off the shelf parts in our products. We use strictly selected LEDs with a very expensive sorting process to achieve a consistent color spectrum. We could easily buy out-of-tolerance LEDs for a fraction of what we pay. In a flashlight or hobby item, one would never know the difference as multiple LEDs would not be displayed near each other at the same time. One of the reasons that our lights are so visible from so far away is due to the specific color spectrum we selected. Our optics are imported from Europe and our wiring used silver plated, Teflon coated conductors.
We use custom metal clad printed circuit boards (expensive) to mount our LED devices. This insures a proper thermal heat path to the outer housing which helps keep the devices in a safe operating temperature.
The dimming function of our lights is accomplished by a patent pending microcomputer which sends digital signals to each light. There are four individual programs in each control pot. We can choose between each of them for varied applications. When switched to low beam mode, our dimming circuit allows one to dim our lights from a low of 12% illumination to a maximum of 85% illumination. Once the high beam is selected, our lights are now told by the controller to latch to full 100% brightness. We clock each light at a rate of 250 times per second. As LEDs are essentially an “instant on” device, there is no lag in turn on time. By switching the lights on and off quickly and then changing the off time, we can fool the human eye into perceiving the lights as dimmed. One added benefit of this process is that when the lights are off, they use no power at all. By programming the dimmer control to match a human eye’s sensitivity, we can make the lights track the rotation of the pot and work in a linear fashion. Our new and even brighter Krista light uses some even more sophisticated electronics to manage life, temperature and dimming. Some electronic and aviation engineers have commented very favorably on the quality and construction of our products.
We have many hundreds of hours in programming and board layout on these products. Multiple iterations of design and prototypes have resulted in a very high performance and unique product that is simply not available anywhere else.
And a matter of fact, we DO have a rocket scientist on staff along with a few EE engineers and a physics major. J
MECHANICAL
There are many reasons our lights are priced the way they are. Every housing is
CNC machined (in house) on very expensive equipment. And each is inspected and sent off for hard anodizing. Then each housing is masked off with high temperature tape and then powder coated for extra durability. All hardware is high grade Stainless Steel and our brackets are either CNC machined aluminum or laser cut SS. You would be hard pressed to find another manufacturer who has the attention to detail that we do. Our mark up on our products is fair and in line with any quality manufactured USA company.
Sorry so long winded, but I just felt the time had come to say a little bit about Clearwater products. The posts on this site are not only some of the most entertaining, but they represent some of the most intelligent and well thought out information. We just hope to add to motorcycle safety and deliver high quality products that may save someone’s life someday. We take the quality of our products and our customer's input very seriously. Feel free to comment or PM me directly. And as always, feel free to call anytime for additional information. Thanks so much. Stay tuned for a special ADV discount on our new Krista light. And if you want to learn more about our efforts to further improve motorcycle safety, check out this link.
http://www.roadracingworld.com/news/...?article=40579
Thank you very much.
Glenn Stasky
President
