It seemed like a clever idea to swap out the filament position light on my Tigger 800 for a super bright LED bulb and make the bike a tad more visible. I got a pair of W5W 6000k 12V lights from a little shop I found called Amazon. The bulb was easy to fit by removing the plastic cover from around the twin headlights (4 screws) and removing the rubber ‘bung’ type bulb holder from the bottom of the light unit. The W5W is simply pushed into the bulb holder - it isn’t a bayonet fit. More of that later! Reassemble the light, cover and away you go! The problem is that Englands greatest ever achievement - potholes in roads, rattles the heck out of the anything driving over them - including the bulb holder. Eventually the bulb falls out and gets trapped inside the sealed headlight unit. I used the second bulb (leaving the first stuck in the light unit) as a replacement. This worked fine until a few days ago when the second bulb made a bid for freedom and went to live with its mate just below the reflector in the near side light. Should someone ever lose a bulb in the sealed headlight unit - this is how to remove it - it took 10 minutes - and that included searching for the ingredients of my little fix. Some suggested a wire and bluetack but I was worried it would fall of leaving a progressively larger collection of detritus in the headlight! This is what to do! Ingredients: 1) some thin gauge but bendable wire - about 50cm length 2) duct tape - the really sticky stuff… 3) scissors. 4) There is no item 4 - just 1 through 3. Method: 1) bend the end of the wire into a square shaped hook. 2) wrap some duct tape (cut off strips) sticky side out around the hook. 3) use another strip of the duct tape to stick the other strip firmly to the wire (you don’t want to lose your duct tape in the headlight too!) 4) stick a small ‘flap’ of duct tape to one side of the duct tape covered hook 5) remove the headlight bulb to create a nice big hole to go fishing… 6) carefully (so as not to scratch the reflector) fish around and touch the fallen bulb with the sticky flap on your fishing hook/wire. 7) remove the bulb/hook through the hole - and don't drop it! Job done. It really is easy! I attach some photos of the process. Also there are a few photos of another project I did to add more led lights to the bike - this uses an Arduino Nano to drive four 10W 12V LEDs on the front (that dim at night and wigwag when the horn is sounded); two bright red leds on the rear of the bike - that brighten when breaking (and also do a little ‘flicker’ to improve visibility), and some side RGB leds that are red except when indicating (they turn amber and flash - done by mixing red and green light in the right proportion). I wired up another port on my circuit boards and case to drive more leds but haven’t gotten around to installing them yet. There is also a front/rear facing video camera/recorder just for laughs. The circuitry was quite fun to do - converting power from the bike to drive the Arduino, power lights, sense horn, brake, indicator inputs etc… I can share the C code I wrote if anyone is interested... This picture shows the four 10W 12V leds all on (bought from eBay) and the centre position W5W bulb fitted and working. The main headlights aren't on as the engine wasn't running. This picture shows the top (of two layers) circuit board - this has the Arduino Nano controller (programmed in C) to monitor inputs (from on/off switch, night/day dimmer switch, horn button, brake light, left/right indicators, etc) and then drive the different led arrays accordingly. The second layer board has all the 12V to 3.4V circuitry for driving the components etc), fuses and MOSFETs etc. This picture shows the controller box all closed up and water tight. You can also see a 2 camera DVR system and the compressor for the Sound Bomb horn. I'll get around to making it tidy one day...
Last picture - the rear lights - they go brighter when braking (and 'flicker')... You can't see on this photo but there are two side facing leds on each side to be visible from the side on angle - these flash amber when that side indicator is on and then revert to red when the indicator is deactivated. Sorry - this is all a bit nerdy. I might integrate the cameras, gps and an accelerometer to a 3/4g modem so that I can live stream video. It's something to do on a cold rainy day!
So, if I’ve got this right you have white flashing leds at the front when you push the horn and red flashing leds at the rear when braking?
Yes that’s right. The vehicle lighting regs say flashing rear brake lights are legal (now on cars like BMW) - but supposed to be when braking hard. I’ll just brake hard from now on... the flashing is subtle - a glimmer. Just enough to catch the eye/attention but not distract. Front flashing lights more tricky. Flashing a front light should only be done to alert traffic of a hazard. Hence having it flash with the horn to give audiable and visual warning of a hazard. Definitely don’t do it with coloured lights (eg blue) as pretending to be plod is v naughty! I asked a police officer about it and he was pragmatic in that bikes are hard enough to see - this definitely catches the eye so he’d personally ignore it unless the user was taking the pi55... After all you can flash your lights manually anyway- this just automates it for the time the horn is on. Sounding a horn doesn’t ensure a muppet has seen you - this helps improve the odds. At one point I was considering doing a different flash sequence for when filtering but think it would be hard to justify (impossible) within the rules of the vehicle lighting regs. The lights also dim at night so as not to dazzle.
Very impressed with the planning and execution. The results for LED are great, but I particularly like the horn and camera integration.
