Mint Tin Bike Light

Hey all!

Long time no post ... I've been idle in the electronics hobby for a while now, but recently revived a project from last year.

This is a bicycle taillight powered by an lm3410 boost converter and three AA batteries. The led array is comprised of 28 superflux leds, running at 50mA ea (200mA array total). A PIC 12F683 µC provides for different strobe modes and a power-saving standby.

In the future I will add a tilt switch to the pic so it can detect motion and automatically power up / power down the leds.

Run-time is really great - my latest test left the light running for eight hours, and according to my charger, that had drained ~2300mA out of the batteries. So I might be able to get nine hours total. My avg bike rides are only 2-3 hrs, so a set of batteries should last several trips before needing a recharge.

**broken link removed**

More details, pictures and video can be found on my blog!

What are you using for the headlight?

It looks pretty bright.

The headlight is a series string of three ssc zled p4 leds on a massive heatsink, being driven at 1a... according to the datasheet, the output is somewhere between 540-600 lm

I have a bit more "finish work" to do on the control for the head light, and then I'll do a write up on it as well.

Is the headlight currently using a switching regulator or is that still in the pipeline?

Yes, the headlight is powered from an LED Dynamics Buckpuck Driver.