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Hoverboard Headlight

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MadScientist267:
Well I thought I'd have to do a lot more tinkering to get a headlight to work on the T6... Until a wild hair led me to the clearance aisle at Wally world...



11 bucks. Designed originally to go atop a skull...



But with a little velcro cable management strap, it not only doesn't look silly like they do on people...



It's functional!

Doesn't interfere with the swivel, and makes plenty of light even on low... Only thing I felt the urge to do was mask off the top of the lens, because it doesn't need to see anything more than what it does skimming along the ground... And should stay out of people's eyes ;)

Every once in a while something just works lol... This is one of them.

MadScientist267:
Success..!

There's a window where it isn't great... When there's *just* enough light to compete with it... But in total darkness, I'd go as far as to say it's better than daylight in one way. It does a very good job revealing road contour... Along with anything that's on it.

The project was inspired by the combination of shorter days, my lunch break time, and a 3 mile trail I go ride on every day that weather otherwise permits. There are root heaving issues throughout that I can easily get over, but I need to know they are there lol.

This allows me to see every little defect because it's so low... The angle exaggerates all of it. Also, an unintended bonus because of the way it's mounted, and the natural movement of the platform (handle more accurately), it does indeed "look around corners" when I'm turning.

It has one Achilles heel... Lol.. Oncoming lights :o

MadScientist267:
This thing works like a charm... I think the next modification I'll be making will be to change out the 3xAAA for a small "USB battery" so I can run it at full brightness without dumping cash into primary cells.

A test last night revealed that while low is adequate, high is better, if not *almost* too much lol... But I think after having gotten a taste of "high beam", I indeed prefer it, and a small lithium battery is certainly doable without any real headache to implement far as I can tell.

That said, riding out on that trail with this as the only light source anywhere nearby is kinda surreal hahaha... The effect is almost something you'd expect to see in a found footage horror flick lol

Either way I'm enjoying being able to extend out my ride time as the days get shorter... Now the heater... That may be a little more difficult  >X-D

Electric blanket? Lol

MadScientist267:


My best attempt so far at capturing the eerie... Even a [rather shallow] stab at "pro mode" doesn't capture the essence... But at least you can see the bumps I have to beware ;)

Yes, I stood back and tweaked views until something got close... That said... Who's that in the bushes? :o

(Ok so I'm a month early)

MadScientist267:
USB battery dedicated to the task, add 5 bucks.

First I was thinking just get rid of the AAA set entirely, briefly considered a fallback scheme (since the USB simply pops out of existence, not great in the dark lol)... But space issues forced me to abandon the idea. Back to bypass, and it's flaky (logic control vs the auto-on sensing going on in the battery), but can be turned on with a little magic handshake lol...

Now it's cutting off "randomly", and I'm catching a whiff of "not so happy". Nothing seems excessively hot so I push on to see the deal... Ruled out cable disturbance, it was heat... Somehow.

Turns out the two key components in all this are closely matched for where it runs out of pedal, and as the LED heats up, draws more current, pushes the battery into shutdown.

Confirmed this by letting it get it's juice from a heftier port and the LED began to blue. Oops. Seems ok, we'll see.

Ok so told you that to tell you this...

The original battery box has the PWM and what not in it and so for that moment, had decided it was best to just connect the USB across the battery terminals and well... They also fight, as mentioned.

The heat indication with only 0.5V increase tells me they were relying purely on cell impedance to limit current, and that since it's piping 100% "PWM" on high, with no ballast, and I'm really only interested in running it on high, and there's a magic trick to turning it on?

Pfft. And the battery can handle turning it on and off and everything! Lol

I'm thinking I can ditch the box, throw a 1N4001 in series with it and go raw and probably be just fine. I may want a small bit of real resistance in there but I think the wiring being so thin helps there some. Don't need to lose much ;)

It'll also look a bit cleaner lol

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