Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 05:11:48 -0400 (EDT) From: Marty Goodman MD KC6YKC Subject: More on Specialized Lighting systems To: bikecurrent@cycling.org, msiminoff@specialized.com Message-id: <01JH1A3W08Y88XKBC7@delphi.com> Here are some portions of letter from Mark Siminoff to me regarding some questions and criticisms I wrote to him about the new Specialized Comp and Team lighting products. It constitutes a kind of interview with Mark about these interesting new products: marty: >>> I would have liked to see the system with the option (either via a lower power halogen bulb, or via a third bulb, or via a chopper / dimmer) of a 5 watt lamp. Preferably, actually, via a separate, overvolted halogen bulb. I haven't, however, seen in the bike lighting market anything less than an 8.5 watt 12 volt halogen. But perhaps a PWM-driven (if you can get a cheap enough PWM, such as the ASIC Willie wants to design) 4.8 volt 5 watt MR11 bulb would be an excellent choice here. <<< Mark Siminoff of Specialized: This system certainly "could" power a 5 watt 12V bulb.... heck, for that matter it could use ANY halogen bulb designed to run between 0 and 14.4 volts. It'd be a simple job to re-write the EEPROM software to regulate the voltage to the low wattage bulb to 6 or 8 or 10 volts. That's one of the nice things about microprocessor controlled regulators.(I have some 6W 6V MR-11's to play with, I will experiment with this and report back my findings.) I picked the 12 watt low bulb for a pretty simple reason; My main competitor is NOT Cateye, it's NiteRider... and they use a 12 & 20 watt combination. When most consumers compare our products they look only at the numbers and they want to see more "WATTS" One other thing... ASIC's are only cheap when purchased in VERY large quantities because the development and masking charges are so expensive. In addition, minimum order quantities (MOQ's) are typically 10,000pcs or more. Those quantities are fine if you're building wristwatches or pocket-calculators or maybe a brand-name (ie. MagLight) flashlight... but tough to deal with if you sell bike-lights (we plan to sell only 1500-2000 "Team" lights this year.. a LOT more "Comp's"). PIC processors (yes we do use a "RISC" type) are definitely the way to go for this type of product. marty: >>> Using a 5 watt incandescant lamp as the auxilliary, secondary incandecant lamp part of your metal halide plasma arc lamp "team" lighting system, instead of the 12 watt one you chose, could allow MUCH longer overall run times on real world >night bike trips. <<< Mark Siminoff of Specialized: I understand that the 12W bulb running at 6W is a pretty inefficient lamp, but remember we have a 59 watt hour battery... the runtime is extremely long already marty: >>> Zach and I are VERY partial to the DIMMER we put on the halide lamp <<< Mark Siminoff of Specialized: I worked on the "dimmer" concept for a while too. I had problems with the arc becoming unstable at very low wattages (12 watts or so). Anyway, it seemed logical to just dim the halogen bulb and let the MH lamp do what it does best. ... Our Ballast is connected to (not inside of) the battery pack. The reasons for this choice were also simple... putting the ballast in the lamp housing would have made the light bulky and ugly... and I had plenty of room in the "electronics housing". Our battery pack and "electronics housing" look like a water bottle... batteries in the bottom, electronics on top. The two disassemble from one another with a simple twist so you can swap out battery packs in a flash. marty wrote, regarding the CHARGER in the Comp and Team systems: >>> You provide an intelligent, properly implimented gas gauge mediated charger (perhaps less desireable in my opinion than a voltage and temperature sensing smart charger, but a lot less expensive and in most cases pretty effective. <<< Mark of Specialized corrected and added: Who said anything about not having voltage and temperature sensing??? The gas Gauge monitors BOTH. As a matter of fact I believe it's the ONLY bike light/battery that continuously monitors actual battery temperature. Additionally, if you put the pack on the charger when it's hot, it'll wait until it cools down before starting the charge. Also, the gas gauge monitors temperature during storage and uses that to calculate self-discharge rates. marty observed: >>> Of course, riders needing this option are free to add on a CatEye HL500 Micro 2 2.4 watt lamp <<< Mark countered: OR the new Specialized SPARKPLUG watt micro headlight... it's got a 2.4 watt micro-halogen bulb, runs on 4 AA's and it's smaller and lighter (50 grams less) than the HL500-II.... Passes the Brittish and German lighting standards too. Marty commented, for he'd heard rumors earlier that both Specialized and Cateye were trying to develop an "instant on" metal halide plasma arc lamp lighting system for their new products: >>> Many engineers to me that it was POSSIBLE to make a nearly instant-on metal halide plasma arc lamp system, when I complained about CatEye's original Stadium lamp taking 10 seconds to reach useable brightness, and another 5 or 10 seconds to reach full brightness, after being turned on. <<< Mark Siminoff of Specialized replied: The first ballast I developed used an arc-lamp controller (microprocessor) from Unitrode and a 10kV ignitor. We were able to fire-up the MH lamp to full brightness in 2 or 3 seconds.... even with very long high voltage cables. The problem was reliability and cost.. I blew-up a bunch of microprocessors and spent a LOT of money and finally realized I was chasing my tail. The high power ballasts were noisy too and caused interference with the RF transmitter. I finally decided on a much more simple unregulated ballast. (according to the best of my knowledge at this time, NEITHER Specialized NOR CatEye will be marketing "instant on" metal halide plasma arc lamp systems. BOTH entries into the market will take 10 to 20 seconds to reach full brightness after being turned on, tho Specialized has an incandescant lamp that goes on instantly and stays on until the halide arc lamp gets up to reasonable brightness. ---marty) marty commented: >>> I believe both you at Specialized AND the folks at CatEye are using in this years' model plasma arc lamps the same (or the same sort of) unregulated ballast that CatEye used in their original Stadium lamp. Someone mentioned to me this decision was dictated by a desire to more completely use the battery pack. <<< Mark Siminoff of Specialized agreed: Yep, that was probably me... We get significantly longer run times with the unregulated ballast... it's basic electronic laws at work here. Of course the long run time comes at a price... the bulb will become dimmer as the pack voltage drops. ----------------------------------------------------------------