Bike lights never really act in isolation. You need a minimum of one front light and one rear light on a bike to be seen and immediately you have a bike lighting system instead of just bike lights.
Why shouldn't some of the lights on your bike share their batteries? You can wire up your bike lights to do this already:
* You can make a light into a power source by running wires from the end positive and negative terminals in the light to outside the light.
* This can be used to power another light, typically a rear light which may have been provided with only a tiny battery to begin with.
* Packages for containing and connecting multiple batteries are available from electronics stores and hub dynamos and solar charged batteries are also available. These all make excellent independant sources of power for bike lights.
It would be nice if all bike light manufacturers provided a simple socket to allow for input voltages for the light or output voltages from the light's battery pack. This would allow simple plug and play arrangements of bike lights. Don't know if this will ever happen.
Anyway the photos show one of my efforts in this area. The tiny 3V battery in this flashing rear light is replaced by a 3V battery pack. The lifetime of the new battery pack is many times that of the original.
Regards
Steve Nurse
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Ahhh, lighting, I have been thinking about this recently due to it getting dark so quickly and some of the riding that I want to do may be in the dark. Although I have been thinking about a micro controller controlled solution(because of my line of work I guess). I am thinking about using an LDR (possibly more than one) to determine when to turn lights on/off etc, and have even been thinking about blinkers.
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