Lamp Housing Initial Thoughts

This is just a simple idea I came up with in Illustrator. I’ll have Joe make some real 3d models soon so we can get this thing to the machine shop.

I’m working a new not exactly street legal driving light for my 640 Adventure with one of my buddies who designs lights for aircraft and the like.

I’d like everyone to dump any and all information or ideas in this thread and I’ll keep an eye on it and take suggestions.

How much electricity do we have to work with
I’ve found some info about how much power the stator puts out and all that but what do you guys think the maximum load (watts or amps) should be for both the 640 LC4 and the G650 bikes. We’ll make sure you KLR guys are covered too. I just happen to have a 650x and 640adv to experiment with.

How much light do we want
Also, how much light do you want out of a supplemental light. I realize football stadium would be cool but we’ve only got so much power. Would 1200 lumens of very focused 6° light be enough. Or would you like a mix of 900 lumens at 6° and 300 lumens at 25°? We’re experimenting with different lenses on several LEDs to get a good pattern. I’m not sure how to convert lumens to foot candals or any of that. I just know what the LED’s we have put out at 350 milliamps. For comparison sake…the Surefire M6 flashlight is only cranking out 250 lumens so this is going to be almost 6 times brighter. I’ll ask Joe to do some math for us but I’m guessing the best thing to do to describe our light output is going to be to take some photos compared to stock headlights and something like the trailtech HID. I will get these as soon as I have the circuit boards made.

Extra Features
I’ve been thinking about mounting mine on the right blinker stalk. So would putting some yellow blinking LEDs in there be a good idea or would you rather mount it somewhere else. I thought the blinker stalk was relatively sturdy and protected. I’ve dropped my bike a few times and have never lost a front blinker. I’m not yet sure how easy it would be to aim from there. Up and down would be simple enough but left and right still has me perplexed.

We’re going to put a temp circuit in that dims the lights if they get to hot. Would it also be cool to have them dim if your bike was idling or if stator output dropped for a while. For instance we could make the light auto dim after 10 seconds of reduced power. This would keep them from chewing into the battery reserve. If the stator is kicking out full voltage they’d run at full power, reduced voltage and they’d back off to 50-75% output after a few seconds. The delay would allow them to run full power during shifts or other lugging the engine moments but drop of at idle.

Assuming 4 LED’s with some different lenses for spot and flood is anyone interested in the ability to have one click for full power and another click for just flood. The flood could probably be considered street legal.

Also should we wire a relay into the high/low beam circuit that allows the switchgear to kill the light when the rider selects low beam. So you’d turn on the light with a dedicated switch but if you toggled your highbeams the LEDs would shut down too.

Testing The Cree MC-E Lamp

We got some new Cree XLamp MC-E LEDs. The MC-E is a multi-chip LED providing 370 Lumens at 350mA.

We’re working on designing a circuit board to hold 4 of these things to give 12oo+ lumens of focused light with minimal power consumption.

I got the following information from ADVrider.com about the output of the stator on the LC4 motor. It doesn’t give us to much extra power to work with but we’re working on a solution to keep the watts low and throw a ton of light.

I had some correspondence from one of the electrical engineers at the KTM factory about this.

Basically 200W is MAXIMUM output. So you would get about 16amps at full RPM. At cruising speed (5500rpm), you are down to about 13.5 amps. The battery needs about 3amps to maintain good strong charge, so you want to keep your TOTAL amperage to less than 10 amps. Even then, at idle or cruising around town you are down to 11amps, and so if you had 10amps TOTAL, you would only have 1amp left for the battery.

So…bottom line. Add up all your loads, and keep it down to 10A total, and turn off the extras in town to manage load. (ie don’t sit at a stop light iding with your heated grips on “give-it-to-me”, and your 100W driving light balring)

Your headlamp alone is 55w = 4.6amp. Heated grips are another 3.5 amps, and roadbook/GPS/Accessory lighting=1 amps or so. So on my bike I basically have 9amps load, or 1 amp left for otther stuff. Also, in a subsequent e-mail, the engineer said that the accesory leads, and all lamps are on 1-10amp fuse, so you’d be running the risk of blowing fuses with too much more load.

Here is the engineers message.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~
Mr. Flannigan

I am responsible for the electric system of our bikes . I hope , I can
answer your questions .

To my information , the Adventures used on in the globerider story had stock
headlamps . For an other Adventure for an australien rider we made some
minor electrical modifications , like output for GPS and for charging
notebook battery .

Generator performance :
The generator / regulator output depends on engine rpm . Please see table
below
1500 rpm 9 A
2000 rpm 11 A
3000 rpm 13 A
6000 rpm 14 A
10000 rpm 15 A

Battery charge :
On a long trip your average rpm maybe around 4000 to 5000 rpm giving around
13 A generator output . Please make sure , that your power consumption is
less , around 10 A , to have some current for battery charging .

Wiring harness :
Our harness is made to minimum outside dimensions and we use small wire
sections .Other bike makers may consider KTM harness as too small .
With higher load , you may run into voltage drops problems . Voltage drop
can cause some problems :
* Bad light output , because lamp performance highly depends on
voltage
* Bad battery charge

Fuses :
The purpose of fuses is to protect the harness in case of short circuit .
Typical reason for short circuit is when wires are mechanically damaged .
Fuse rating has to be matched with wire section .
If you overload fuses with your higher capacitiy equipment , they may blow
and you will replace with a stronger fuse .
The problem of stronger fuses is , that in case of short circuit , they may
not protect the small wire section . The wire may blow before the fuse .

Couplers and switches :
Couplers and switches on KTM’s again are not overspecified . The just work
with standard load . With higher load , the may fail .

Conclusion :
If you know something on electricity , you can try . Test your system before
you start your trip and be prepared to run in one or the other problem
listed above .
If you have no idea on electricity , please do not change the system !

If you have further questions , please do not hesitate to came back to me .

Ordered New Lenses and Luxeon K2 Star LEDs

I ordered some new LEDs and Joe is going to solder them to a circuit board as soon as they come in. We’re thinking about using Luxeon K2 Star LEDs which generate around 130 lumens of white light per LED.

I also ordered a new lens that hold 7 LEDs in a cluster. When paired with the new LED’s we should be cranking close to 1000 lumens out of our little motorcycle light.

I’ll post some 3d images of the case as soon as I have them.

The All Seeing LED Light for Your Motorcycle

I’m currently working on an LED solution for the BMW X-Challenge and the KTM 640 adventure. It’s going to be a mountable light and its going to kick out some serious light with only a minimal amount of power. One of my friends designs lights for aircraft and has some super hot LEDs that only draw 15 or so watts. We’re currently working on designing the enclosure and the circuit board.

I will keep everyone posted. Please let me know if you’re interested and let me know how much coin you’d be willing to drop on something like this. We’re trying to keep them around $250 but with all the machining and custom lenses they may be a bit more.

This photo was taken with my iphone…the wall is about 50 feet away. I wish I had my real camera but I was to excited to take any photos of other stuff. That’s 10 volts at 15 watts. I will attempt to get some real photos of it outside at night and compared to my factory 640 adventure high beam.