Tour Easy: Amber Running Light

Having seen a few bikes with amber “headlights” and being desirous of reducing the number of batteries on Mary’s bike, this seems like an obvious first step:

It descends from the fairing flashlight mount with an entry to suit a 15 mm truck side marker body:

LightBodies = [
  ["AnkerLC90",26.6,48.0],
  ["AnkerLC40",26.6,55.0],
  ["J5TactV2",25.0,30.0],
  ["InnovaX5",22.0,55.0],
  ["Sidemarker",15.0,20.0],
  ["Laser",10.0,30.0],
];

The rest of the code gets a few cleanups you’d expect when you compile code untouched for a few years using the latest OpenSCAD.

The markers are allegedly DOT rated, which matters not for my use case: SAEP2PCDOT.

The mount is grossly overqualified for a wide-beam light with little need for aiming:

Eventually, the marker should slip into a prealigned cylindrical holder, with a dab of epoxy to keep it there.

The lights are a buck apiece, so there’s no reason to form a deep emotional attachment. They are the usual poorly molded and badly assembled crap, although the next step up from a nominally reputable supplier is a factor of five more expensive.

It’s generated for the left side of the fairing, although I think having a pair of them would improve conspicuity:

Being automotive, it runs from a 12 V supply, which comes from a boost converter driven by the Bafang 6 V headlight output. The absurdity of bucking a 48 V lithium battery to a 6V switched headlight output, then boosting it to 12 V to drive a single amber LED with a 1.5 V forward drop does not escape me.

It’s possible to slice the lens off (using a lathe), remove / replace the resistor, then glue it back together, which would be worthwhile if you were intending to drive it from, say, an Arduino-ish microcontroller to get a unique blink pattern.

Given the overall lack of build quality, it might make more sense to slap a condenser lens in front of a Piranha LED.

Bonus: contrary to what you (well, I) might expect, the black lead is positive and the white lead is negative.