I wanted to add two, at the full width of the trike, to help define the width of it from the front and from the back. The other added benefit is that the headlights turn with the wheels. :) (yeah, yeah, I know, wedgie headlights do this already, but most trikes lights don't!)
I used a schottky bridge rectifier with a 470uF capacitor and a schottky in series with the luxeons to aim for a current of 350mA tops in the luxeons. The generic red LEDs have a 66 ohm resistor in series with them to limit them to a current of about 35mA. I have yet to replace those generic LEDs with a pair of high-intensity LEDs. I'll draw out a circuit diagram and post a photograph of the schematic eventually, sooner if there is demand.
So now, I have 6 lights on the trike all sharing the power budget of a single B&M 3Watt S6 bottle generator. I am tempted to upgrade to the 12V model which would give me 6Watts and access to the many 12V LED automotive marker lights.
So far, I need to work on the mounting to the mudguards since one of the Raleigh headlight mounting tabs has broken off from a particularly rough road fatiguing the mount.
Another thought is to make the left and right tail lights standlights and to be able to use them for signalling.
Perhaps all this belongs on the bikecurrent list, but most wedgies aren't 1m wide. :)
All this may be related to bulb warmup time as has just been suggested on the list.
I don't expect any problems with my Luxeon star/o's since I have tuned the current to never exceed the rated 350mA.
Having said that, I am tempted to try to change it a bit to attempt to reflect the top half of the beam to double up the bottom half and get a semi-circular bottom half beam pattern so I don't waste it lighting up the sky.
> I have contemplated getting a Dymotec S12 and a bunch of white LEDs to > get as much light forward as possible. The S12 is regulated, so I guess > there is no need to add voltage regulation.
It is regulated, but you want to regulate current on these LEDs rather than voltage since the voltage/current curve is very steep. If you had the LED configuration in such a way that the power peak maxed out at the current max of the LED, you shoudl be fine.
I used to have a Sanyo dynamo that rolled on the tread of my back tyre on my old wedgie long distance touring bike and I left it on all the time too. The rollers wore out on those things... I had people tell me constantly that my headlights were on during the day. "Good" was my reply.
I have used one of the blue Luxeon star/o LEDs on my winter bike last winter in addition to my 10W BLT halogen and the blue really got noticed. Where I used to get ignored and cut off with just that 10W halogen I was rarely ignored with the addition of the blue 1.2W LED.
I now have a red one as well and would like to try to get a green one as well and do a full "red, green, blue" headlight, tuning the three colour intensities for best effect.
Funny you should ask... ;-) They are in what I guess might be best described as the "crotch" of my chopper. I don't seem to have any photos of it without the chunks of ice added by some riding companions.
That's one good thing about under seat steering in cold weather... The blood flows *into* your hands, rather than out of them with OSS, which is definitely the case with riding this chopper in the winter...