extremelights

Nope. I am saying that our lights were tested and passed and we got our approvals. :-) The batteries that we sold a few years ago where dodgy but we have replaced those that gave issues. Even when they are out of warranty in most cases. At this stage I am very very proud of the quality of the lights. I think our K-rangekicks the big brands but left, right and centre

:-)

I build so many lights in my file it is hard to remember. Extremelights account has others managing it most of the time. My name is Hannes Zietsman andIi waist way too much time and money on this addiction. :-) What do you whant to know?

it is hard not to recomend this one http://extremelights.co.za/shop/extreme-1400-new-cree-xm-l2-improved/ 1000 real lumen for 9h and weighs only 400g+-. YOu don't need more than that.

why is your bike in the tree?

Hi Jva. welcome online. Remember that what you say will be used against you whenever you expect it least.

Is it really worth the risk buying cheap? http://extremelights.gocommerce.co.za/wp-content/uploads/sites/66/2014/01/Flaming-house-1200x399.jpg Did you know that all products that connect to the ESKOM Power grid must meet SABS safety standards? We were shocked to discover how few products sold meet any standards at all. This is a classic example of how buying cheap can cost you more! Rest assured that Extreme Lights has the SABS safety badge of approval, and unlike other untested and unsafe equipment available on the market, you can be at ease when you connect our chargers to the mains. You will not put yourself and your loved ones in danger. When purchasing online items internationally, you take a big risk that the product might be unsafe. As international recalls can prove very difficult, bigger online stores do not always adhere to strict safety controls. Keeping costs low is the main factor for companies like this, and sadly for many South African fly-by-nights too. Why should YOU worry about this? Li-ion batteries pack a lot of power and connecting them to a low grade charger can easily over charge the batteries. They become like a ticking time bomb after being damaged, and can blow at any time. When a li-ion battery explodes, the flame that is jettison is well over a 1000deg C, and can easily put fire to most household materials. Watch this video for an example of typical cells that cycle lights batteries are made of. http://youtu.be/IwtAR1Jmquk Our standard cells have been improved over the last year and are now high quality, and excellent value. We also now stock both Panasonic and Sanyo branded li-ion cells. If you want the best batteries, read more about our K-range with Panasonic cells. Original post here

Well if you are a team of 4 it is a very fund outing. I have fond memories of this race. I would do it again if I get the time to train.

Did you manage to get a refund?

The B10 is an excellent little light.

Good day TMB Members, We are offering 10% discount on all our cycle lights for TMB members only. Please take note that this offer does not include lights already on sale. Use the coupon: tablemountainbikers at check out to activate the discount. Visit our website at www.extremelights.co.za

The B10 is now on special for R695. Have a look under the product review section to read more about this light.

Yea small bug in the code. it was fixed a while back. ;-)

No plonking required if he can bonny hop like that

http://extremelights.gocommerce.co.za/wp-content/uploads/sites/66/2013/08/B20-BLACK-Front-502x502.jpg http://extremelights.gocommerce.co.za/wp-content/uploads/sites/66/2013/08/B20-Black-set.jpg http://extremelights.gocommerce.co.za/wp-content/uploads/sites/66/2013/08/B20.jpg The B20 is Niteye’s strongest cycle light tested to ANSI FL-1 standards, it produces 1200 lumens. The two reflectors, each hosting a Cree XM-L U2 LED, are designed to throw a beautifully balanced beam best suited for extreme cycling. Manufacturers specs: Light source: 2 x Cree XM-L U2 LEDs Material and finish: Aircraft grade aluminium and HA III anodizing Rated max lumen: 1200 Modes and runtimes: 1200lm – 2h30 / 600lm – 5h / 100lm – 35h Battery pack: 4400 mAh Li-ion cells in a neoprene pouch Water resistance: IPX 6 Dimensions: Length: 55mm / width: 46mm / depth: 31mm Fitted weight: 439 g Features: Battery gauge Constant current regulation Quick release mount Remote switch As with the B10, there is no fault with the finish and quality of the B20. The B20 adds a second LED in its own reflector as well as Niteye's patented battery level indicator on top of the light. It shares the same battery pack, remote switch and quick release mount used with the B10. The B20 emits twice as much light as its smaller brother while only adding 29 g in weight. Sharing the same battery pack results in compromised runtimes, with the max runtime at 2.5 hours. Thanks to the battery level indicator, one has no excuse running flat and being unprepared. The beam pattern speaks for itself (see picture). It is extremely wide and floody while still illuminating 100+m in front of you. If your need is not to make light in front of you but to be seen there is always the the strobe function. This mode quickly alternates between the two LED, giving a very distinct indication that you're there. The B20 is an excellent light and hard to fault. Click on any of the pictures for more info.

We did a cycle light comparison test a few months ago. The aim is to make it clear how each of our light preforms. At this moment we are extending our range and will update the review with newer lights. But this should still be very interesting we believe. This is just a short part of the full review which you can find on our site. www.extremelights.co.za The following lights where compared: Extreme 2400 5xLED cycle lights http://extremelights.gocommerce.co.za/wp-content/uploads/sites/66/2013/04/Extreme-2400-Front-Pic-502x502.jpg Extreme 2000 3 X LED http://extremelights.gocommerce.co.za/wp-content/uploads/sites/66/2013/05/Front-view-502x502.jpg Extreme 1400 with Super hight capacity cells http://extremelights.gocommerce.co.za/wp-content/uploads/sites/66/2013/05/Extreme1400-front4-502x502.jpg Extreme 1200 MKII Cree bicycle-light http://extremelights.gocommerce.co.za/wp-content/uploads/sites/66/2013/05/1200-Front-Flip-502x502.jpg In the test setup we took four Lux measurements to better compare the lights. The larger number is the ceiling bounce test and the other values are taken at 25 m, 50 m and 75 m markings. The ceiling bounce measurement is an indication of how much light the unit generates. Because we can’t measure lumen, it is a good indication of how much light is produced. Every time we add new lights we have to take the measurements again. Please don’t use our Lux readings to compare to other cycle light comparisons on the website. The test setup must be exactly the same when comparing Lux readings. Because of the nature of road cycling, a light with a sharp hotspot can compensate for the lack of light it produces. For mountain biking, a handle bar mounted light should have a wider spill of light. This will require exponentially more light to achieve the same “brightness” level over the larger area. A less powerful light with a lower the ceiling bounce reading can give a higher Lux reading at the 75 m mark, due to the deeper reflector lens focusing the light further. The Extreme 1200 is a good example of this. http://www.4x4community.co.za/forum/images/statusicon/wol_error.gif This image has been resized. Click this bar to view the full image. The original image is sized 1000x750. http://www.extremelights.co.za/wp-content/uploads/sites/66/2013/05/Shout-out.gif For the rest of the detailed review visit our site www.extremelights.co.za

http://extremelights.gocommerce.co.za/wp-content/uploads/sites/66/2013/08/B10-Black-side.jpghttp://extremelights.gocommerce.co.za/wp-content/uploads/sites/66/2013/08/b10-black-set.jpghttp://extremelights.gocommerce.co.za/wp-content/uploads/sites/66/2013/08/b10.jpgNiteye (pronounced Night eye) is a new name in the South African cycle light arena. It is a brand that has a reputation for designing and building high end LED products. I will be reviewing the B10, its entry level cycle light.Manufacturers specs: Light source: Cree XM-L U2 LED Material and finish: Aircraft grade aluminium and HA III anodizing Rated max lumen: 600 Modes and runtimes: 600lm – 6h / 200lm – 15h / 50lm – 64h Battery pack: 4400 mAh Li-ion cells in a neoprene pouch Water resistance: IPX 6 Dimensions: Length: 49mm / diameter: 34mm Fitted weight: 410g Features: Low voltage indicator Constant current regulation Quick release mount Remote switch The B10 cycle light has a simple design compared to some lights, but the craftsmanship and finish is excellent. It comes in two colours, black and red. The light unit itself is very light, but the battery pack and cables I found to be on the heavier side. I think this is due to the added material to protect the batteries. The wiring is also exceptionally thick and all connectors has screw caps to prevent them from accidentally working loose. The quick release handlebar mount is excellent. It has rubber padding and a screw strap to fit any diameter bar. Once fixed, there is no need to remove it. The light clips onto the mount and cannot come loose unless the release button is pressed. The mount has a hinge that allows for small horizontal movement of the light to adjust the aim of the beam. The overall quality of the plastics parts are excellent. The battery pack itself has ample amount of Velcro to ensure a tight fit to your frame or stem. Using the remote switch: This is quite a handy feature on the Niteye cycle lights. I found the buttons to be well spaced and the user interface effortless to use. There are two buttons with different shapes, thus one can choose between on/off/modes/strobe without having to look down. I strapped mine to the handlebar just next to the grip, not wanting the switch to sit between my hand and the grip. To prevent accidental on/off one need to hold the round button for a few seconds.The beam and runtime : The B10 has a spectacular wide and smooth beam pattern. There is no hot spot and the reach is sufficient. In my opinion the 600 lumen is more than enough for technical single tracks and cross country use. I will let the photo speak for itself... We know that 600 lumens breaks no records, but 6 hours runtime on max is quite impressive and reassuring to say the least. And when the road widens and less light is needed, one can select the low mode and extend the runtime to 64 hours.In conclusion, my only real criticism is the weight. Other than that I really love using my B10 and can recommend it to anyone. For more info click on any of the pictures.

Yes I agree. on this!!! get Sanyo, Sony, Panasonic, LG, Samsung cells... More test would be required to get a clear representation. But dead cells are common with the cheaper batteries. To order 10 and weed out 1/3 because they are defective is also not acceptable. And way to time consuming. The fact that Type A, Type B and type C did not have working balancing circuitry would be to blame to some extent also. But even if I balance them now over a few cycle they will go out. Type A had the wires directly on the cells. Type C had one of those 18650 protection board only. So there is no balancing either. If it was biased it would be coincidence. I got the idea a few weeks ago and ordered the cells i did not have. I charged them and tested them. I am sure if I did the test with the same cells again the results would be the similar. I am pretty confident at this stage that none of the cheaper cells will beat the better quality cells. If they provide +4000mAh it would be a score but it seems rare these days.

Hi. yes I did it twice per battery. That took very very long to do. I have been doing this tests for the last 2 weeks. Some of the batteries did not give very reliable results so I had to find others that gave the same result. I should do more than 2 test per battery but hell this is a hobby not a job. I must admit that over running does call in to question the results. At this stage I can only speculate why that battery pack is preforming so well. I think it is due to the much lower cut off of the battery pack protection. The others seem to cut of at 6.2V where that pack runs to 5.1V. But there should not be that much power at the end of the run. I know that capacity is based on current drain so I speculated that the effect of the current drain on the Panasonic results in less internal losses. But it should not be that much. Remember I did not do current testing. The calculated capacity was based on the runtime which is effected by the cut off of the protection and the limit set to the sensor. I think I need to change that to % rather than mAh to be more clear. In this case I think it is more valid because for practical reasons I want to know how long the light will run. I will run that test again with a few other Panasonic battery packs. just to make sure what is going on. But to sit for 9h and watch it is not fun. It is really amazing how much better the high quality packs preform compared to the cheap ones. I never really believed the statement that some of that Chinese batteries are reclaimed cells from old laptops. But now i do you really get what you pay for. I have orderer a Lux meter that can logger. And I have been building a integrating sphere. So the plan is to get it calibrated and then measure the lights outputs over time. I wished that I had access to this type of batteries from day one.

We have gradually improved the quality of or products over the years. At this stage we only sell protected batteries that are very good quality. It was not easy because we had to build up our relations with the manufacturers. For most of last year and the beginning of this year the Extreme1200 came with the Type D. I can't do that. Not in South Africa. The point was not to cross compare brand lights. The thread was started to highlight the huge difference in batteries types. I would love to do it I must admit. Not all lights drives are same. Some are very good at converting the power without wasting energy. But in South Africa one can't compare a product to a competitor with out there consent. In this post I am not making the other suppliers known. it is a fine line but if I had lights heads you will recognize them easily. Magichsine changed to BAK last year. It is a good brand. they also provided the MJ868 with Samsung batteries at some stage. Not sure if they still do.

If it is a legit brand like Niteye, Gemini and the newer Magic-shine lights which claims 4400mAh@8.4V or 5200mAh@8.4V then the ratio should hold true. I know some brands use the Samsung batteries also. I have tested both so you can easily just take the runtime of your light / claimed capacity * 6800mAh. For example if you have a Magicshine MJ808E with a 4400mAh battery then the runtime should also be over 9h. Here are more information on the cells that we now use. Test / Review: Panasonic NCR18650B 3400mAh (Green) or on CPF Post 1 Post 2 Battery test/review summary And here is the datasheet of the cells on Panasonic site.

Cycle Light batteries compare www.extremelights.co.za One of the most over looked and under appreciated element of a cycle light is the battery pack. For most there are only two factors when selecting a light; Price and lumen. The price is heavily influenced by the quality of the battery pack. Up to 2/3 of a lights cost can be attributed to the battery pack it self. That is why it is the prime element that is targeted when price is reduced. Regardless of how good a light is, if the battery pack is unable to provide sufficient power, the light is useless. Therefore the battery pack should not be ignored. In our opinion, the battery pack is even more important than lumen. We have taken the time to test a few commonly available battery packs. At this stage, we have only compared 4 cell configurations. But the results should be representative of 6 and 8 cell configurations. Test setup http://www.extremelights.co.za/wp-content/uploads/sites/66/2013/10/Test-Setup.jpg Our test set up is a very simple construction. We have an analogue timer and a Lux sensor that is modified to be able to turn on the power to the timer when en pre-set lux measurement is reach. We aimed to have the timer stop running if the light output dropped below half the max. All the batteries are charged using the same charger. An Extreme 1400 light was connected to a fully charge battery and let the timer run in dark room. This way we get real world results. The Extreme 1400 uses the latest Cree XM-L2 U2 LED but power wise it is about the same as most single LED Cree XM-L. The test should be representative of other Cree XM-L lights regarding runtime. It should be noted at this stage that most over claimed lights which are supplied with the cheaper lower capacity battery types do not power there LED fully. This is done to fool the user by extending the runtime of the low capacity batteries. Due to the nature of light it is difficult to notice if the output of a light is half with out directly comparing it. Test subjects. Seven batteries where tested in total. It was interesting to note that all of them where sold claiming to be water proof. We seriously doubt that the cardboard end of Type A will stand up against South African rain. Type A,B and C are covered with PVC heat shrink which will provide a minimal amount of water proofing. The battery cost range from R150 up to R700. This is a very large jump and we where very interested to see our self if the high end batteries where 4.5x better. Weight does not vary that much due to the battery configuration being the same. What does add 80g is the high quality pouch and water proof rubber housing. The lightest where 209g with the heavyset being 288g. All Li-ion batteries should have some protection against over voltage during charging. Shockingly Type A had none and Type B was not functioning. The risk of setting your house on fire with li-ion batteries are real. For the supplier to provide batteries that are not protected is very irresponsible. http://www.extremelights.co.za/wp-content/uploads/sites/66/2013/10/Low-Quality-Batteries.jpghttp://www.extremelights.co.za/wp-content/uploads/sites/66/2013/10/High-Qualty-batteries.jpg http://extremelights.gocommerce.co.za/wp-content/uploads/sites/66/2013/10/Cytcle-light-battery-test-results.jpg *Capacity was calculated based on runtime and is estimations not actual. The runtime is determined by the build in protection of the battery and the lower limit set on the timer. Therefore the calculated capacity should just be used as an indication. **These batteries did not have a low voltage cut of protection. The light where able to run for much longer due to this but the output of the light dropped to below pre set Lux level and the timing stopped. It is detrimental to run li-ion batteries below 30% of there capacity. The protection circuitry should prevent this. Summery The results show clearly that not all Li-ion batteries are equal. It will be hard to choose based on the advertised values. Taking in to consideration that the first 5 types all claim the same capacity and waterproofing but the results vary wildly. At the end it is clear that cost does affect performance. As can be seen a 4.6x an increase in cost results in a 6.6x increase in performance. That is if you ignore the improved pouch, waterproofing and battery protection circuitry. The incredible runtime of the Panasonic cells took us of guard. We did not expect that at all and we repeated the test 3 times to verify. What was very alarming was the missing protection circuitry in the cheaper batteries. This is very dangerous and irresponsible. Li-on batteries are very unstable at high voltage levels. To rely on the chargers ability to prevent over charging is very risky. Over charging li-ion batteries can explode or shoot out a flame jet. Easily setting any flammable material in proximity alight. How do I know what to look for in a battery pack? If you are dealing with a reputable dealer it would be easy to compare based on capacity(mAh and Voltage) values. But unethical advertisers easily over state there specification to make there product more attractive. This makes it nearly impossible to compare. At the end price and appearance are very good indicators. It is highly unlikely that a supplier would chose to drive up cost by providing high quality pouch and waterproofing with out addressing the quality of the batteries to some extend. Lights equipped with the Panasonic cells are: Extreme 1400 1000 lumen for 9h weighing 416g Extreme 2k 1800 lumen for 4h weighing 399g Extreme 3K 3000 lumen for 3h weighing 616g

Congratulations to the winner of the Extreme 2400 We ran a Facebook ‘LIKE’ competition, which ended up in over 2000 LIKES! Our random draw pulled Dean Poole as the winner of the Extreme 2400 (6cell) cycle light. Congratulations Dean, we hope you enjoy your prize this coming summer!

This has some an impressive specks.

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