40-60 lumens?
An interesting design, but only 40-60 lumens? About an order of magnitude too small as to what is needed for an effective riding bike light. Powered by 3 AA batteries, hopefully people will use rechargable NiMH batteries. Lets see, 100 hrs on a 2500 mah in series results in a average draw of 25 ma over the life of the batteres. Considering the output droop of these batteries, say a starting 50 ma for the lights. Each will need about 3.7v to function (the reason for 3 batteries), so they will have to be wired in parallel and each gets maybe 10 ma each.
If you look at their formal web site, they state the 100 is only for blinking, only 50 hrs on steady. So even if they are drawing something more reasonable for illumination from the batteries for steady mode, say 100 ma each LED, they would get about 4 hours steady light. So my conclusion ia the light is good for a front end blinker and that is about all. It is not suitable for riding on dark roads to see obstacles in the road. As they say in response to an inquiry on their website "It's a "be seen" light. So it has 30?? spread. " So all the articles, including their website, should be a little more clear on what this bike light really is. Anyone who pledges money to the company should have a clear expectation to what the product really is, to what the competition is, and the chances of a sucessful business model.
You need about 500-1000 lumens for a good riding bike light. Something like a single Cree XML-T6 (or SCC-P7) LED pulling at least 2 amps, or three lesser Cree's pulling 1 amp on 12 V. As far as security, I personally use a plastic woodworkers clamp to attach my lights to the handlebar. The light is bolted to the clamp. Does not scratch the bars, and has good clamping strength. I just unclamp and remove the light when necessary (and battery if the territory looks risky), and put it in my backpack with other stuff.
