Yeah. I admit, I’m in love with these Revolights.

They look awesome, but are ‘a bit’ pricy at $229 (Ex VAT and Ex shipping to Europe)



Since I don’t want to throw down that amount of money, I decided to look for alternatives and DIY solutions on the web.



I found something on ebay: http://www.ebay.com/itm/LED-bike-lights-RED-KIT-BOTH-WHEELS-safety-spoke-wheel-lights-/271297498735?ssPageName=ADME:X:AAQ:US:1123 which could work, but then stumbled upon EL-Wire a relatively new material that you may know best for use in those funky looking daft-punk style suits:

Some peolple put it on cars, some one shoes, but I also found an example of it on bike rims:

I’m not a great fan of the look of the wires braided around the spokes, but okay, this is an awesome idea!

Since I live in The Neterlands, I’m not allowed by law to use anything other than white or yellow light in the front of my bike, and red in the rear, but this stuff comes in all colors, and a quick trip to google later I found myself on iPrototype.nl and ordered:

3 meters of white EL-Wire (€ 9,95)

https://iprototype.nl/products/components/el/EL-wire-white-3m

3 meters of red EL-Wire (€ 9,95)

https://iprototype.nl/products/components/el/EL-wire-red-3m



and 2 control boxes (€5,50 each)

https://iprototype.nl/products/components/el/el-wire-converter-battery

That’s just over € 15,- per wheel! Nice!



Next day order and some mocking up with matte sticky tape later (I will hate my self for using this tape somewhere in the near future) this was the result:





There was enough EL-Wire to lead along the rim for one half of the wheel,then, loop back around the valve, and make another full circle around the wheel, ensuring visibility on both sides of the wheel:

There are some problems though:

The prototyping tape is ugly. Need to swap this with clear tape. Don’t be like me.

Second, The control box that hold the inverter and power switch is not waterproof and was never even meant to be. Also, the way it’s zip-tied to the spoke (in the same way as the ebay version suggested) is not optimal for wheel balance, there is a noticable wobble on high speeds. Since it’s autumn in Holland I already sort of ghetto-waterproofed the contraption by locking it a zip bag, planning to fix this properly soon.

To create a proper solution for this, I went shopping in my private tool and spare part stash and came back with:

Some bike spokes

An old inner-tube

My soldering iron

Black electric insulation tape

Some wire

After some mocking up I found that an AA battery fits exactly in the width of the bike hub and went ahead bending a spoke into a shape that fit nicely over my hub, clamps the batteries and balances out the batteries on each side

That could work. I cut some of the inner tube to length and wrapped it around the holder to see if that would work

Awesome. Snug, balanced, waterproof, exactly what I want.



Next up: Making a circuit out of the bent shape by adding some electrical tape and soldering in the first 2 parts of the battery springs that I took out of the control box:

While constantly chekcing if it still worked, I added the other 2 springs with soldered-on wires, led them along the spoke, and taped the whole thing up. Voila! A a custom battery holder!

The inner tube is compressed here for easy access to the batteries (this will also be the method to swap them out)



Now all that’s left is hooking this back up to the control box with the invertor.



First, I soldered some wires to the spot where the original battery springs were mounted, and tested having just the printplate with the plastic cap on it, saving loads of space. The top plate shifted a little bit when putting pressure on it, disabling the button, so I put a tight tie-wrap around one of the condensators to fill up the void space.

.

I unsoldered one of the 2 el-wire connector sockets, and broke it out onto 2 pieces of wire for easy connecting and disconnecting when mounted in place:

Then made sure everything still worked:



As final steps: I packed the control board with cap on it and wrapped in some electrial tape in another piece of inner tube and slid it onto the middle part of the battery holder.



2 small cuts on each end of the inner tube make sure that the rubber can wrap around and the whole thing is watertight to the battery end. This is secured with the 2 zip-ties at the top.

At the bottom end, I left some slack tube to be able to wrap the connector and the connected wire coming from the wheel in rubber as well. The circular shape you see is a tiny bit of round bent spoke that makes sure the rubber from the tube doesn’t press the on/off button. It’s also a visible indicator of where the button hides.



Next up:2 More zip-ties to lock the whole battery pack and switch to the hub.

An overview of the finalized prototype:





And with the flash off:

(It’s actually white, but shows blue due to phone camera)

I’m quite happy with the result so far :)

Ofcourse they’re not revolights in the way that they don’t light the road, and they don’t have the tech overload in them, but they greatly increase my visiblity to other road users and look awesome!