Magnetic Induction Bike Lights (Mod)

Step 2 Break Open the Reelight

Reelights are glued together with some pretty hard-core adhesive, since they were never meant to be opened. You should probably do a neater job than I did. A dremel with a fine cutting wheel would serve you well; I went at it with a saw and a screwdriver and pried the thing open, which sadly cracked the case in a few places.

This step has a number of close-ups of the internals of the Reelight, for others' reference. These pics are for the red rear light; the white front light was identical except for the color of the plastic cover.

Comments

[Unkful]

Hey Nagutron, thanks you for these photos and share it, I'm really glad to see your manual, but I have 2 questions. What is capacitor's value (in F)? and, if you only put one of these, may be posible that only one of the couple of led works right? I think that so the coil makes AC and I think the leds are reverse biased to fully profit the AC. I think may be better put 2 capacitors, one for each led, what do you think?

[nagutron]

Sadly, the whole thing's been coated and the details aren't visible. For a more from-scratch approach, see these instructables: http://www.instructables.com/id/Contactless-dynamo-powering-bike-safety-lights/ and http://www.instructables.com/id/Contactless-dynamo-bike-wheel-lights/

[cantsolder]

Which solder joint on the circuit is positive and which is negative? I plan to directly wire mine rather than use a jack. Also if thicker wiring was to be used on the coil would there be more windings or fewer windings? Do windings have to follow a certain direction?

[nagutron]

I actually don't know which side was positive. I just did the dumb thing and kept track of which wire went where on the lights, and kept those connected on the proper side through all of the components I added (wiring, audio jack, audio cable, coil.) There's probably a better way...

[cantsolder]

One reason why I went to this instructable was that my front Reelight 120 failed (the rear is still working great). I heard a ticking noise inside the housing just before it failed. When I opened up the housing the two strands going to the LEDs had completely broken off their solder joints, leaving the two strands attached to the coil. I think the fragile connection between the LED and coil strands broke during use and the rest broke off when I dremeled the housing. Reelight should have put in beefier wires as there is a lot of vibration on a bike wheel as well as jolts from everyday riding. Maybe speaker wires will work.

[nagutron]

Yes, those wires coming off the coil really are extremely thin. I thought that that just made them difficult to hack, which is excusable, but it they're also less durable under normal use, i'd say that's inexcusable.