Spoke to exposure today about lights etc and i asked whether or not i can charge the maxx d from a sinewave revolution via the dynamo hub? I know i can charge the maxx d via a cache battery with the supplied lead so i cant see why the dynamo wouldnt do the same. The guy i spoke to said hes heard of folk doing it and seems to work.....so has anyone tried it and had results because if it does i dont see the point in buying a revo with less light :0)

Did he understand that you meant charging it while it's in use? I assume you do mean that or do you mean charge it in the day and use it at night?

Mike wrote:Spoke to exposure today about lights etc and i asked whether or not i can charge the maxx d from a sinewave revolution via the dynamo hub? I know i can charge the maxx d via a cache battery with the supplied lead so i cant see why the dynamo wouldnt do the same. The guy i spoke to said hes heard of folk doing it and seems to work.....so has anyone tried it and had results because if it does i dont see the point in buying a revo with less light :0)

The Sinewave Revolution produces 3W at 6V, which if my maths is correct is 0.5A. It will therefore work, but it'll take time.

What sort of riding is this for? I couldn't get much use out of a dynamo system on the HT550 as you just don't ride fast enough on the off-road and spend a lot of time walking well below the lowest acceptable input for the Sinewave.

No the later pal! charge through the day and use it at night for a max of 4 or 5 hrs on low :0) might be worth a test once iv got the sinewave to see how much charge it will put in before i buy the light?

Not tried, but I suspect it is feasible, in theory, however...
I’m not a huge fan of dynamos, but for on-road riding they provide a reasonable option, with reliability caveats. I would always take a head torch to supplement if intending to ride off-road. So that’s another thing needing charged. If you are using the Maxx D close to high power (and if not, why not use a lighter light?), you will need to do a lot of brisk pace (not on trails) pedaling for a long time to re-charge that massive battery. The Revo is also significantly lighter.

Personally I have gone back to a Fenix (as used by all the American racers), with a replaceable, usb charged battery that I can get almost full charge during a cafe / pub stop, or several re-charges from a small powerbank. Similar performance to my Diablo, but I always have a spare battery ready.

Unless you are properly off-the-grid (and that’s quite difficult in the UK), I’m unconvinced dynamo offers anything other than servicing our fascination with gadgets!

The MaxD is 2500 lumens for 2 hours so the 6 hour setting will be 833 lumens. The Revo is 800 lumen so there's hardly anything in it in terms of light output. Obviously you only get the full 800 when travelling above about 12 mph but below this I find the 400 lumen enough to still see where I'm going.

The exposure website says that the charger is 2.8A and a full charge takes 9 hrs so at 0.5A it would take 50 hrs?

I don't think there's a way to cheat the system and get extra light for free. If you are going to be out for a long time in the dark then a dyno light just works all the time. It also powers the rear light. No changing of settings or thinking about run times, if you're moving the light is on. I leave mine on the bike all winter. As I use it most days for my commute as well it just works with no effort. I don't have to remember to charge anything.

If I'm going out with a mate for a ride after work I'll take my Toro these days for the extra light for the more technical trails at higher speeds. But on the loaded bike I'm not going as fast.

I used the Revo on the BB300 to ride through the night with a Joystick on my helmet for tricky bits but I didn't have it on all the time. At no point through the night did I think to myself "If only I had more light I could go faster"

I don't use the dyno to try and charge other devices, it's just not powerful enough/efficient enough to be worth the effort? I just use mine to power my lights.

cheers guys.... hmmm maybe the revo is the way forward especially for my winter commuting as you say Sean less faff with batts. Im not expecting great things from the charger side of it but i do think it maybe useful on longer road trips like around scotland and the like where the speed is higher for longer :0)

I did a post on my blog about dynamo electrickery on The French Divide. It generally worked there because of the higher speeds, any technical sections were (as far as I got) short lived. This was with an Igaro D1 which seems to be able to begin to supply charge at around 8kmh but doesn't then stop until around 5kmh. I didn't have an electrical meter with me, this was from observation of the charging lights on the Powerbank blinking when current was flowing.

I was generally power neutral for our time in France - the FD plus a long week touring in Brittany - I recharged my camera which threw all my calculations out and I spent the last couple of days being very careful with the GPS in particular whilst getting the batteries recharged. I had one three cell and one single cell powerbank (they use multiple 18650 batteries) but 2 x three cells would be ideal. As a general figure I work on getting an average 300mAh out of a dynamo which means for each 18650 cell you need about ten hours of brisk pedalling to fully charge it. Again that does depend on the riding you are doing, I was doing better than that in France needing only 8hrs or so to recharge a cell.

I'd say that trip was at the good end of dynamo usage, for something like the HT550 I don't think they are the optimum solution for the reasons Craig states. My preferred option then is just to take a couple of powerbanks and possibly recharge one or both at a cafe along the way. It does help that there is very little darkness when the HT group start takes place.

On the BB200 I rode through the night with just a Joystick on my helmet, can't remember which program it's on but the low setting is either 24hr or 36hr. The low setting was enough for the hike-a-bike bits, climbs and roads. Switched to middle setting for the trickier/faster downhills. I charged it for fifteen minutes at Llanidloes and with that top-up it just lasted until Llanbrynmair. Might have been easier on my eyes but not necessarily made me any quicker to have had a more flood like light on the bars.

Basically: use your devices carefully to minimise power consumption. Use the lowest light level you can get away with via choosing the right program and/or light setting. Put phone in to airplane mode except for when you need to use it. Try not to use the screen on your GPS too much.

I like the dyno/revo as a day in day out solution. It's not as powerful as modern battery lights but remember when we only had these to see where we were going

whitestone wrote:It does help that there is very little darkness when the HT group start takes place.

We won't have the full moon in 2019 we were treated to this year* The moon will be getting less as the days pass so the quicker you get round the more light they'll be at night... although as it will be raining** the clouds will block out what moon there is anyway

* I've already checked the moon on my phone app to see what it will be
** Based on the statistical probability = It's not been a wet one for a while

sean it will be 26 degrees and full on sun with weeks of dry trails before as I'm not putting my name in the hat

We don't want rain! But I'd also like it a tad cooler this time. saying that we need to get a place first otherwise I'll be riding it just before like hux did this yr ;0)

26 would be cooler than this year

According to the exposure website the mk 11 maxx d has an 11.6 Amp Hr battery. If you can maintain 3W / 0.5A then that's 23.2 hrs to charge. I think the figure for the 2.8A charger quoted (8hrs) includes a low amp trickle charge after 95% charge has been reached.

Mike, there's also the weight question. A MaxxD and a dynamo is around 800g, but a Revo and dynamo is the same as a Maxx D. As far as "is it possible" goes, yes it is, but I suspect that on an event with very low average speed (HT550), the MaxxD will be charged less than it discharges, so over 4-5 days it will discharge a fair bit, all you will do with a dynamo is slow the rate of discharge.

Go for a revo and joystick, or a maxx d and joystick, but don't do dynamo, maxx d and joystick - very heavy setup!

Iv decided to get the revo, use it for most stuff and use the maxx d for night time blasts when I need more light. Sinewave revolution on order for charging my phone or cache battery. It's a gadget I don't need but what the hell :0)
I could loose some weight just by stop eating some much cake

I didn't like to say.... but on a ride don't you spend enough time eating in cafes to fully charge a maxd if you took the mains charger with you? About 9 hours a day