Ay Ups = O for Awesome! July 2, 2009

As the title says, my new Ay Up lights are O for Awesome! (And while we’re at it, learn a bit about the history behind the expression and buy the t-shirt!)

They arrived yesterday and we couldn’t wait for it to get dark to try them out. We got the MTB kit which comes with two sets of lights – designed to be used with one on the handlebars and one on the helmet – but with them costing $700NZ (by the time you took into account the extra mounts, postage, the exchange rate, and GST), we had decided to share the kit, with my husband and I each running one set of lights on our helmets.

Less words here and more pictures I reckon..

Here’s a picture of the old home-made system that I was using beforehand. 35W 24 degree halogen bulb running with a heavy 12 V SLA battery. Total weight around 4kg.

The new Ay Up system. CREE LED bulbs, with a 3 hr lithium polymer battery. Both mountable on the helmet. Total weight: less than 150 g.

Now let’s see the lights and batteries side by side:

OK. So they look pretty and they’re tiny and light in comparison to the old home-made sytem. But how do they compare in terms of output?

The all-important back yard light test.. (homemade on top, Ay Ups on bottom)

(halogen homemade system)

(one Ay Up intermediate beam helmet-mounted light)

Initial thoughts?

The Ay Ups have an incredibly white light compared to the yellow of the halogens, and they have a narrower beam. But enough of this backyard stuff  – let’s head out on the trails!  (Sorry, no photos from here onwards – left the camera at home). The lights were pretty good on the wider, straight singletrack, but on the twisty stuff, they didn’t look around corners as well as the wider beam halogen then I was used to.  However, I felt like I could move around a lot more on my bike because I wasn’t carrying such a huge battery around in a backpack. It might take a few more rides to get used to seeing the white, narrower light after riding with a yellow “floodlight” the past few years. The weight savings are definitely worth the compromise in degrees of actual light, and I imagine if I were running both sets of lights (one handle-bar, one helmet), they would cover more area. It’s quite cool how the two lights  in the pair are independently moveable also. Reminds me of this cool robot:

Alright. That’s enough writing for me. It’s raining and very cold outside. Plus it’s cartoon night on C4. I think I’ll stay on the couch for the rest of the evening..