Funk Babblings

Since it's often getting toward dusk when I'm riding my bike, it might be a good idea to have some sort of lights on it. I don't ride in the the dark, so headlights are unnecessary, but some sort of flashing taillight might be nice. But I don't want to deal with batteries or switches, so one that uses the movement of the wheels would be good.... such as, for example, the one I had on my old bike.

See, I have an electrical engineering degree (even though I managed to get out of the electromagnetics and power classes, probably the most useful ones outside of an actual EE job). So when I was in a bike shop and saw a taillight that used a spoke-mounted magnet to induce current to make a set of LEDs flash, I HAD to get it. And it worked great. (The model may have been called "Red Alert".)

Then the bike it was mounted on was stolen. And now that I finally have a new one, I've discovered that the light I used to have isn't made anymore. The bike shops have nothing similar, so I searched online.

The closest I found was this one. But it mounts way down on the wheel hub, necessarily interfering with the quick-release mechanism as well as just being visibly too low. And it does look like there's a risk of the thing getting caught in the spokes.

The next closest I found was this setup, which looks like something someone put together in their garage. But other than the ugly homemade look, the technology seems to be a step up from what I had before. (The comparison they have with related technologies is interesting.) If it didn't have such a homemade look and cables running everywhere, I'd jump at this one.

The ultimate technology for this might be a wheel hub generator. Maybe if I start riding across the country....