[jacquesm]

Anything you strap to a bike has to be reliable. If there is one thing you can say about mechanical systems it is that we know how to design them so they last the lifetime of a bike (wear parts excluded), anything electrical or electromechanical will have a shorter life than the equivalent that uses only mechanical parts. Just look at your average bicycle light set, even after I don't know how long we still can't make a set that lasts more than a couple of years.

The key to mechanical longevity is maintenance, a bit of oil and a bit of care and this stuff will last a lifetime. How many electronics bits and pieces do you know or do you have that have lasted > 20 years? > 30 years?

Case in point a friend has a Shimano bike with electric shifters. Super nice bike, but super fragile. One trainride and a very thin and fragile cable got lodged in the gears.

Several long hours of work later I have it working again (this only happened last week), oh, and never mind the $45 crappy little cable with custom plugs which gets plugged into an in-frame patch panel that is just about impossible to get to. I don't see any advantage over my mechanical stuff, in fact I see a significant disadvantage. Electronics and bicycles don't mix well unless you are prepared to make things bullet proof and that will price them right out of the market. So I don't see this as a viable path, a novelty, something on very high end bikes but not something that will stand the test of time.

[pcl]

> Just look at your average bicycle light set, even after I don't know how long we still can't make a set that lasts more than a couple of years.

You're probably right about the average bike lights. But the good folks at Light and Motion make some incredible products. USB-rechargeable, bright, easily removable, and pretty durable in my experience.

http://www.lightandmotion.com/

[Nition]

Since we're talking about it, are there any decent brands still making dynamo bike lights (the ones that are powered by the turning of the wheels)?

[papa-whisky]

There are quite a few, mostly German. For the hubs themselves look at Schimdt SON, Shutter Precision, or Shimano. For lights, Busch & Muller, Schmidt, or Supernova.

Most dynamo lights use a reflector (more like a car headlight than a normal bike light or flashlight) so despite the lower lumen output they can actually provide much more useful light on the road.

[Nition]

Thanks!

[hmschreck]

Seconding this, they make a rear light so bright my 94 year old grandfather can see it in daylight.

[dasil003]

Which I have to say sucks for the rider behind you. If you demand that level of visibility get a high vis vest. Personally I err on the side of assuming every car will try to kill me. It's kept me alive in SF, London, and worse places where most people are scared to bike on roads for good reason (New Mexico).

[photojosh]

For maximum visibility safety when riding alone, I turn on the maximum-output, blinking mode (which IIRC is actually illegal in some other countries). But when group riding, dim it down and turn it on to the solid-on mode.

[stbtrax]

Electronics, if weatherproofed properly, will last a very long time. They don't have any wear and tear like mechanical parts so I'm not sure what would degrade other than the battery or misc connectors.

[brians]

Capacitor electrolytics.

Air bubbles in silicon, thermal expansion, and a zillion day night cycles.

Humidity and dust enter, contributing to occasional momentary shorts.

Oxidation anywhere you have electromechanical connections.

Magnetic stresses on any coil, any rectifier.

[kazinator]

Transistor aging: https://spectrum.ieee.org/semiconductors/processors/transist...

(Not likely to affect anything you'd mount on a bicycle, over any span of time relevant to a bicycle.)

[mkj]

Or shock causes a supercap lead to shear off, etc. I guess everything could be epoxy potted but then it isn't repairable.

[jacquesm]

Cables, servos, brushes, switches and so on.

[mcbain]

The in-frame patch panel (aka junction box) may require pulling a few other things off the bike like the cranks (if access is through the BB cluster) which is often only a few minutes work when you have the correct tools.

Which leads to the fact that many bike tools are incredibly specific, and require updating almost more often than the parts they are meant to be used with. Insert old joke about standards and having so many to choose from - but that's an issue that stands to the side of electronic against mechanical parts.

[buttsu]

A "Work-horse" version of this would be very ideal. I will start looking into this technology when i see bike messengers and the like using it