Sunday 26 October 2008

Light relief

Now that the clocks have gone back, and as the nights draw in, I expect I will be doing more riding in the dark. I have Cateye lights on the front and rear of the bike, and I am happy with both of them. I only have one real complaint. Without a manual, it is pretty much impossible to work out how to replace the batteries in the front light. Other than that, they both do what they promise.

But there is one thing that puzzles me.

Each time I push the button on the front light, it changes from a steady light, to a flashing light, then back again. To turn it off I have to hold the button down.

However, holding the button down on the rear light doesn't turn it off. Each time I push the button, the light changes to a different pattern of flashing, then turns off.

What this means in practice is that when I get home, and I want to turn off both lights, I have to hold down the button on the front light, but cycle the back light until it reaches "off" state.

What puzzles me is that these are both lights from the same manufacturer, bought at the same time, that achieve much the same thing, in different ways. Why do they not use the same system? Perhaps there is a logical reason why front and rear lights should work differently, but I can't imagine what it could be.

Can anyone tell me whether this is a design flaw, or a feature?

2 comments:

randomjunk said...

Is your rear light a long thin one with 5 LEDs? I can only assume it has a different controller because of the different number of LEDs and the different flashing states, and they just did it differently.

I've had a number of different cat-eye lights over the years and they seem to have been about half and half.

Autolycus said...

And flimsy! I managed to lose the red cover and batteries out of one of their rear lights just from bumping over a pothole in the road. So the replacement is going to have some added sellotape....