Comments on: BikeGlow: Wrapping Your Bike with Glow

By: drzwi wewnetrzne

drzwi wewnetrzne — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 21:20:44 +0000

I rarely leave remarks, but after reading a ton of responses here BikeGlow: Wrapping Your Bike with Glow | Commute by Bike. I do have a few questions for you if you tend not to mind. Is it simply me or does it look as if like a few of the comments come across as if they are coming from brain dead individuals? And, if you are posting at additional online sites, I would like to keep up with you. Would you make a list of the complete urls of your shared sites like your Facebook page, twitter feed, or linkedin profile?

By: Richard

Richard — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 17:43:45 +0000

Colin,
I agree you can go out and buy the components yourself at a cheaper price. Remember $25 is retail so these guys are selling to LBS and REI at significantly less which allows the end retailer their markup. I doubt the three guys that are BikeGlow are necessarily going to quit their day jobs.

A $25 price point is sweet and comparable to most red blinkies or low end headlamps.

Thanks for the coollight link as I am going to experiment with EL for a bike helmet application.

By: Ken

Ken — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 18:36:13 +0000

Colin, I’m a burner to, and I like what this guy is doing. I’m not so sure you can find a 10′ premade unit for your bike for less than $24 (I can’t even figure out where to buy it on the coollight site, and it’s the same price on the coolwire site without any way of connecting it, etc.). I’m not sure the regular joe will want to be soldering, etc.

So let’s not bag on it too quick. The world needs bikes lit up at night. Period. If Bikeglow makes it easy for people great. Not to mention, if they’ve been doing it at BRC for years, no one in the regular world knows about it, so El Wire marketing doesn’t seem so great, eh?

By: Colin

Colin — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 18:15:34 +0000

@Mark I haven’t taken EL Wire to the arctic but there’s no reason it should get overly brittle in cold. It’s just wire + phosphorus coating + vinyl cover.

By: Colin

Colin — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 18:10:28 +0000

Ha! It’s kinda funny to see this hitting the streets outside of Black Rock City. This stuff is Electro-Luminescent Wire (EL Wire) which has been covering bicycles at Burning Man for years.

Personally I think it’s hilarious that this guy TMarked BikeGlow and doesn’t use the word EL Wire anywhere — it’s like he doesn’t want you to know that you can easily buy your own E.L. wire plus battery pack driver cheaper on any number of websites. The wire runs around $1.20 a foot and a simple battery pack driver runs around $7. If you buy in bulk strands you’ll need to solder a connection to the wire but that’s easy.

And if you want to get all crazy you can get sequencers and attach multiple strands to created animated strobes.

Check out: http://www.CooLight.com or http://www.thatscoolwire.com/

By: Mark

Mark — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 15:15:13 +0000

Nice idea, but what is the bottom temperature rating. Not much good if it gets brittle at 10 degrees. Plus, in cold weather, you’d have to buy expensive lithium batteries or keep taking the thing on and off.