Welcome to Lumos Co-Creation Series

Co-Creation Series:


Hello and welcome to our new format of delivering content about our upcoming products to customers and fans of Lumos. This is a way for us to show you what our product roadmap looks like for the year, but more importantly gives you the opportunity to be involved and help shape our products with us so that we can build the best solutions catering to your specific needs. We’re hoping this will be a really fruitful exercise and we’re excited to co-create with you to make the best Lumos products yet.

Hi, it's me again. - Bilal, co-founder of Lumos

At the end of our Ultra Kickstarter campaign, we ran a survey about what you wanted to see from us in the future and the feedback we received from you was clear; more lights, things with a battery (not quite sure why this specifically, but it came up numerous times) and more cycling accessories. So we set to work planning out our next round of products. If there’s something we’ve developed a fair amount of expertise on over the years of running Lumos, it’s lights. So naturally it made sense to think about this more deeply. We also constantly hear from our customer-base that ‘you can never have too many lights’, and we agree! So bike lights it is!

Yayyy to your first contribution to the process!

Now, because we’re Lumos, we don’t just want to do any ol’ bike lights. We’re really serious about innovation here, so delivering something special in this category is absolutely our main objective. We’d love to push the bike light market forward, just like we’ve done with cycling helmets. So let’s begin with a bit of theory and go over our mission and how we go about thinking about developing new products.

As humans, when we’re in the dark, our eyes are always searching for recognizable elements and are looking to identify patterns and make sense of things moving around us. We’re particularly adept at spotting faces, or if it’s in the dark, looking for a pair of eyes. It’s a survival trick we learned over the years of being chased around by predators during the night.

When you have two lights that don’t look like they’re connected, your mind doesn’t immediately associate that they’re part of one entity. However, when those two lights are moving in unison together, the human mind can more easily comprehend that they belong to the same body. The distance of those two lights also helps us to determine the size of the entity. If the lights are close together, we naturally assume a smaller object and a larger object if they’re further apart.

By spreading out the lights on a rider, we create a larger silhouette that becomes far more visible on the road. Drivers will assume you’re big, and are more likely to give you more room.

Comparing one light placement vs two or three lights that are spread out

Since we also have helmets that are smart, we’re able to create a whole cacophony of synced lights which all flash in glorious unison.

Something that our customers love about our helmets are the turn signals, so you can bet those are also going to be a key feature of our smart lights.

Join us on this journey

As you can probably tell, we’ve already made a few early prototypes and have been busy testing these with a few Ultra Kickstarter campaign backers and the initial responses have been very positive. I’ll be sharing more details on how the design has evolved in a future post, but we’re not done yet.

To make it easy for us to get an idea, just use the link below to sign-up to receive the rest of our updates to this Co-Creation series.

Lumos Firefly is live on Kickstarter now! Enjoy up to 35% off with our Early Bird discount before the campaign ends.

That’s it for now. We’ll be updating you on our progress through these posts, but if you’re really excited and want to get more involved, feel free to join our Discord server and see a lot more of what’s going on behind the scenes (you might even hear about a few other products that we’re working on).

119 comments

Signed up. One thing I’d love to see is integration with Die systems. My bike already has buttons in the hoods on my handbars (one on the left and one on the right). For someone who rides road bikes, it would be ideal for me to use the buttons already on my bike for turn signalling, rather than having to mount a bulky control module to the handlebars.

Aubrey April 21, 2022

Former Lumos backer, excited for this development to safely bike in San Francisco to and from UCSF.

Rebecca Schiff April 21, 2022

Running lights on the ends of my handle bars is something I would be interested in.

John Kuenzel April 21, 2022

Lights are good for night riding but too much may irk drivers eyes.

Simon Tan April 21, 2022

Hi Bilal,

Just an idea along the way, I saw a great project with lights on the pedals, producing a pattern easy to recognize as human, but that required to buy pedals too. If you find a ‘hack’ to be put on almost all pedals (or, randomly, MKS pedals 😇), I’d be the first to buy!

Good luck,
Amaury

Amaury April 21, 2022

Hi guys,

I’m petra, one of the guys for the lumos ultra helmet testers.

I think it might be good to have an option for dynamo-hub linked lights too, since they dont have to be charged all the time. I sometimes forget to charge stuff or change batteries every so often.

Thanks!

Petra Octavian Perdana Wahjoepramono April 21, 2022

This is exactly what I have on the motorcycle. My lights are solid but I have white and blue running lights. My turn signals are white in front and red in back when breaking. Then both turn Yellow when Flip on the turn signal.
How about turning off the turn signal after the helmet detects the lean?

I love this idea. I think white and blue alternate. How about we can choose colors?

Ken Shade April 21, 2022

Placing safety as a priority with helmets with the use of lights is important to me. A lot of bike riders appreciate that (and probably snow skiers, as well as trades people that require wearing helmets around construction sites). I’ve been a light geek since childhood so it’ll be time to upgrade my gear soon. Have you considered use of laser lights and solar charging built into helmets and vests? Looking forward to your upcoming developments. Thanks, Daan

Daan Mulder April 21, 2022

I’m one of the kick backer of the helmets and my helmet still working my question is it is posible to develop a charger that can be connected to an outlet ? The one that I have is only for USB port connection and in some ocasiones I’ve been without USB port on the road

Javier Hernández April 21, 2022

LOVE the bar end idea. The ones for drops look great but could there be a version for straight handlebars? Orange indicator maybe…

Paul Bussey April 21, 2022

Thanks for the update and the possibilities you show re: lights. It sounds like a fun trip to join you for the adventure of inventing new ways to use lights for safety etc.

Jim Burkhalter April 21, 2022

Intrigued by the premise of the double lights and the turn signals. Please make them easily demountable so we don’t have to leave them on our bikes and have them stolen. I’ve had two of your helmets and they definitely get attention. Many people will stop and exclaim, “cool helmet”. So, people do notice these things. Thank gawd.

Leslie Ventsch April 21, 2022

What about adding a camera in the light or even the helmet? Having a dashcam like camera would be great.

Benedict Canare April 21, 2022

Lookg fwd to the updates.

Magesh Siva April 21, 2022

The Lumos Helmet is a really nice product and I am glad that I joined on the kickstarter campaign. My only gripe with my Lumos Ultra is that it is not Garmin Watch compatible for the hand gestures. Maybe some day. :) :)

James Morrisey April 21, 2022

More of the same!
I want it to be as obvious as possible..

The first one was still pretty damn good, but an improvement would also be a bonus..

Jake Korving April 21, 2022

Front indicators (on helmet, and/or handlebar plugs) would be great. Solid yellow at the front when braking to show oncoming traffic that you’re slowing down would also be great.

Damien M Wilson April 21, 2022

Turn signals that can easily be spread out on the bike? Count me in!

Benjamin April 21, 2022

I think the concept of synchronising the flashing of multiple lights seems like a great idea. Some bikes with panniers may have some width at the rear, but the only part of a bike that is really wide is the handlebar. Perhaps mounting lights in the end of the grips is a good idea? Of course, they’d have to be tough – in my experience the end of the handlebars take a heavy beating.

Roger Shepherd April 21, 2022

What I really want to see in your helmet is integration of BT stereo speakers above the ears and a mic in the center under a visor. This and only this will make me buy Lumos again. Other than that – you have a great product!

Glenn April 21, 2022

I like being seen 👍🇺🇸 More Lights Please 😁

John Moak April 21, 2022

One idea: A light focused on the biker, especially from the rear, so drivers & people can actually see the biker, not just the lights on the bike

Ronald Sauve April 21, 2022

Bought your first generation helmets. Love what you are doing. I’m 76 and ride daily and I need more light visibility. Front, back head is flashing but people still don’t see riders.

Jim Todd April 21, 2022

Looks good. Send me one to trial

Glenn Baker April 22, 2022

From my experience the battery needs to last longer. Going out for a 2 hour plus ride the last thing you want are those lights not working before you end the ride.

Cliff Baughen April 21, 2022

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