My new opticube EL410 arrived from an ebayer in the US yesterday, so I got to try it on the way home tonight. Not good enough for a headlight on unlit roads, but plenty good enough to make myself seen, and supposedly waterproof to 50m.
I've had a run of destroyng flasher headlights cycling in the rain the last few weeks, so I was pleased to get a reliable light at less than half the going rate for the same unit here (5 cents change from a hundred bucks). For what they are, I'm just amazed that people are silly enough to pay that for what must cost less than 10 bucks to make including labour.
For my trail light I made up a unit consisting of a 3W Luxeon MR16 downlight, an overvolt protection regulator from a **** Smith kit, some speaker cable and a pair of old 7.2V NiCds from my R/C model car racing days.
Cost me about $50 in parts. The only downside is the weight of the battery, but it's still light compared to some of the water bottle batteries I've seen used with halogen headlights.
The runtime on a pair of 7.2V 1700mAh sub-C nicads is well over 3 1/2 hours, and the light output compares to a 15W halogen.
I found one of my old 6V 600mAh receiver batteries the other day. If I can find the spare I can mount them under the stem, and ditch the 1700s, the regulator and a bunch of wiring, get plenty of runtime for the trip home, and not notice the weight!