Hello Friends! It’s been a long time coming, and many of you have waited for this moment after my extraordinarily long product development time, but the day is finally here! I’ve been using these lights on my mountainboard since mid 2022, and have ridden over 1000 miles with the mounting design, to ensure they are of sufficient quality and will provide a great experience to my customers. In addition, various beta testers have these lights on their boards and have put in a good amount of miles as well.
I’d like to introduce the ESN community, and soon, the rest of the skate community, to my first public offering on pevcomponents.com, the BIG BEEM headlights.
What are BIG BEEMS?
The Big Beem headlights are a brand new high-voltage lighting option for electric skateboards or any PEV that runs on 12-80V*. These headlights can be powered straight off board voltage and boast an immense amount of light output. These lights also have a flat beam, making them far superior for board-mounted lights, when compared to basic flashlights with a round beam.
The Big Beem headlights have two modes, High (daylight white color temp, further throw) and low beam (warm yellow color temp, close range), activated by sending power to either the red (high) or yellow (low) wires that come out of their IP68-rated housings. Additionally, the red and yellow wires may be connected together to power both the high and low beams at once. I prefer this configuration and have been running them soldered together for the entire period of testing.
While the headlights do not come with built-in switches, you can purchase & assemble your own switching system depending on your desires. These are available on the website, along with the related wiring diagrams.
Mounting System:
The Big Beem headlights can be mounted to your electric skateboard or mountainboard using the wide variety of pre-made mounting fixtures available from my shop. Most of these mounting features have been physically tested by myself or my beta testers to make sure the angles are right and that they will work effectively with the truck that they are designed for.
[Pictured below: Onsra TKP on left, Hypertruck Lite on right]
There are currently 10 truck designs supported, with more on the way. The trucks that are currently supported are as follows: Apex Airs, Onsra TKP, Hypertruck Lite, Hypertruck, Matrix II, Matrix III, Hoyt ROSA, Boardnamics RKP, Moon Luna 350, and Exway Trist 10.5 DKP.
Designs are currently in work for: Trampa IR, Finality Fatboy, Trampa Precision Vertigo, and Newbee RTKP.
The TPU mounting design varies depending on the design of the truck itself. Some trucks have screw holes that are used to provide the most secure fastening option, while others use a clamping design, that uses the force of screw clamping and friction to keep the mount from sliding side-to-side on the truck hanger. Mounting hardware for each design is provided with the purchase of the mounts, with the intention of being easy to set up and supporting consistent quality.
These mounts are fixed position in order to make sure they always stay in place. However, additional angles of the quick-mount rails (screwed onto the light) can be purchased separately, and will be provided to the first users of new designs to ensure they are able to find the right angle for their setup. I do my best to design in the right angle in CAD, but it can be difficult if I do not have the truck on hand to test it physically.
If you do not wish to use the unique rail-mount quick-disconnect mounting system that has been tested up to this point, you may purchase the Big Beems with no mounting by selecting that option at purchase. However, the rail mounts are convenient and have been shown to last well.
Why make them with quick-disconnects? Well, the truck mounts are also compatible with Smol Beems (to be introduced later), and if you wanted to, you could use MR-30 connectors to buy one pair of lights for multiple boards, and swap them between. Or, you could have multiple sets of Smol Beem, or something like that. In any case, modularity is usually convenient.
You can purchase EXTRA mounts here if you want more besides the ones that you select with the headlight/truck configuration. Additionally, you can see pictures of all the different mounts here, by selecting the type in the product selector.
Wiring Setup:
Big Beems are extremely easy to wire up. Simply connect the negative to the negative port of your battery, and connect the desired high/low wire, or both, to the discharge port/common port on your BMS. It’s that simple! No buck converter, no phantom drain, nothing!
What about switching them? These lights do not come with switches by default
Why? The best way to control these lights will depend heavily on your setup. I have them wired straight into the discharge port on my LLT smart bms, which can be controlled with the app, thus, giving them a virtual on-off switch. Additionally, I have them wired with an XT-30, so I can disconnect them while the board is charging (thanks for that glitch LLT).
These lights have extremely small capacitive loads, and thus, even when plugging straight into 50.4v, there is hardly any spark, making plugging and unplugging them for use a possibility if desired.
Let’s talk a little about options for switches. First, I’ve got two diagrams to wire them with SPDT switches. One option allows you to switch them between OFF, HIGH, and LOW. The other option combines two switches, allowing you to do OFF, HIGH, LOW, and HIGH + LOW.
SPDT: HIGH OFF LOW
SPDT DUAL: HIGH OFF LOW, HIGH + LOW
Here’s another option instead using a DPDT switch, in the configuration HIGH OFF LOW
Hopefully these diagrams will be useful for those of you trying to figure out your wiring for the first time. Keep in mind, we are switching full battery voltage with a small capacitive load, so you can really use any switch that is rated for the voltage (many switches are 120v AC rated and those seem to work fine for these).
Another consideration for those very few of you that have uboxes, @haven has been running the lights off the 12v light switch on his build, and it seems to work just fine. Additionally, if you have the TTL lighting system, you should be able to use that light output for these lights as well.
In the future I may collaborate with another company on this forum to offer a smart-turn-on solution that makes it even easier.
You may view the switches and options here:
Volts, Current, and Temperature:
Here’s some nerdy information for those who are interested. I did some testing on my bench with my power supply at different voltages and found the following.
At 12v, on high beam plus low beam mode, one pair of lights draws approximately 2.2-2.5a
At 42v, on high beam mode only, one pair of lights draws approximately 0.75a, which slowly tapers off a bit as the lights heat up (still air, indoors), ending at 0.59a after 15 minutes.
At 54v, with both diodes turned on, one pair of lights draws approximately 0.64a, which slowly tapers off a bit as the lights heat up (still air, indoors), ending at 0.50a after 15 minutes.
At 61v, on high beam mode only, one pair of lights draws approximately 0.45a, which slowly tapers off a bit as they heat up (still air, indoors), to 0.34a after 15 minutes.
Now, one WARNING is that these lights do get quite hot with extended runtime. I have measured temperatures of up to 85C while these lights are running in still air. PLEASE BE CAREFUL. They will not instantly burn you (I don’t think) but you shouldn’t really have to touch them anyway.
The lights seem to be completely unaffected by the high temperature, and as seen in my data, it looks like they throttle back the current a tiny bit as they heat up. While riding, I’ve never noticed anything like thermal throttling, light disappearance, or anything like that, so nothing to worry about. I’ve ridden for multiple hours with them turned on, stopping at lights and for breaks, and they just work. In fact, they’ve been doing so for over a year now.
*up to 100v has been unofficially tested but pevcomponents.com will not replace any headlights under warranty due to internal circuit failure caused by usage outside of the rated voltage.
Materials:
These lights are full metal construction, including the bash guard/heatsink on top. Attached to the light is the PETG rail-mount, using an M6 bolt. This may eventually be switched to ASA or another material, but PETG has shown to be sufficiently heat, vibration, and environment resistant.
The mounts that attach to the truck are made out of TPU, and are VERY durable. TPU is an amazing material, and while I may eventually switch from 3D printing for the rail mount, the hanger mount will likely stay printed due to how great they have performed, and how easy it is to modify.
Warranty:
These lights will come with a 90-day warranty from the time of purchase. This includes breakage of the mount, the rail mount, or manufacturer defect of the lights. In the box, all lights will come with two pairs of rail mounts, if they are purchased. In order to redeem a warranty claim, the customer must reach out through the website portal with order number and provide pictures of the defect or breakage. The customer will receive a return shipping label and must return the broken hardware in the box at pevcomponents.com’s discretion.
I believe in my testing and the durability of these lights. They’ve taken a tumble before, and run hundreds of hours without fail, so I stand behind my product.
Processing & Shipping:
As a one-man show who also works full-time, and runs a YouTube channel, I will be setting reasonable shipping and processing limits for any products purchased on the website.
On the website, the shipping policy states that I will only be shipping on Fridays unless otherwise noted. Additionally, all orders with 3D-printed parts or soldering will have a minimum processing time of 3 days. Of course, I will work to pre-print things as much as possible and fulfill faster, but easier to underpromise and overdeliver.
What this means for normal orders, is if you purchase on a Saturday, it will likely not be shipped until the upcoming Friday. Likewise, if you order on Thursday night, it will likely not ship until the following Friday as well.
For any orders purchased this opening week, they will be shipped at the latest NEXT Friday, August 25th.
Thanks for taking the time to read this thread, and I look forward to servicing you as a new vendor. Please help me do my best by providing constructive feedback on the website, products, installation, and other information via PM! The website was created by myself, as well as all of the mounting hardware, designs, etc. I also did the product photography. Some images are missing in the galleries page, but feel free to look at some of the installations that DO have photos! I’m working on getting a customer photos gallery up soon so you guys can show off your builds with my products!
Final thing: Shoutout to my testers for my products in general, as well as those who have put miles on the Big Beem headlights. If you explore the site, you’ll see that other products will be coming in the near future! @bboybowzer @MichaelWA, @haven, @Sobrik3t, JJ Thompson, Jimmy Robinson, @DeadLightning, Ray Belden, @KaramQ, Alex R
Please use this post to discuss the Big Beem headlights! I will be making a general store post later this week, and introducing the rest of the products as I’m ready. I will not be making a pevcomponents account on this forum at this time since I’ve been around for so long, don’t really see the point.
If you are an international customer, please PM me before purchasing so I can walk through it with you. I have not serviced anyone internationally yet so the shipping methods are currently untested.
the wider 184mm versions specifically since they do make smaller trucks that I doubt will have the space to fit anything extra on it