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Sombra has a lampshade for your tail light

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Sombra-on-a-bike

Night-time cyclists everywhere are thankful that LED tail lights have gotten extremely bright in the last 10 years. So bright though, that at close range they can be distracting, or even painful to look at.

Sombra is a bicycle tail light diffuser. It makes your tail light visible from any direction and reduces the bright spot effect of a high-powered LED. Inspired by a ride in London where inventor Offer Canfi was blinded by a passing cyclist’s rear light, he then when he went home relaxed with a book. While reading, he noticed the lampshade on his lamp, and voila! An idea was born…

Sombra-Lampshade
The Sombra is made from a translucent polypropylene, and should fit most bikes on the market by attaching to their seatpost clamp. By diffusing the light through the plastic, it makes the bike visible from all sides, as well as helps others gauge your speed and distance from them since they do not have the bright light shining in their eyes.

Lampshade-Try-#-6 Lampshade-Try-#-47

Through the process of developing it, Canfi moved from paper and aluminum to the polypropylene that is used for the final product. Even after finding the right material, several different shapes were tried to see what worked best.

Sombra

One of the coolest things, the Sombra is low impact, meaning it’s locally made from 100% recyclable material and shipped in a regular envelope anywhere in the world.

As with all good ideas lately, the Sombra is on Indiegogo for the next 28 days, starting at just $5 for a single one.

SombraCycle.com

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Slow Joe Crow
Slow Joe Crow
9 years ago

That actually looks like a sensible solution to real problem for a change. Any change of engineering a dimmer switch for 300 Lumen headlights next?

Gunnstein
Gunnstein
9 years ago

Good idea – second best thing to not buying a point light source in the first place. Good rear lights have built in light diffuser/enlargers, and also a retroreflector.

Veganpotter
Veganpotter
9 years ago

No idea why you’d buy a rear spotlight. They tend to be much more expensive and not work as well. I guess if you’re dumb enough to buy one, you can buy this too and basically make it work like the cheaper light you should have bought from the beginning. You’ll still probably have to charge it often rather than have AAA batteries that last practically forever

Rube Goldberg
Rube Goldberg
9 years ago

I’m embarrassed…this is about the stupidest most inelegant solution looking for a problem to disgrace my name.

The sole purpose of a taillight is …TO BE SEEN… especially in a city environment, why would you want to disguise the light? This is a mickey mouse band-aid for a non-problem. If you want a less obtrusive (why??) light, than just get one of the many tiny (worthless) $5 lights off ebay. Dazzling an inattatentive driver..IS THE POINT of a light.

I guess they assume all the designers of the powerful lights never heard of a diffuser or instruct users to aim the lights downward if excessive brightness(?)
was a problem.

Greg
Greg
9 years ago

(deleted)

Aleph Beeblebrox
Aleph Beeblebrox
9 years ago

Wow how laughing oW!

I can rig my own for the cost of a milk jug deposit. 4 or 5 of them. Ooooof coarse I don’t buy silly lights like the one pictured. I have a preference for oscillating LED’s run on 4 AA batteries.

Ace
Ace
9 years ago

I have used rear blinkies for MANY years and I’m always looking for the brightest one with disposable batteries and I would NEVER consider dimming it (and to be quite honest) I really don’t care if drivers are annoyed by it as long as it keeps me safe.

Ben
Ben
9 years ago

You might care when your extreme tail light blinds/disorients a driver and you get brushed. This is a good idea. Not everyone needs it, but some mounts don’t allow optimal angles for lights. Sitting on someone’s wheel while their megaflash 5000 is going epileptic is also highly annoying. Drivers can see/be seen better with their brights on, but its not courteous.

ginsu
ginsu
9 years ago

I dunno, there’s A LOT of cars with obnoxiously bright headlights AND tail lights, so I don’t see what’s wrong with competing with them. Obviously, if we reduced overall light pollution and glare in cities than an invention like this would be more appropriate. I think this would be nice for a small town or city w/o a lot of traffic or congestion.

Matty
Matty
9 years ago

Diffusers are a great idea. You’re not reducing the light output, you’re softening it over a larger area. Arguably an easier object for a driver to see than a pinprick of light, and exactly how car lights are designed.

You can do the same by cutting a hole in a ping pong ball though…

Psi Squared
Psi Squared
9 years ago

Diffusers aren’t necessarily a great idea. Granted a theoretical argument can be made that light output (if measured in total power) is not reduced, the reality is that irradiance (intensity) will be reduced making the distance over which the light is effective less, possibly significantly less. There is no free lunch in optics, even if those optics are diffusers.

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