I just found out that the reelight bike lights are in the stores now.
They’re small LED lights powered by a current induced in a coil in the lamp by magnets attached to the spokes.
They won’t work for unicycles (hence the post is here in JC), but you could probably semi-easily make something similar for unis.
The article I read about them said they consume “1/5000 of the pedalling power” so they won’t slow you down much.
I think they’re pretty cool. I have yet to try them out, but the idea is cool anyway.
All these sproducts have one problem in common, they stop when you stop i.e. you get a car up your arse when you’re stopped at the lights. Ok now it wouldn’t be that hard to make these things charge a small battery which discharges when you stop pedalling, but I don’t think they’ve done that, which is a shame.
If I where to build one I’d experiment with letting the thing charge a capacitor while riding so that it would give maybe 2 minutes of light after you stopped. My current taillight works that way. A backup powersource would add alittle to the size and the cost, but I also think it would have been worth it.