Bicycle lights don't do you much good if you forget to bring them or charge them. The wÿnd helmet was designed with that fact in mind, as it features a set of hand-crank-charged lights that you simply pull out and mount on your bike whenever needed.
Currently the subject of a Kickstarter campaign, the British-designed wÿnd (pronounced as in, "wind it up") is for the most part much like any other EN-1078 safety-certified general-purpose cycling helmet.
In the back, however, there's a docked white headlight and red tail light, plus a fold-down dynamo crank. Flipping up the crank and turning it at a moderate pace for 30 seconds should reportedly generate enough charge in the lights' 80-mAh lithium batteries to keep them running for 30 minutes.
And yes, you can crank longer for longer runtimes if you really want to, up to a maximum of about five to 10 hours of illumination depending on output mode. A column of LEDs between the two lights indicates the charge level.
Once the lights are sufficiently charged, you just pull them out of the helmet and mount them on the handlebars and seat post (or wherever else you want) via their rubber straps. They can be set to two flashing patterns, and put out a maximum of 50 lumens each – so they're definitely "be seen," not "see the road" lights.
The helmet itself is claimed to tip the scales at 300 g (10.6 oz), with each light adding about 20 g for a total-package figure of around 340 g (12 oz).
Assuming the wÿnd helmet reaches production, a pledge of £37 (about US$50) will get you one. We're told that the planned retail price is $89.99.
Sources: Kickstarter, wÿnd
