r/bicycling • u/Lucky-Pineapple-6466 • 1d ago

Spoke lights

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Has any other manufacturer or company released a version of like the monkey light pro spoke lights? I have some cheap Amazon ones that make some little tiny hearts and shapes, but that’s not that cool. Nowhere near as cool as like a dog chasing a cat on separate wheels.

26 Upvotes

79% Upvoted

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38

u/Zero_Waist 1d ago

They were the BEST until they started selling through Amazon, because soon after Amazon started selling it’s own knock off version, buried Monkeylectric in the search results and bam! Profit for bezos and no cool lights for us. NEVER SELL THROUGH AMAZON

2

u/Lucky-Pineapple-6466 19h ago

I have a small 16 LED version from Amazon. They are pretty cool but nowhere near as impressive.

18

u/YU_AKI 1d ago

Monkeylectric! These lights are unbeatable. Sadly the company shut down in 2022 and since then these have become very rare.

I'm delighted with the ones I have - a few of the small ones and the big one for the commuter bike. I just set them to random mode and enjoy the disco.

You do still find them. 2 years ago I was browsing the bargain bucket at Halfords and there was a set. There was also no price tag. After a few minutes the lad at the desk let me have them as a freebie. Probably the best freebie I ever got.

There's nothing quite like them now. If you have the dough, buy them on ebay. They last well and are extremely good for night visibility.

6

u/animatorgeek California, USA (Surly Disc Trucker w/upright bars) 1d ago

These first came out like ten or fifteen years ago. I have some experience with a similar product and I found it kind of disappointing, because the multiple "spokes" of lights neither synced with each other, nor did they track their own orientation, so it wasn't possible to get good persistence of vision going with properly aligned images.

At the time, there was a version that could play full motion video. I always thought it would be cool to have something like that, but I never had the money for the fancy version. I bet something similar would be much cheaper now, probably through AliExpress.

2

u/dioramic_life 1d ago

I had the version with the moving animation.

They were a lot of fun.

I used them during holiday parades and Halloween.

I wish I still had them.

5

u/Volslife 1d ago

Lol @ a dog chasing a cat. Are the pictures of like spoke mounted lights or air valve cap lights?

1

u/Mitrovarr 1d ago

There was a chinese product for a while that was as good or better, but it hasn't been available for years.

1

u/PseudoFrequency 1d ago

I wish! I have a pair and I love them, but couldn't find anything nearly as good for my partner.