Update!

Our move to Colorado went well and we're settling into the new environment quite well! The riding around Boulder, both road and mountain, is absolutely gorgeous and I've been getting in some super fun miles. There are a few groups in the area that do really fun weekly night rides and it's been great to get out and meet new folks and enjoy the spectacular Colorado riding.

During the course of our big move I had some time to ponder the future of Tarsier Lighting Systems. Over the past few years I've really enjoyed developing new and efficient lighting technologies for cycling use. Consistent advances in LED efficiency made it possible for me to stay far ahead of larger manufacturers through early adoption and implementation of the latest and greatest emitters, optics, and electronics available. We had a great run and sold more lights than I ever expected.

Recently we got to a point where I had to make some tough decisions. I've put a lot of my personal time and effort into developing these lights, and it has been very rewarding to see them get used, abused and enjoyed. Unfortunately, I'm sad to say that I have decided to stop producing lights. Tarsier Lighting Systems was a concept with tremendous potential, but without a significant injection of capital it would have been impossible to grow the company to a sustainable and profitable level. I had a blast and learned a lot about running a company, logistics, management, product development, and too many other topics to list. It was fun, challenging, and very rewarding but it is time for me to move on.

Our move to Colorado came at an excellent time. I've just finished my engineering degree and I'm really looking forward to exploring all the options that are in front of me. There are lots of engineering, design, and manufacturing jobs in the greater Denver area and I'm officially on the job hunt. Ideally I can find a position that will allow me to use my technical and creative abilities to do something cool. There's a bunch of alternative energy action in the area as well as some top tier bicycle and component manufacturers and I'm confident that I'll find something exciting.

I have to extend a tremendous "Thank You!" to all the riders and shops in North Florida and throughout the Southeast that spread the word about Tarsier Lights, especially Paul at Bikes & More, Lex and Joe at Villin Cycleworks and Mike and Gus at Mr. Goodbike. I really appreciate everyone's unwavering support and positive word-of-mouth advertising, thanks to you I never had to go crazy with marketing and I still sold lights as fast as I could make them.

A big thanks also to the TT crew in Gainesville and their unreal urban trail network. You guys continually inspire me! You're some of the best test riders and friends I could imagine having and the TT rides present some incredibly demanding test conditions for bicycle electronics. If you guys can't break it no one can! I miss you all.

For all you guys that have lights that I built, don't worry... I'm more than happy to help you out if you ever have an issue with anything! Just fill out the contact form on the website (which will remain up) and I'll get right back with you. If for some reason the site is down or I don't respond in a timely manner shoot me an email at my personal address: stevez743 at gmail.com

Thanks for the great years!

Steve Ziegler

P.S. I do have a few parts left to build Occams, so if you really, really want one I could probably be convinced to fire up the soldering iron and put one together. Also, if you have a really interesting project that you want LED lights developed for, give me a shout, I might be up for doing some one-off stuff.

New Adventures on the Horizon

Right,

Sorry its been so long since the first blog entry!

The initial run of Occams is just about gone and I've been chipping away at our latest project, the Spartan. This light is a completely different beast than our first product, although it shares much of the design philosophy and is going to be machined by the same folks. The Spartan is... well... simply the smallest, brightest light we could come up with. It's designed to have significantly more output than any commercially available LED light system while still offering long runtime and intuitive operation. Equipped with hyper-efficient cool white emitters it will pump out around 2200 lumens, or if you're into quality and quantity our detail-enhancing neutral white emitters will be capable of over 1900 lumens.

The Spartan is controlled by a fully programmable user interface that features 5 levels of output while providing active temperature monitoring and low battery warning functions. The preliminary specs for this light will be posted on our main site after I get some more testing done.

Here's a rendering of the current design revision:

On a different note, we're moving! My wife scored a post-doc position at CU in Boulder, Colorado, and we're packing up and heading west! Stay tuned for updates...

Website Launch!

Hello World!

We've finally stopped riding bikes and building lights for long enough to patch our website together! Check it out! We're still working on some of the pages, but there's info on our premier product, the Tarsier Occam, which is now available to the general public!

WTF? Tarsier Occam?
... What the heck kind of name is that?

Well...here's the scoop.

Tarsiers are strange little primates from Southeast Asia that have huge eyes, incredible night vision and leap from tree to tree snatching insects to eat from the midnight sky. Needless to say we were looking for a good name for our new bike lighting company and these guys kinda kept popping up.

Occam represents the legendary "Occam's Razor" principle, a vital component or our design philosophy. Paraphrased, Occam's Razor states that the simplest solution is usually the best. As we experimented with ways to build dynamo powered bike lights we found ourselves slowly moving away from complex designs towards smaller, lighter, simpler and more versatile solutions that had fewer components and greater reliability.

There you have it, silly name explained. Here's what you really want to know about our light:

The Occam represents a new generation of solid state lighting that can be driven with either a dynamo or batteries. From a dynamo hub the Occam puts out roughly 275 lumens of brilliant white light while drawing the same 3W load as traditional dynamo lights. Our custom reflector focuses the light from a CREE MC-E multi-die LED through an anti-reflection coated glass lens to make sure that as much light as possible makes it out of the front of the light.

Whether you're commuting, touring, mountain biking or endurance racing, the Tarsier Occam provides a versatile option for the serious night cyclist.