Patent Application
20180162498
This invention relates generally to illumination systems for sporting equipment, and, in particular, to modular illumination systems for the aesthetic and functional use of watersports boards such as kiteboards, wakeboards, paddleboards and waterskis in low-light conditions.
Several watersport activities allow a rider to ride the surface of a body of water atop a board that the rider stands on, for example, kiteboarding, wakeboarding, surfing and windsurfing. These sports, hereafter referred to as “water boardsports” are conventionally enjoyed in the daytime, but favorable conditions and time constraints sometimes compel sportsmen and sportswomen to ride after sundown.
However, many water board-sports involve the rider being separated from the board when he or she falls. As the light fades, it becomes more difficult to find a floating board and the risk of being struck by boats or other sportsmen and sportswomen greatly increases. For many people, the prospect of riding at night is not attractive enough to warrant the purchase of boards that are purpose-built for night riding, but such a rider may be compelled to upgrade their non-illuminated boards in order to protect themselves and their equipment.
To illuminate a board inexpensively, some riders will attach chemiluminescent glow sticks or other inexpensive light sources to their boards. While this can be helpful if the board remains upright, the board can also flip upside down and hide the light when the rider falls. When the light source is under-water, turbidity in the water and internal reflection can make the emitted light invisible over a short distance. Attaching the light source to a tether may allow the light source to move out from underneath the board, but does not guarantee this, and also allows the light source to strike the rider and drag in the water, creating a nuisance and potentially adding drag. Attaching a glow-stick or other generic light source to the bottom of a board almost invariably increases the hydrodynamic drag of the board, compromising the board's performance.
Water boardsports also generally require riders to have their equipment in a state of readiness hours or days before they actually ride. The wind or wave conditions, can appear suddenly and last for a short time, leaving little time to prepare before the rider begins the activity. For wakeboarding, riders often must drive for hours to the lake or river where the riding happens, meaning that the equipment must be made ready before the rider leaves home.
Accordingly, there is a need for an illumination device that can be easily installed on non-illuminated watersport boards that provides significant light both above and below the board without disrupting the hydrodynamic performance of the board, and which makes a floating board easily visible to an observer swimming a distance away. Additionally, there is a need for such an illumination device that can emit a sustained light intensity on both sides of the board when switched on, but which may be prepared hours or weeks before the activity takes place and can be switched off to maintain a state of readiness when the board is not in use.
The present invention is directed to a system that combines a battery-powered board-top light and a light-emitting fin, which are affixed to each other with fasteners that extend through holes in a watersport board, where the board-top light powers the light-emitting fin.
The threaded fasteners may also convey power from the top module to the fin module, and the system may additionally comprise advantageous elements such as light sensors, calculation and indication of sustainable on-time, various colors, corrosion-inhibiting sealing surfaces, multiple illumination states, favorable luminous intensity distributions and robust sealing strategies.
In a further preferred embodiment, an inductive charging module may be provided to recharge the battery using inductive coupling so as to avoid the use of connectors with metallic contacts that may be susceptible to corrosion. The inductive charging module may preferably feature structures or geometry that retain a charging connector in an aligned position with a receiver coil.
Various objects, features, aspects, and advantages of the present invention will become more apparent from the following detailed description of preferred embodiments of the invention, along with the accompanying drawings in which like numerals represent like components.
All publications mentioned herein are incorporated herein by reference to disclose and describe the methods and/or materials in connection with which the publications are cited. The publications discussed herein are provided solely for their disclosure prior to the filing date of the present application. Nothing herein is to be construed as an admission that the present invention is not entitled to antedate such publication by virtue of prior invention. Further, the dates of publication provided may be different from the actual publication dates, which may need to be independently confirmed.
While several preferred embodiments of the invention are shown and described herein, such embodiments are provided by way of example only. Numerous variations, changes, and substitutions will now occur to those skilled in the art without departing from the invention. It should be understood that various alternatives to the embodiments of the invention described herein may be employed in practicing the invention.
Unless defined otherwise, all technical and scientific terms used herein have the same meaning as commonly understood by one of ordinary skill in the art to which this invention belongs. Although any methods and materials similar or equivalent to those described herein can also be used in the practice or testing of the present invention, a limited number of the exemplary methods and materials are described herein.
Watersport board: a thin, substantially flat, water-impervious object that supports a rider by generating hydrodynamic lift when it is propelled across the surface of a body of water. A watersports board is not self-propelled, and has a top surface, bottom surface, and edges, but does not have tall side-walls, as does a boat or canoe. A watersports board's surfaces may not be exactly flat, commonly including one or more modest curvatures such as rocker and camber. Examples include surfboards, wakeboards, kiteboards, and sailboards.
Board: watersport board
Top: taken in the reference frame of the watersport board, indicating the broad surface of the watersport board facing away from the water and designed to contact the rider.
Bottom: taken in the reference frame of the watersport board, indicating the broad surface of the watersport board designed to interact with the water.
Fin: A thin, elongate, streamlined structure that extends from an object and guides the movement of that object through water.
Switchably connected: configured to permit an exchange of power, data, or control signals, but wherein this exchange may be repeatedly interrupted and re-established.
Electrically Connected: referring to two devices that are configured to exchange power, data, or signals. This term does not preclude additional devices situated between the two connected devices in the power/data/signal path.
Sandwiched: describing a physical arrangement in which a first and second object are situated directly opposite to each other with at least a portion of a third object between the first and second objects.
Push-button: an electro-mechanical device that converts a physical force into an electrical control signal.
Non-directional: not having a dominant directionality.
Sealing face: a physical surface that presses against another physical surface and in doing so forms a barrier to fluids.
Substantially within: at least partially within, but not necessarily wholly within.
The translucent fin 104 comprises a translucent body material 105.
The illumination system further comprises an energy transfer coupling 114 that transfers energy from the battery 109 in the board-top light 103 to the translucent fin 104, thereby illuminating the translucent fin 104. The energy transfer coupling 114 may be energized or de-energized by the interface switch 110, thus allowing a user 7 to begin or cease emission of light from both the board-top light 103 and the translucent fin 104 simultaneously. Energy can be conveyed from the board-top light 103 to the translucent fin 104 through the watersport board 1 in many ways, for example fluorescence of the fin caused by emission of UV light from the board-top light 103.
In another preferred embodiment of the illumination system, the addition of a microcontroller 117 allows for more features regarding control and charging. A program 260 stored in the microcontroller's program memory allows the microcontroller 117 to control the transfer of energy between the energy storage elements and the light-emitting components in response to input from a sensor or modulation of a switch. There are a variety of sensors that would be desirable for an interactive illumination system, for example a light sensor.
In some embodiments of the illumination system, the battery 109 is non-removeable and must be recharged. There are many advantages to using a non-removeable battery, for example environmental friendliness, lower cost to the user in the long-term and a waterproof housing that does not require repeatable sealing mechanisms. Any method for driving a current could be used to recharge a non-removeable battery, for example a plug with conductive elements or inductive charging.
In another preferred embodiment, a light-emitting fin 204 comprises a fin body material 205 and a second light-emitting component 212, which can be energized to illuminate the fin. A board-top light 203 comprises a waterproof container 208, battery 209, first light-emitting component 211, and interface switch 210. The board-top light 203 and light-emitting fin 204 sandwich the watersport board 201, and are in physical contact and mechanically bound together by at least two fasteners (a first threaded fastener 206 and a second threaded fastener 207) that pass through holes 2 in the watersport board 201.
In this embodiment, the second light-emitting component 212 in the light-emitting fin 204 is switchably connected to the battery 209 in the board-top light 203 through a first electrically-conductive path 231 and a second electrically-conductive path 232, so that the battery 209 energizes the second light-emitting component 212 to emit light. The interface switch 210 can be arranged to energize and de-energize both the first light-emitting component 211 and the second light-emitting component 212 in response to modulation of the interface switch 210.
The first electrically-conductive path 231 and second electrically-conductive path 232 can take many forms, for example wires passing through a hole 2 in the watersport board 201, energy passing through conductive fasteners or an inductive coupling.
When a watersports board is lost in low light during a watersports activity, the owner must quickly locate his or her board. The owner may swimming in the water, and therefore may be at eye level with his or her board. Further difficulty is introduced because, once lost, the owner cannot control the orientation of their board in the water. Therefore, it is important that the three-dimensional distribution of the light being emitted by the present illumination system is as large as possible. The half power beam angle is well known in the art of light emitting devices, and is a measurement of the spatial distribution of luminous intensity around a light source with respect to the geometric center axis of the light emitting device. As shown in
A microcontroller is shown in
The microcontroller 117, 217 may also be used to report the amount of time that the light can be sustained. This is a particularly important piece of information to a rider riding in the dark. An unexpected exhaustion of the light system battery could create a hazardous situation. Further, a rider will require time to reach safety before battery exhaustion occurs. The various illumination states such as 263 and 264 may consume the battery energy at different rates, so a calculation of time may be advantageous over a reporting of battery level. As one implementation,
Conduction through Threaded Fasteners
Sealing Face between Fin and Fasteners
A sealing face 255 may be advantageously incorporated in the design to mitigate corrosion of the threaded fasteners 206, 207 and the electrical contacts 251, 253. It is well-known that watersport boards are used in corrosive environments. Electrically energized metals are particularly susceptible to accelerated corrosion in the presence of salt-water. While the fasteners may be replaced, the contacts 251, 253 may not be replaceable, so their protection may be highly advisable. Sealing face 255 may be the surface of an elastic part, such as a rubber o-ring, or it may be any geometry that fits against the threaded fasteners without gaps. One successful method of constructing this sealing face is to mold the fin with a threaded fastener held inside the mold. The geometry of the threads will be accurately captured in the fin body material 205. If the body material is hydrophobic or water repellant, water ingress may be blocked with this manner of construction.
In addition to the first 211 and second 212 light-emitting components, a third light-emitting component 213 of a different light color than 211 is shown connected to the circuit board, 218. Light-emitting component 211 gives the board-top light the ability to produce multi-color lighting and color mixing. Of course, this strategy is not limited to only one additional light-emitting component. A fourth, fifth, sixth, and more light-emitting components may be added to achieve a number of advantages including, but not limited to: color depth, greater brightness, more uniform light distribution, patterns. The availability of multiple colors is particularly helpful for producing indications for the rider 7 of the light's status. For example, a low-battery warning may be communicated with illumination of a red light-emitting component.
All of the above advantages apply as well to the first embodiment, so
The ambient light sensing functionality described above, applies as well to the first embodiment as it does to the second.
This application claims the benefit of U.S. Provisional Application No. 62/264,839, filed Dec. 8, 2015, which application is incorporated herein by reference.
