DIY Solar Garden Light Hack – Solar Battery Charger
Make a solar battery charger using some dollar store path lights. Using 4 cheap dollar store garden lights you can make a very good solar AA or AAA battery charger for one or two batteries.
This is a simple solar garden light hack which gives you a decent solar charger worth about $20 if you were to buy it retail.
43 thoughts on “DIY Solar Garden Light Hack – Solar Battery Charger”
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for god sake buy yourself some proper srewdrivers and wire cutters.
Yes. It was so frustrating watching him work…I thought the same thing,
and then stopped watching coz it was annoying me so much…the no
screwdriver and the way he just chucked things on the table. Not pleasant
to watch.
please do not do this!!! he removed all the voltage control circuits. over
charging is now guaranteed!!! When lithium rechargeable batteries
overcharge explosive things begin to happen. Nickel-cadmium a little less
but they will still pop and explode. At minimum you destroy a perfectly
good battery. Please do not do this unless you plan to keep the control
circuit in place.
+Dana Rider yep, you know it all. I know nothing. all the manufacturer’s
who build dump circuits, voltage regulators in their charger controllers
are just stupid people trying to rip you off. over charging, over
discharging and exceeding the designed C rate are just marketing gimmicks
to make you spend more for fancy do nothing electronics.
maybe I could sell all the dead, exploded and swollen batteries as “did
project batteries”, sounds like their is a whole market out there that
thinks they are perfectly good. come by our store front (texas solar
outfitters) and we will hook you up.
now I’m off to watch all the “fake” over charging video’s on you tube.
+The Do It Yourself World +nbookie must work for energizer. he is a
conditioned instruction manual idiot never finds anything out for himself..
+nbookie I been working with batteries my whole life never have I seen one
explode, you have to be a real idiot to make a battery explode. don’t
believe all the crap they say about batteries so that you keep returning to
the stores like a good conditioned sheep. do your own experiments and you
will quickly find out all the marketing and warnings they tell you are
complete BS and batteries have more potential than what is fed to the
public. A battery will get very hot to the touch before it gets anywhere
close to fizzing out not exploding…unless you hook 120 up to a 1.5 volt
battery…
+nbookie No, the diode is in there. Read the article for details.
+nbookie The control circuit of a solar LED lamp is very basic. It simply
turns the light on or off depending if the sun is shining or not. And it
drives the LED at night. Not much more than that. These solar cells are so
low on current that they are very gentle. You could leave the circuit in
place if you like though. I never harmed a battery doing this. Never.
How do you complete the electrical circuit if there is only a single
battery in place?
its done in parallel.
Removing the circuits is a very bad idea. They stop overcharge and the
batteries from exploding
My only thought is that it could do with a diode to protect the solar cells
when it gets dark. Batteries feeding power to a solar cell that is in dark
is not so good. I expect the omitted circuitry had diode protection built
in.
+mmdirtyworkz Fair enough, must have missed that bit.
You didn’t watch the video then. He did built in the diode…
I have a ton of these old garden lights. I have a new project now
This circuit is basically only feeding in energy without it being able to
stop when it’s full. NimH’s don’t like that, that why all NimH charger have
a cutoff circuit.
Look at the blob in the picture bellow, it’s a chip which tells the
charging to cutoff when the battery is full.
http://i280.photobucket.com/albums/kk164/bigclivedotcom/solar2.jpg
No measurement of the amperes. Probably enough to charge for single 18650
cell in about 2 months.
ya i did the same thing but i mad a 4 much bigger ones that now help run my
power in the basement of my house but i am using them to charge my
batteries so ya it works nice
cool
How many watts is one cell?
So, you didn’t need to add a resistor anywhere along your daisy chain?
You don’t check battery by just sticking a voltmeter to it. It needs to be
under load to actually see if it still can produce the required voltage.
It’s like saying that you can pull a fully loaded cart at 5km/h when the
only test you’ve done is pulling an empty cart.
if you put enough of them together would this compete with bigger solar
panels or would it just defeat the purpose at some point would you
eventually be paying more for these than you would for buying a larger
solar panel because my idea is to put 20 in a circle all filling the circle
and make it hang-able by a hook or lay it on a roof would that work or
would i be spending more money for less mAh / voltage someone answer plz
Excellent info love the do it yourself stuff, and thank you thank you for
the follow along info of the site listed.
+John Gomes use this solar charger
https://plus.google.com/109570723730276172256/posts/96x4BWXJcnx
Resourceful. Might give this a go.
Thanks for uploading.
what is better to have high volts or high amps
+Francisco Sanchez Both
Depends
I have three small solar panels but not from garden light. Do I put a diode
at the positive side after running a pararell connection or do I put the
diode on each of the panels? Which one works best?
Hi man.
I bought like 200 of these cells. I want to connect them all and have some
fun
So… here is my delima. I test these cells under 500w industrial lamp. One
cell maxs out at 2.60Volts.
Now when I connect two of them together. They both read 2.30V
Why is that?
Arnt I suppose to get 5.2V?
help pls.. I need answers lol
+Ryan Walsh Yes, if you connect each indivisual one in series you just
multiply the voltage by the number of panels. The panels will be fine and
you can use small gauge wiring since the current will be so low.
+Stephen Vieira (MultiRotorManiac) I dont even think the cells would be
able to handle that much voltage going through them…
+Stephen Vieira (MultiRotorManiac) 200×2.60Volts. 520 Volts no? I havnt
connected them all yet ordering wire for it.
Well, it all depends on what your application is. With 200 of them, you can
wire them in parralel and in series to get the desired voltage and amperage
needed for your application, for example if you wired each set of 100 in
parralel and then connected the two sets together in series, you would then
have an output of around 5.5v at ~5 amps (depending on light source and
efficiency of the panels). Have fun tinkering!
+Stephen Vieira (MultiRotorManiac) I dont really care about amps with these
cells because they do not produce that much amps. But this is really great
info. Thank you.
$0.99 shipped.
I am not sure if these are better than the ones you got from the dollar
store, I bought some online, here is the description and link. If your
solar panels are a better deal, please let me know, so I can buy some while
they are in stock locally.
“6V 0.6W Solar Panel Module DIY Small Cell Charger For Light Phone
Portable”
http://rover.ebay.com/rover/1/711-53200-19255-0/1?icep_ff3=2&pub=5575137642&toolid=10001&campid=5337742584&customid=&icep_item=301884476406&ipn=psmain&icep_vectorid=229466&kwid=902099&mtid=824&kw=lg
* 0.6W Solar panel Polycrystalline DIY small cell charger
* Polysilicon solar panel 0.6W-0.7W
* Transfer efficiency not less than 17%
* Clear solder joint of positive and negative pole
* Packed with anti deformation PCB , resistant to corrosion e UV, high
transmission EPOXY
– Specifications:
* working voltage: 6V
* Dimension: 80*55*2.5mm
how do you know when the battery are fully charge
+Dana Rider so, the battery says “stop I’m full”? it simple doesn’t charge
anymore. that’s hilarious!!!! please, keep educating us!!!
+nbookie lol it simply doesn’t charge anymore, nbookie you are a idiot you
dont need a computer to hold your hand for everything in life.
What part that
you don’t. he ditched the second most important part.
+clark Grizwalt any type of voltage control that was on the board