Comments on: Scrounging from a Solar Garden Light

By: agw

agw — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 19:03:08 +0000

A couple solutions to make them work again:

1 – Before trashing them, try “zapping” old batteries with a big capacitor in order to melt those small internal crystal deposit that short circuit them in the long run. This applies both to NiCads and NiMh. There’s a lot of information out there on the subject.

2 – Replace batteries and leds with newer ones. Newer batteries have a higher power density and more modern leds should give more light at the same power consumption, or the same light with less current.

I’d also try #2 and making one lamp out of two by putting two solar cells in series or parallel (+ a diode, depends on the circuit). That should add much more juice to charge more powerful batteries.

By: Ayush S

Ayush S — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 03:57:11 +0000

@dfowler, I guess it wouldn’t be as fun. Even though I love to get parts from broken things, when I look at the circuit board I feel somewhat dissatisfied. I would much rather just spend the extra two bucks on buying the parts from mouser than get my desoldering tools out and take it aprart only to realize that the wires (leads?…w/e you call them) are too short to be actually used.

From the picture it looks like you can just pop out the battery and replace it…

But then again…if you don’t need it…*pulls out soldering iron* :p

By: dfowler

dfowler — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 23:39:07 +0000

@Matt
Yes it’s a CdS sensor. I meant to fix that before I published. I was not sure what the correct text was for the sensor so stuck in CCDS. I will fix the text. Thanks for being a “pendantic bore”

By: dfowler

dfowler — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 23:35:59 +0000

@Ayush, where is the fun in that? LOL.. The lens on this light was so deteriorated I do not think it would have passed much light and probably would have shattered if I tried to force it back together. If you take care of these low cost garden lights, I am sure you could replace the batteries and get more life from them. This one had sat outside non functional for maybe a year. It may have been saved but I wanted to see how it was put together.

By: Matt Baker

Matt Baker — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 22:46:20 +0000

“CCDS Light Sensor”. Do you mean CdS sensor?
I would expect Cadmium Sulphide sensors not CCD Charge Coupled Devices.
Sorry Just want to be a pedantic bore. ;+)

Love the site but the nerd (troll) in me needs to have correctness.

Matt B

By: Ayush S

Ayush S — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 12:46:04 +0000

How about replacing the battery?

By: MikeS

MikeS — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 03:25:14 +0000

I’ve taken a few apart also. The problem is usually the batteries are worn out cheap junk.