Home made led light + battery charger.

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Prepper
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Joined: Fri Nov 30, 2012 2:39 pm

Home made led light + battery charger.

Post by Prepper » Sun Dec 09, 2012 9:44 am

Hey.

This is gonna be a bit personal so if you don't wanna to anything personal stop now.

2 months ago I lost my son I a accident with a train and I have put a lantern on site buy the tracks. Instead of a real candle I chose a led light replica that flickers like a real candle. The problem is that I have to change the batteries ever 2 weeks. And I really don't want to go out on the tracks coz of the danger. So I want to build a solar powered charger that work like a garden light. It's of during the day, charging. And at night it led up. I have put 4 solar panels from garden lights I parallel and tested without battery's, shining a light and got the led to light even thou one would think that it shouldn't be lit and only charging and when I connect the battery's the led lit up, but when I move it into the light it won't close the led.

What am I doing wrong.
I'll post a drawing showing how I want it. And I anyone can,please tell me what I need to do to make it work.
And maybe I can post a video showing how I've connected it now.
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techman
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Re: Home made led light + battery charger.

Post by techman » Mon Dec 10, 2012 9:33 am

Hi,

I am terribly sorry for your loss.

The easiest way to make this work is to use a complete solar garden/path light and just cut the wire leading to the LED and then run wires from there to your flickering candle LED. Run the wires directly into the battery compartment of the flickering candle, not modifying that at all. Do not modify your path light either. Just run the wires. Leave all circuits intact.

The path light circuit will do its job and charge the batteries during the day. At night the batteries will power up the flickering candle.

It should work perfectly.

Please let me know if it helps. I will happily assist you in getting this to work.

Prepper
Posts: 5
Joined: Fri Nov 30, 2012 2:39 pm

Re: Home made led light + battery charger.

Post by Prepper » Wed Dec 12, 2012 5:38 pm

techman wrote:Hi,

I am terribly sorry for your loss.

The easiest way to make this work is to use a complete solar garden/path light and just cut the wire leading to the LED and then run wires from there to your flickering candle LED. Run the wires directly into the battery compartment of the flickering candle, not modifying that at all. Do not modify your path light either. Just run the wires. Leave all circuits intact.

The path light circuit will do its job and charge the batteries during the day. At night the batteries will power up the flickering candle.

It should work perfectly.

Please let me know if it helps. I will happily assist you in getting this to work.


This is where I'm at now:
Part 1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7om192VQml8&sns=em

Prepper
Posts: 5
Joined: Fri Nov 30, 2012 2:39 pm

Re: Home made led light + battery charger.

Post by Prepper » Wed Dec 12, 2012 5:38 pm

Part 2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvUHDupx_ww&sns=em

Please watch and see if I've done it right. :)

techman
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Re: Home made led light + battery charger.

Post by techman » Sat Dec 15, 2012 10:17 am

I think maybe your desk lamp is too dim to turn off the circuit. On these solar path lights, the sun shining on the solar panel turns off the LED light circuit and allows the batteries to be charged. If the sun (lamp) is dim, the circuit lights the LED.

Try this outdoors and see if your LED is still flickering constantly. If it is then recheck your wiring. The original path light circuit should remain intact. And you should only need one solar panel, or at most two. Try it with one first with the original circuit fully intact and simply connect your flickering LED where the original LED was.

Let me know how it goes. I have a couple of these flickering lamps. I may try this myself just to see how it turns out.

Prepper
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Joined: Fri Nov 30, 2012 2:39 pm

Re: Home made led light + battery charger.

Post by Prepper » Mon Dec 17, 2012 10:41 am

Another try this time with rechargeable battery's. it kinda look like its working. Need to test it in sunlight though.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5NrqqLW360&sns=em

Solar98632
Posts: 246
Joined: Tue Jan 15, 2013 3:10 pm

Re: Home made led light + battery charger.

Post by Solar98632 » Fri Jan 18, 2013 8:07 pm

see if any of this helps:
http://www.thediyworld.com/forum/viewto ... =21&t=1648
I am thinking you may be pumping to much into that one IC thus causing it to shut down.
you will need 2 lamps for that circuit and you will need a second one of those Ic boards if you have it .
if all you need is that one flickering light then one panel should do the trick unless you trying to power a device, then that is where the complicated set up begins.

Solar98632
Posts: 246
Joined: Tue Jan 15, 2013 3:10 pm

Re: Home made led light + battery charger.

Post by Solar98632 » Sat Jan 19, 2013 11:40 pm

Tech man, I have 2 Odd lamps that were purchased last summer, the weird thing is with out a battery they will light the LED with out the battery, even on a cloudy day. Not sure the reason on this. but it is weird. I guess the good thing would be If you have a dark room that needs lit during the day? I guess one could take the top half of the panel and place it out side in the light and then take the lower half and leave the battery out and one would have a 12 hour light for there dark closet ?

hmm I have a flicker candle LED that I got from the dollar store.
It has a 2 volt button battery that came with the thing. I am thinking of converting a solar LED from a garden Lamp with this Flickering Cnadle LED. Should be simple and should make for a good Halloween Lantern..

Oh, CFL bubls suck when it comes to testing panels... They really do Suck.

techman
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Re: Home made led light + battery charger.

Post by techman » Tue Jan 22, 2013 8:46 am

Nothing beats the real sun for testing solar. But yes, plain old normal light bulbs work better than CCFL.

I am going to be making one of these flickering conversions myself soon. Maybe even this week if I get time. I have the parts now. All dollar store stuff.

It is interesting that your solar path lights work without the battery. I am sure there is a good explanation, but I do not have enough coffee in me yet to figure it out. The transistor turns on the LED with there is no sunlight on the solar cell. That part is simple. The the sun shines, the transistor turns off the LED and the battery charges. But remove the battery, hmmm....

techman
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Re: Home made led light + battery charger.

Post by techman » Tue Feb 12, 2013 11:25 am

I have been thinking about this project for a while now and decided to try it out for myself.

I opened up a solar path light from the dollar store and cut off the LED. The rest of the circuit and wiring I left intact.

This little light happened to have a 2/3 AA battery inside it. Not that it really matters, but now I have a bunch of these batteries left over from all the projects I have been making with these path lights.

Anyway, I took a dollar store package of flickering LED candle lights and opened one of them up. There is a button cell 3 volt battery inside. I figured that since the LED in the path light needs 3.2 volts to run, it should be a perfect match. There is a voltage booster inside the path light circuit to boost the 1.5 volt battery up to the necessary 3.2 volts for the white LED light.

I hooked up the flickering LED light to the place on the path light circuit board where I cut off the original LED. The flickering LED turned on, but did not flicker. The light did turn on and off though when light shined on the solar cell, just as it did originally with the built in LED.

But with the flickering LED light not flickering, there must be something I need to change. Maybe the battery is not charged up enough to run the little candle circuit properly. Maybe the aligator clips are a bit too rusty.

I will charge up one of these little batteries and try again to see what happens. And I will look for some better aligator clamps.

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