The choice of Poundland lights has been disappointing this year so far. That's not surprising, given the logistics problems caused by the pandemic.
This is a light they've had for a few years, but the style has evolved from time to time. It's very effective, especially with the neat bit of bubbled plastic light-guide.
The circuitry has the extra components required to use a colour changing LED, although it runs the LED at such a low current that the lower voltage red LED tends to dominate colours that include red. (magenta, yellow and white)
It's actually worth getting these just for the PCB to fix other lights. But you can also hack these to make them single colour, two different colour LEDs wired in series, or add an LED socket as in this video.
If you enjoy these videos you can help support the channel with a dollar for coffee, cookies and random gadgets for disassembly at:-
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Or alternatively:-
http://www.bigclive.com/coffee.htm
This also keeps the channel independent of YouTube's advertising algorithms allowing it to be a bit more dangerous and naughty.
#ElectronicsCreators
This is a light they've had for a few years, but the style has evolved from time to time. It's very effective, especially with the neat bit of bubbled plastic light-guide.
The circuitry has the extra components required to use a colour changing LED, although it runs the LED at such a low current that the lower voltage red LED tends to dominate colours that include red. (magenta, yellow and white)
It's actually worth getting these just for the PCB to fix other lights. But you can also hack these to make them single colour, two different colour LEDs wired in series, or add an LED socket as in this video.
If you enjoy these videos you can help support the channel with a dollar for coffee, cookies and random gadgets for disassembly at:-
https://www.patreon.com/bigclive (extra streams and channel interaction)
Or alternatively:-
http://www.bigclive.com/coffee.htm
This also keeps the channel independent of YouTube's advertising algorithms allowing it to be a bit more dangerous and naughty.
#ElectronicsCreators
Julia inlet
The amount of hate you and others have for lead free solder makes me wonder if I’m magically lucky… it works very well for me with my baby USB soldering iron (which is supposed to be 8W but only hits like 5-6W, lol)
Great idea for boarding handles on a boat or towel racks, you’d enjoy glow in the dark paint,I use it for a waterbase varnish
Clive, how come you don’t just bend the leads to hold the components whilst you solder them ?
Can anyone tell me what voltage the 100 nano farad capacitor is??? is it 2.7v?
im trying to convert a solar light to a colour changing one….but cant findthe right capacitor value…
Hi can you please tell me where you got your molex connector from as I am doing Ride The Lights in Blackpool & want to put lot's of lights rund the bike thanks
How many of these (salvaged) solar cells would be needed to build a phone charger and how, can you make a project like that…?
Geez, the battery size in those is ridiculous, most I buy here in Australia at least have a AAA or a half AAA size, the battery in that light looks nearly as small as a button cell.
It's true that the switch is usually the first thing to fail from rusting, better designs have a rubber cover over the switch so moisture doesn't get in there. Then the second failure is the battery itself, the battery can be replaced. The other components however typically don't appear to fail from my experience, so they don't need replacing.
I like the bubble glass effect in the light you have there, there are some here in Australia like this also, however if the material is plastic I don't want to buy it, because the clear plastic turns a gross murky colour after not too long from the sunlight. Therefore I try to buy solar lights that have glass instead of clear plastic.
A good solar light may cost 5-6 dollars instead of the cheap 1 dollar ones, but the good solar light will be better looking and made of glass and such and can easily be repaired endlessly. There are even some large ones here I have that use AA batteries, which is excellent.
I agree with you also, the white light is so damn boring, virtually any colour is more interesting than the white light.
The standard colour you can get are the red, green and the blue. Out of those the blue is possibly the best, green being ok, and red just looking too harsh.
However you can buy a wider variety of led's outside of these, one particular neat colour to buy is purple, this is probably the best looking night time colour.
Of course making sure to not buy 5v ones, but to use the 3-3.6v ones. They call them ultraviolet, but they are actually more like just violet, being around 390nm etc.
You can get the other ones that are not based on the material itself, but it's like a white LED encased in a purple plastic, but I find those are weaker in their light output, because they are getting the purple via absorbing a lot of the other spectrums and allowing the purple inside the white to pass through, which means a lot of the light energy is lost.
But blue is probably the most easily available, and cheapest good looking colour to use. I like your idea of using that connector, so you can just swap them out easily.
I also take apart my lights to check the components, they nearly always have the green inductor, the little oscillating integrated circuit. I have seen some that only have those 2 components, yet a lot of other ones have the power diode in there, and a capacitor. I also have one that has a zener diode inside it, instead of a power diode.
So each light is a little different, but it's essentially doing the same thing.
Usually the most components, the better obviously, it's a more intelligent circuit. These additional components are usually to control the direction of flow better, and to not allow backflow. Obviously commercial solar panels have their own inbuilt power diode, but these tiny cheap panels on these solar lights don't have any such thing inbuilt.
Not exactly a lava lamp, is it?
Are the batteries welded to the tabs or do they clip in?
Have you ever tried one of those little laser diodes in those lights? I know I used to shine them into clear statutes of elephants for my late wife, she loved the effect as the laser sort of bounced around the statue making it seem almost alive.
Well, I'm going to be busy for a while now. Dismantling all of the old LED solar lights my parents keep picking up (they're in their 80s and ocasionally forget that they picked up the same things a month earlier. To be fair, so do I and I'm significantly younger!) and clearly defining "points of interest" in the garden – the edge of the pond springs to mind for some reason…
Nice to know I'm not the only one who uses scissors to ream out holes to make them bigger. I'm a lazy ass and it just saves the faff of dragging out the battery drill and looking for the right size drill bit, which inevitably is still in the hand drill with my lock picking kit somewhere (or accidently secreted under the bed or a table, or the kitchen cupboard that I forgot to replace the kick board on). ..Hooray for Scissors!!