I've seen these particular lights in various outlets and i'm pretty sure that poundland has had these for a while, but i've never made a video about one well, i don't think i made a video about one yet uh, but as this year is very kind of it's Because a covert poundland doesn't have a lot of stock, i thought well, let's take a look at one of these. It is, it is all ground. Mounting light comes with protective film, it's got two leds and uh. The four strips of solar material each strip is about point.

Five volts adds up to about two volts. That's used to charge the battery what's odd about these particular ones is that they have a little inductor and uh step up circuit on them. Actually, on the actual printed circuit board itself, it comes with this stake, i'm pretty sure the previous ones. You could uh actually screw it down, but this one doesn't seem to have that or it could be wrong.

Maybe it is we'll explore it afterwards, but it has a stake, so you can mush it into the ground and visually. Well i'll. Show you what it looks like. I shall turn it on.

I shall take the exposure off and then i shall turn the light off and we'll see what it looks like. It's, not bad. It's, okay, the light is coming back. Watch your eyes.

Let's take it apart at this point. No i'll show you that afterwards because there's something interesting, so i shall pop these screws out and we'll see what batteries. I wonder if they've used a 10 little button cell or if they've used something beefier like a tripoli or double a be quite good. If they've used the latter, these have been available in various forms over time that this thin shim of material, the solar module, a little plastic cover over it just sat into a little recess, is saturn to recess.

Let's see if i can get it out of the recess: oh, it's a decent sized battery, so this system is different from the normal solar lights and there's only two connections coming off these one of these is going via the switch to the positive and the negative Is going to its own dedicated terminal, but one of these terminals here the positive is actually the positive connection to the solar panel. I'm just going to mark that i'm going to mark it positive just in case. I do something terrible and i shall mark that one negative for the battery and this air panel is very familiar because i've had one before which has four leds. I wonder: if did this one come from poundland as well, not really sure, but if we zoom down in this you'll be able to see that uh it has the inductor and the chip on board right.

Tell you what i'm going to see. If i can read this number, oh you know what is that uh? The resin has not stuck to the top of that right. One moment please, i'm going to see if i can find a data sheet in this, so that chip is the qx s521. This is the best i could find online.

I couldn't find a specific data sheet for it, but it's like the classic uh solar garden, light type chip. So here's the led here's the little nickel metal hydride cell in this case. It's a this one values that it's a miserable 150 milliamp hour. That's very small! Is it going to be super light? Yes, that's like these batteries.

You get from ebay, that say, 9 900 milliamp hour, but they're really absolutely light and they're just a fake value. That happens a lot i've not tried buying one recently. I should so here's the solar panel, what they call solar plant here and in daylight, there's a little module in here a little bit of circuitry that measures the voltage from the solar panel, but also in here, there's effectively a diode, so that uh, when the sun Shines uh: it effectively charges this battery. The inductor is 47 micro henry.

In this instance, it's marked four seven zero, four, seven and zero is a multiplier, that's quite a low value. That equates to a higher current when you use a lower value, uh inductor and maybe they've done that, because it's small i'll show you this other one, because it's uh easier to pick up and the bigger by using a small inductor, there's more chance of the resin Going over the top, though it's just kind of surrounded by the resonance wicked around it, as with these leds on both these units, if anything, it might be a good idea, given the top of that chip was exposed, it might be a good idea to drizzle a Bit more resin across it, but here's the operation uh when it it detects. It's dark. This circuit kicks in and effectively it bridges this connection over to the negative, but it does it as a series of high frequency pulses and when it does that this end starts off negative and gets pulled at positive and that end gets pulled negative now.

Normally the battery that, though, it's effectively across the led with inductrin series, very little current is going to flow. It's going to be leakage current or anything else, because the led typically needs at least about two volts before it will start conducting the case of the white leds, it's about 2.4 volts before they start conducting. So this 1.2 volts or a peak of 1.5 volts fully charged. It's not going to go through that.

If you've ever seen these uh solar lights that uh, when it's you hold it out in daylight, the led lights up what's actually happening. There is the solar, the the battery has uh failed and it's gone impedance and what happens is the solar panel is effectively just lighting the led directly that points usually a faulty battery or the little battery switch connection which is uh in sears of it, but in Normal operation, when it wants to boost the voltage it this end, is connected to the positive battery. This end gets pulled negative through the circuitry, and then it turns off and when it turns off, this end goes positive. This end goes negative.

Effectively goes in series with the battery. The battery's already got about 1.2 volts. That then adds a bit more on top and then the current can flow through the led make it light. So the led is actually lighting as a series of very high speed pulses.

That's about all there is to say about these: it's a very minimalist circuit, so there's scope that uh the worst thing that could happen really in these uh. The construction of the unit is fine. It's got loads of drainage holes around the edge if water did get in this theoretically going to find its way out of those the middle area, the circuit board sits in quite snugly and then there's this plastic housing that then cups over the top of that. It's quite well designed but uh, technically speaking up there, i've actually just pulled it off.

That's that's annoying right, okay, so uh that quite easy to break as well. I've just snapped a little strip off the back of that. It's no great deal. You could tack a connection onto that, but also, if you really got desperate, you could probably drill a wee hole in if you wanted to salvage one and uh access the soda joint that way, but uh yeah quite easy to break that's good to know, but the Middle bit has no drainage holes, which means that there is a risk that moisture is going to gradually ingress because, as the heat of the day heats, this up at the air will expand.

And then, if it's raining and then there's a rim of water around the edges, the air cools down again at night it'll suck the water in it's just it happens with lights. It happens all the time uh this one. I could actually swap this one to that. Is it going to be compatible? Is it the same size, let's just shove it in and see what happens? Uh yeah, it does appear to be compatible.

I'm guessing it's probably really from the same manufacturer. It's the sims earlier, but that's a poundlands solar light. It looks all right, that's reasonable construction! You have the option for putting a better battery inside um and it looks okay, just be careful when you take it out, you can snap these wires. I shall try repairing that just because i feel i need to, but there we go poundland's solar garden up light.

It's very simple: it's nice that the electronics are mounted under the resin and protects them. There's no separate circuit board. All that's on the back is the switch which can be shorted out to be honest because they're unreliable when water gets into them and the battery which uh it's fully accessible. So it's a very serviceable.

Looking light.