Solar Light

How to make a cool nightlight from a solar garden light.

Step 1 Home Depot

I went to Home Depot and bought a 4 pak of Landscape Solar Lights from Hampton Bay. It cost about $24.

Comments

[crippledeath]

i saw them at homdepot i was going to buy them and do the same thing very good simple and cheap

[botronics]

That looks like the same one I did an autopsy on. I made a schematic of it and some ideas of what to do with it:"Garden Light autopsy"
The lights are cheap and fun.

[chibipowered]

YES listen to andrew he knows what he's talking about with the nimhs!!! The nicds are the old style cell phone type that if they aren't drained all the way before recharging, they won't recharge all the way.

[PCvsMac]

OK Cool. You mentioned as a battery pack? I decided how to do that do that, and then I noticed you had three wires coming from the solar panel. How would I wire this in positive/negative terms? (for instance, would I combine black & blue together to get negative, and use the yellow as positive?

[!Andrew_Modder!]

oh, make sure to replace thos crappy @$$ NiCd batterys with some good NiMh ones :-)

[Lancealator]

i put mine inside a window that doesnt get any direct sunlight and it never charges we dont have any windows that face the sun so it really stinks it never gets charged unless i put it out side which i dont want to do i was just wondering if they all require direct sunlight

[calikoala]

try locating the sun receptor away from the lamp so that it can be placed where it will get sun and run a thin wire back to the batteries

[netxtc]

Great one!....I just thought of something...how about using a couple of these mounted to my fishtank--charged by my house lights and on at night when dark?... Thanks again.

[jameso]

are the batteries NiMH?

[curious.jp]

I think someone else did a similar project her.

Yeah, check out Homemade Sun Jar for something similar. Your carafe looks nice though!

[jameso]

could you take apart the lights and just use them to charge batteries or at least the batteries that came with them and use them with different electronics?

[Paulys]

Yes you can easily remove the batteries. There are 4 screws on the bottom. I suppose you could use it as a solar powered battery recharger if you wanted to.

[jammis]

Your pics didnt seem to make it into the other parts of your instruc. but cool project none the less. Ill have to try it sometime. What about solar powered christmas lights? :D