DIY solar garden lamp repair

In detail: do-it-yourself repair of a solar-powered garden lamp from a real master for the site my.housecope.com.

Somehow I bought cheap garden lights on solar cells, took twenty pieces at once, but why waste time on trifles, especially at a cheap price.

The whole summer they stood in the garden and at night they were pleasing to the eye. But by the end of the summer, only half of them remained in working order. The next year, he placed the remaining half in the garden, by the end of the summer there was not a single working lamp left, all twenty pieces were covered, it's a shame.
And it was all the fault of the water, in some lamps after disassembly and there was nothing to take, all the tracks on the boards disappeared, oxidized and dissolved, even the legs of the LEDs dissolved, one plastic case remained, there was nothing to solder the wires to it.

The neighbors say throw them out and take the others, but my "amphibian" turned out to be stronger, decided to repair them all. Well, as much as I can. In general, during disassembly, not a single solar battery was working, corrosion did not spare anyone, well, I tried a little, in some places the wiring was accidentally torn off from the solar cells during their dismantling.

On some solar cells, there were no wires under the spine, and all my attempts to solder the wire to the battery were unsuccessful, well, explain to me how you can solder the wire to the glass?

Let's start the recovery process, because the solar battery will come in handy in other crafts.
We purchase such a conductive glue, well, or you can use another, not necessarily this one, just to conduct the current.

Then we unsolder the wires if there are still any.

On the plots, many summer residents have solar-powered garden lamps, mainly made in China, which are not particularly reliable.

Video (click to play).

Simple modifications can significantly improve the performance of such lamps.

Garden lamps not only decorate the plot, but also illuminate the paths, making evening walks in the garden safe. All garden lamps are subdivided into stationary and stand-alone. Placing stationary lamps in a garden area involves a significant amount of work on laying an electric cable and installing the lamps themselves. And their price is very high.

Stationary luminaires on the site can be supplemented or even replaced with stand-alone devices. They will be appropriate literally in every corner of the garden. Especially

such lamps look spectacular if you place them around the perimeter of the reservoir and along the garden paths. There are also stand-alone garden spotlights that are used to illuminate buildings and large ornamental plants.

Despite the variety of models of stand-alone garden lamps, they are all assembled according to a typical scheme, which includes a solar battery, a battery, a voltage converter and an LED or LED module. Any of these components can be improved, thereby improving the performance of garden lights - for example, brightness or duration of their work.

For example, the Tower lamp (Fig. 1) is assembled on the DA1-ANA618 pulse converter (or its analogs - ANA608, Y801, Y8018). The pulse converter raises the voltage of the nickel-cadmium battery to the level required to turn on the HL1 LED. In addition, the converter monitors the voltage on the solar battery, and at dusk (when the voltage on the solar battery decreases) turns on the luminaire.The amount of current flowing through the LED and, accordingly, the brightness of the LED depends on the inductance of the inductor L1. In luminaires from different manufacturers, a choke with inductance of 68-82 μH is installed. With this value of inductance, the current through the LED does not exceed 12 mA, although the operating current for most low-power LEDs is 20-30 mA.

To increase the current value (luminaire brightness), replace the standard choke L1 with a choke with an inductance of 33 μH. The current flowing through the inductor is very small. Therefore, you can use a choke of almost any design with a given inductance value (photo 1).

The old choke should be removed from the board and onto it. place to install a new one. If the board is welded to the luminaire body and deployed with components inside the lantern, it does not have to be dismantled. It is necessary, using a desoldering pump, to remove the solder, and then remove the choke from the board (photo 2).

Depending on the design, LEDs provide different brightness for a given operating current. Ultra-bright low-power LEDs have a wide range of brightness from 2 to 20 cd / m2 and higher. The garden luminaire under consideration uses a flat-head LED, which, at an operating current of 20 mA, produces a luminous flux with a brightness of about 4 cd / mg. This is enough to illuminate an area within a radius of up to 1.5 meters. Simply replacing such an LED with a super bright 20 cd / m2 LED 5013UWC will significantly improve the performance of your garden light.

With an increase in the operating current and the brightness of the LED flashlight, the current consumed from the battery increases. Instead of a standard battery with a capacity of 600 mAh, it is necessary to install a nickel-metal hydride battery with a capacity of 1000 mAh of the same size, thereby significantly increasing the battery life of the lamp even in cloudy weather (photo 3).

It should be noted that at present, AAA nickel-metal hydride batteries of various capacities are produced: 1,000, 1,100, 1,350, 1,800 and even 2,000 mAh. The larger the capacity of the installed battery, the longer the lamp will work on a single charge.

Before buying a battery, be sure to check the voltage with a multimeter. In a nickel-metal hydride battery, the voltage on the electrodes does not exceed 1.3 V. In salt or alkaline batteries, the voltage on the electrodes is 1.50-1.57 V. Sometimes unscrupulous sellers under the guise of high-capacity nickel-metal hydride batteries sell salt batteries stylized as batteries ...

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To ensure that the luminaire creates even illumination, instead of one LED, you can install three at an angle of 120 degrees. LEDs turn on in parallel to each other. Before installation, you should check the spread of their operating voltage, which should be minimal, otherwise only one of the three LEDs will burn brightly, and the rest will only glow dimly. A simple test is easy to accomplish by assembling a test circuit (Fig. 2). If LEDs from the same batch are used, they will glow with almost the same brightness (photo 4).

It should be borne in mind that the forward voltage drop for LEDs of different glow colors is significantly different (see table).

Therefore, when LEDs of different colors are connected in parallel, the one on which the voltage drop is less will glow.

The LEDs are located on a 15 mm board. The PCB drawing, assembled LED module and solar garden light with this LED module are shown in Photo 5-6.

You can make garden lamps that will glow in different colors - red, blue, yellow, green, white, purple. It is only necessary to select the appropriate LEDs. Preference should be given to super-bright LEDs, which, with the same operating current, have a significantly higher brightness than ordinary ones (photo 7).

Regardless of what color the LEDs are chosen for the garden light, this color will be static, unchanged over time. A much more interesting effect can be achieved using a three-color LED with a built-in generator. Such LEDs are used in the more expensive UFO and ball shaped pond lights. Compared to conventional garden lights, the cost of dynamic lanterns is 15-20 times higher!

Three-color LEDs with a built-in generator contain a microcircuit on one of the electrodes, which controls the operation of an RGB matrix mounted on the other electrode (photo 8). The LED has two leads - the cathode and the anode. The anode lead is usually longer. A three-color dynamic LED is connected to the power supply through a current-limiting resistor. The operating current of this LED is 20 mA. Dynamic LEDs must not be connected to a power source without a current-limiting resistor or energized with reverse polarity. Maximum reverse voltage over 0.5-0.75V will destroy dynamic LEDs.

Three-color dynamic LEDs are available with fast fading and slow fading. The latter are most interesting for use in garden lighting. The color of their glow seems to flow from red to yellow, then to green, blue, white, orange and back.

Depending on the number of LEDs purchased and the place of purchase, the cost of LEDs varies significantly. So, a batch of 100 LEDs purchased on the radio market cost the author 10 rubles. per piece, and through the retail network, the same LEDs are sold for 55 rubles.

It is impossible to connect a three-color LED with a built-in generator to a garden lamp instead of the installed white LED: it simply will not. work. And the reason is simple - the converter installed in the garden lamp produces a rectangular pulse voltage with a frequency of 200-250 kHz (photo 9). Each new pulse restarts the generator built into a three-color dynamic LED, and for normal generator operation, the pulse voltage must be converted to DC.

The easiest way for these purposes is to use a rectifier diode and a storage capacitor. The diode cuts off negative voltage surges from the converter, and the capacitor is discharged in the pauses between pulses to the LED. Thus, from the variable we get a constant voltage.

When choosing a diode and capacitor, surface mount components should be preferred. It is highly desirable to install a Schottky diode, in which the minimum voltage drop is 0.12-0.14 V, and the operating frequency reaches hundreds of kilohertz due to the short charge dissipation time. It is preferable to use a tantalum capacitor with a low equivalent resistance (photo 10). Under these conditions, the maximum efficiency of the rectifier is ensured.

The luminaire module diagram is shown in Fig. 4, the printed circuit board for the module and the three-color LED is shown in Fig. 5, and the assembled module is shown in photo 11.

Since it is difficult to convey dynamic events within the framework of a magazine article, a series of photographs in photo 12 is shown to illustrate the operation of a garden lamp with a tricolor LED.

Retrofitting a garden light proved to be a very simple task. You can decorate your garden with fantastic illumination based on mass-produced inexpensive garden lamps, modified by your own hands.

Rice. 1. The principle of the "Tower" lamp. Photo 1. Miniature inductors for surface mounting. Photo 2. Removing the choke without dismantling the board. Photo 3. AAA batteries. Rice. 2. Schematic diagram of checking the brightness of the glow. Photo 4. LEDs of one batch have almost the same brightness. Photo 5. LED module assembly. Rice. 3. Printed circuit board for three LEDs. Photo 6. Lamp with three LEDs. Photo 7.An example of super-bright LEDs. Photo 8. Three-color LED with a control RGB-matrix.

Solar lamp repair and improvement - photo 2

Photo 9. Oscillogram of the pulse voltage generated by the converter. Photo 10. Tantalum capacitor. Rice. 4. Schematic diagram of the dynamic lamp module. Rice. 5. Printed circuit board of the dynamic light module. Photo 11. Dynamic light module assembly. Photo 12. Different phases of operation of a dynamic luminaire with a three-color LED.

The idea is simple to the point of genius. The main thing was that she was spinning in my head, but it never came to practical implementation. Solar-powered garden lights are very popular nowadays. Conveniently. During the day they charge and in the evening they light up the path in the garden or like my pond. But they have a big drawback. They don't live long. Mine also die under the streamer when the grass is mowed. The dog loves to gnaw them. Little grandchildren also break them regularly. And they are not very durable either. Few of these lamps live a couple of seasons. Usually no more than one. Previously, I threw out or put all this scrap before I had an idea of what to do with them. And here it is:

DIY solar battery

It makes sense to try again. Now everything is easier when everything is told step by step. Thanks to the author.

Further from the author in machine translation. I kept it for myself, but I will share it with pleasure.

Image - DIY solar-powered garden lamp repair

It is about a solar power plant made from recycled parts. This is a work in progress. It all started in a junkyard, where someone next to me threw from 11 solar garden lights. I had 9 homes from a garage sale. I had an old frame and some plywood and paint. I had to buy 4 diodes from Radio Shack. I started taking all the lights separately and using solar panels. I have saved circuit boards and LEDs for future projects. A plastic ball made a nice little capsule for the garden.

I painted a board with some old house paint. I soldered 5 positions in a row. for neg. I think 4 would be ok, I will know when I'm done. Each set is extinguished 22 volts in good sun.

I installed the cells with a little hot glue sweat to solder the diode to pos. for each set and connect to one cable. Next, I entered all neg. one wire exit ends. I put some hot glue on top of the soldered joints to keep everything in place. I hot glued the frame over all leaving the bottom un glued with a little ventalation.

First test. Over 22 volts on a winter day. Tried vertical and horizontal. I have no idea how many watts.

I cut out a piece of plywood and nailed and glued to the sides. I cut them 60 degrees for Washington state.

I used hot lid balls [probably a mini-greenhouse :)] in the garden.

An example of a successful DIY repair of solar cells damaged by corrosion of garden lamps is shown. The Secret of the Master thanks the author of Cosmogor for the instructions provided and the detailed master class on the restoration of the solar battery.

We bought cheap garden lights on solar cells, bought twenty pieces at once, the goods are cheap and working. The whole summer they stood in the garden and at night they were pleasing to the eye. But by the end of the summer, some of the lanterns stopped working. The next summer, history repeated itself, and by the end of the summer all the lights stopped working. It's a shame!

Analysis of the fixtures revealed the cause of the breakdowns. In view of the leaky fixing of the solar cell, water easily penetrated into the body of the lantern, and the presence of constant voltage caused electrocorrosion and, unfortunately, the rapid death of electronics. In some lamps, after disassembly, a very sad picture was observed, on the boards all the tracks disappeared, oxidized and turned into powder, the circuit was practically destroyed, and the legs of the LEDs were eaten by corrosion to the plastic case, there is nothing to even solder the wires.

Throwing out the lamps is, of course, easy, but a real master will try to restore with his own hands what can be used in further crafts. The most valuable thing about a garden lamp is the solar panel.

During disassembly, not a single solar battery was working, corrosion did not spare the metal. The photo clearly shows how the metal coating at the positive electrode has been eaten away by corrosion. Carefully disassemble the lantern so as not to tear off the metal electrode to which the conductors for removing electricity from the solar cell are soldered. But on some solar cells this electrode was destroyed by corrosion and attempts to solder to the metallization were unsuccessful. And how can you solder the wire to the glass?

Solar garden lights are easy to use and can last for many years. It's just that after the season they need to be washed and stored during the winter with the batteries removed, and the batteries replaced every two years, during which you can forget about them. However, my neighbors just bought them, used them, put them down and forgot about the garden solar lights. Then it turned out that they didn't work and they were thrown away, and then I found them.

I liked my neighbors' trash. These garden solar lights would be very useful to me as garden lights. I ended up picking them up from the landfill - those 25 solar garden lights and buying new batteries. It didn't take long to repair them. First, it was necessary to find out why they were thrown away, but I must say that most of them could not be restored.

I started disassembling the solar garden lights by taking out the batteries and setting them aside. They will be tested, and those that have no charge, I will put them in the charger and see how they will hold the charge.

Usually, when I receive a box like this one, I sort them visually into two groups: the broken ones cannot be repaired, and not broken ones, I check them in operation and, as a result, sort them, which cannot be repaired and cannot be repaired. To do this, I take and swap parts of them apart, test them and test them.

These solar garden lights are easy to assemble, they only stick together with one screw to hold the PCB in place and hold the solar panel slightly in place, most solar panels are loose because the fixing affects them and degrades their performance.

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To test the garden sun light, I removed the lenses from the top, removed the battery, and replaced it with a good one. When the lights came on, I turned the solar panel towards the sun to make sure the lights were out. If the lights are still on, I open the box of the garden sun light and examine the insides.

The oxide on the contacts of the solar panel is easy to repair and it is not a critical malfunction - it is enough to strip the panel contacts and wires and solder them in place.

On those that don't work, but the solar panel is in good condition, I found that the circuit board wires and switches were oxidized and beyond repair.

Now that I've sorted the good garden solar lights from the bad ones, I give them a good wash with detergent and then dry. Now you can carry out minor repairs and assemble the lamp.

I take my assembled garden solar lights out into the yard and look for a place where they get enough daylight and wait until dark. And that evening I go out to see how they work.

An excellent use of the find. In the hands of a master, everything becomes masterpieces. Thank you for the detailed instructions on how to restore your garden solar lights. I'll tell my husband to use it.

Great! I have to show my son. and suddenly he becomes interested and will make such for the grandmother on the personal plot.

It's nice when these lights are on in the garden. Thank you for the detailed information on how to check and wash the lights.

Vera, the article does NOT tell you how to make such garden solar lights.It tells how to repair such lamps!

Elena, apparently you do not have a summer cottage, and you do not know what such garden solar lamps are used for. So, they burn only at night, with a dull dim light. Only to find a path.

Well, yes, the man was lucky. Find such a set of parts for the renovation of a batch of garden solar lights. First of all, you need to have a head, and then put your hands on it!

This is definitely Olga, there is nothing to start a summer cottage, and even more so a household farm, since the hands are crooked. You can't buy everything, you have to do most of it yourself!

The final result of repair or construction of a house largely depends on the quality of building materials. If the concrete begins to crack or the paint flakes off, then you will not get satisfaction from the result of your work. Therefore, you need to buy only from trusted suppliers. a huge database of various high-quality building materials. There you will find everything you need for construction or renovation.

Added by (02.07.2013, 10:49)
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The battery reads: 1.2 V 40 mA / h. Charge 4 mA. If you do not turn off the LED, then when the light hits the battery, it turns off. There is a part on the board with the inscription “F1 0176”. I think it turns off the diode if the battery is charging ...

Added by (02.07.2013, 10:53)
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I am thinking of doing this. 3 solar panels connected in series, and the remaining one parallel to them. The accumulators should be connected as well. The batteries will have to be charged. And they will give 3.6 V at the output. Can you put LEDs here? If everything works out, then I will buy more lamps and increase power. I ask you not to say "Yes, you have nothing to do. Stop suffering bullshit."

Added by (02.07.2013, 10:57)
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Another question, what else is there for the detail and will it be necessary to use it in my idea?

We measured the power consumption of solar-powered outdoor garden lights, as well as charging rates in direct sunlight, on a cloudy day, and in the shade. The picture turned out to be interesting, although quite expected.

This article tells not so much about specific flashlights, but about the practical side of the operation of solar-powered lamps in general.

For the experiment, we took two inexpensive solar-powered flashlights. One of them is of a relatively new type (brown in the photo), of which are now on sale at a price of 40 to 150 rubles. absolute majority. The second one (black in the photo) is of the old model, which inhabited store shelves with the same high density several years ago at a similar price.

The main difference between flashlights is in a solar battery. And here and there it is of a film type, but made of different materials. Also, the old flashlight had a 600 mAh AA Ni-MH battery, while the new one has a smaller size (AAA) with a capacity of only 100 mAh. This is a natural reduction in price, thanks to which the price of these flashlights has not changed so much after the dollar jump.

The power consumption of both LEDs in the flashlights turned out to be the same and amounted to about 12 mA (

14 mWh). This means that with a fully charged battery, the new flashlight can work for 8-9 hours, and the old (only in theory) 45-50. But here it is important to remember that working in conditions of constant undercharging (more on this below) Ni-MH batteries quickly lose their capacity, therefore a more capacious battery in an old flashlight would be preferable only from the point of view that it would have worked for a year longer.

Now let's figure out the power of the panels and charging.

To assess the charging efficiency under different conditions, we chose a good day: the sun, which from time to time was obscured by small light clouds. Lanterns were located both in the open and in the shade of garden trees. Voltage and current were measured at the battery terminals. We converted the resulting values into the amount of energy produced, expressed in mWh. Here's what we got:

The power of the solar battery in the old flashlight turned out to be noticeably higher, but this is not so interesting.More importantly, and it's good news, in direct sunlight, the small battery of the new flashlight can fully charge in about 2.5-3 hours. Now for the bad news. If the flashlight is placed in the shade or the day is slightly cloudy, the charging efficiency will drop 10 times. And if there are clouds in the sky, then there is nothing to talk about at all. The battery will not charge.

For those who are interested in the details of our measurements of the performance of solar panels, here is a small plate.

Good day, dear Radio amateurs!
For almost a month the site has opened the section “From readers“. Honestly, I already began to think that this idea of mine did not work out - there were no responses from readers to the proposal. And this morning, looking through the mail of the site, I was pleasantly surprised to find a letter with a proposal to publish the article. But I was even more surprised, and I can even say bluntly - amazed when I saw who the author of the article was.
So, dear Radio amateurs, today, in the section "From the readers", I present to you with great pleasure and respect an article by the author of many interesting and informative publications and books - Yuri Vsevolodovich Revich:

Several years ago, surprisingly cheap (at a price of less than a hundred rubles) LED garden lamps with a built-in solar battery for recharging during the day appeared in large supermarkets (Auchan, Leroy-Merlin). After a while, they appeared in almost all retail outlets selling electrics or goods for the garden and vegetable garden. The lamp looks something like the one shown in the figure:

A good start, however, turned out to be somewhat spoiled by the fact that the brightness of a small LED is not enough to light something seriously, because the lamp rather performs decorative functions and quickly becomes boring with its deathly white glow. In addition, in real light conditions, the power of the solar battery is not enough to recharge the battery normally - the lamp burns for two or three hours after sunset and then "dies".

There is, however, a simple way to fix both shortcomings at once, and to turn the product from a disposable toy into a beautiful and functional element of the garden landscape. Of course, it is impossible to turn it into a full-fledged lighting device, but it is easy to significantly improve the decorative qualities of the lamp if you replace the LEDs with colored ones. The latter are commercially available in many different colors (not only white-red-yellow-green-blue, but also different shades - for example, greens are not only just green, but also yellow-green and bluish-green, and yellow - and dense yellow and lemon). All of them, both ordinary and high-brightness, of any size and geometry, can work in these luminaires without modification (with the exception of special powerful lighting and still flashing LEDs, which themselves represent a complete circuit). When replacing, just pay attention to the polarity of the LED, and practically nothing else is required. The luminaires work quietly even in winter with light frosts, but in case of severe cold snap, it is better to remove them indoors by removing the battery.

However, the second problem in this case may even be aggravated: a small voltage drop across a color LED will make it burn very brightly, but even in summer, it will only take half an hour or an hour. This is especially troublesome in autumn and winter, when daylight hours are reduced, and cloudy weather leads to the fact that the accumulated battery charge per day is enough for only a couple of minutes.

This drawback is also easy to fix if you connect a resistor of several tens of ohms in series with the LED. You should use a sharp cutter to break the track on the board leading from the microcircuit to the LED and install a resistor instead of it (the figure below shows the alteration of the lamp board from Leroy-Merlin, in other cases the board may look different):

The selection of the resistor should be carried out in such a way that the current through it is 4-6 mA - this is enough for normal brightness of the glow, and when the standard Ni-Cd accumulator of 600 mAh is fully charged, the lamp will then work for several days (in practice, a full charge, certainly not achieved).

At the output of the luminaire microcircuit, it has a coarse current source with an idle voltage of the order of 2.5 V - that is, approximately equal to twice the battery voltage. When the load is connected, this voltage drops, and the resistor must be selected so that the voltage drop across it corresponds to the selected current. For example, for a red LED, the nominal value can be 75-91 Ohm (voltage drop across a 0.4-0.5 V resistor), for a green LED with increased brightness - from 47 to 62 Ohm (voltage drop 0.2-0.3 V) and etc.

By the way, usually a regular Ni-Cd battery lasts no more than a year, then it breaks down. Experience has shown that it is possible to install a conventional finger-type Ni-MH battery into the lamp, and the cheaper (that is, the lower its capacity), the better - the available solar battery will still not be enough to fully charge a battery with a capacity of 2000-3000 mAh , and in any case it will work only for a small part of its capabilities.

For those who (by their youth) are unfamiliar with Yu.V. Revici:

Engineer and journalist with many years of experience. The main circle of interests is information technologies, their impact on modern society, technological innovations, the history of computers and technological innovations. Published regularly in magazines, newspapers and online publications. Author of 6 popular books, including "Entertaining electronics", "A self-study guide for working on a PC for everyone", "Practical programming of Atmel AVR microcontrollers in assembly language", etc.

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Message universal007 Apr 12, 2012 10:34 pm