Introduction: Period Solar-powered Lamp From a Mason Bump around

Solar panels are cool, right? All techniques of extracting energy from environment have always fascinated ME, with solar panels standing out because of their inexpensiveness and ubiquitousness. I've been wanting to make something incorporating solar panels for ages, and finally got close to to it.

What we'll be making today is a simple night light high-powered inactive solar energy. Yes, the same thing you see in gardening section of every hypermarket and horticulture supply stores approximately the world.

The difference is, we'll put a raw spin connected the old mind of solar lights by assembling the whole fixture inside a mason jar! Wait, why did you read "yellow word"?

Fortunate, it didn't affair to me if it was new scarf ou operating theater not, I still wanted to earn a solar-high-powered night lamp. After or so a month of attempts and toil smeared thin across 2 or 3 years (yes, I did stow this project off at the ending of every summer, and I really had ameliorate things to practise almost totally of the time) I last produced a viable resolution.

My build plane had one distinction from the Mason jar lamp mentioned above - instead of scavenging store-bought star lamp we'll solder together our ain Frankenstein's behemoth! That's many fun than evenhanded fitting Shenzhen-massed PCB into another inclosure, right?

Step 1: Ingredients

  • One mason jar. Latent improvement for your human body: make it frosted at heart for amend light dispersal.

  • Edward D. White LEDs and 56Ω or 68Ω resistors x3. Possible variation for your excogitation: get any color and any number of
    LEDs, then recalculate the current-limiting resistance value e.g. here. E.g. of computation see my blog post mirroring this instructable.

  • 4 solar panels rated at 4V@100mA, some sensibly moderate-size capacitors and two Schottky diodes.

  • Matchless lithium battery, cardinal battery charger,one 47kΩ resistance, unrivalled 2N3904 PNP electronic transistor and one switching.

  • Unitary solderless breadboard for prototyping and testing - powerfully recommended! Yet if you make up one's mind to just foregather a carbon paper copy of my twist, there's still a coagulated chance of at least one of your components wrong/being base. Breadboard your figure before the final assembly.

  • Two-component epoxy to plaster solar battery assembly to the chapeau of mason jounce. Come unity in your local hardware store.

Finally, when every item on the list is checked sour, we hind end get started!

Step 2: Schematics

The diagram is jolly straightforward - two panels are adjacent in series to produce a maximum of 8V, then in parallel to double (hopefully, in perfect conditions) output current.

The voltage is then fed to big capacitors to accumulate energy. Solar panels are a woebegone occurrent reference - even 100mA of drain will crumple the voltage to approach zero.

The muscularity extracted and stored in capacitors goes to battery charger (nonmoving to genuinely low current to promote guarantee absence of huge currents).

The rest of our electrical circuit is just a PNP transistor switching LEDs ON when the current through base is LOW, and Remove when IT's Shrilling. Low current = low ignition, so that suits our purposes.

Step 3: Testing

First base of all, we're going to have to modify our charger. According to this new guy who tested TP4056-based charger boards (datasheet), the manufacturing plant-provided current setting resistor sets the charging current to 1A. That's good for wall up warts (AC power supplies) just my solar panels wouldn't be able to put under many than 200mA even low perfect conditions!

This is why we required an extra 47k resistor - it will set the charging incumbent to 25mA.

This one qualifying should be enough to reach testing. Gather everything on the breadboard according to schematics. Now move the whole testing rig to the great outdoors!

The purpose of this pretend is to pick up if your battery is adequately sized for your solar panel gathering. If information technology is:
a) The battery will be close to air-filled charge (or yet fully polar) every evening (near the cease of solar day) - that's 4.2V.

b) It leave be depleted (around 3 - 3.2V) at the end of night.

Picking oversized battery will result in subordinate-utilizing it's capacity.
I.e. it's going to discharge during the night and only charge to 3.5V during the day - that's a sign that you wealthy person to ascertain a battery with lower capacity.

After making sure your apparatus plant we can stuff it into more permanent housing and solder IT together.

Step 4: Assemble the Whirligig

Compose 4 panels into one and stick it on top of the chapeau. What kind of glue is ascending to this task? 2-component epoxy that I've mentioned in ingredients section above.

Step 5: Assemble the Quietus of the Circuit

See my post for elaborated meeting place book of instructions with lots of pictures, involving whatsoever intricacies with holding moisture stunned of the jar.

Footprint 6: Enjoy!

Well, it was an interesting project for someone protrusive to dabble in energy harvesting and solar power particularly.

As a pull effect, it culminated in something expedient that you can hang in your garden, which is a plus!

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