Always enjoy BigClive's videos. Found this and didn't realize it was 2 y.o. I love stuff like this, and makes me remember why I saved all of those phone batteries!
Good call on the negative rail diode, that is the same exact design I came up with using a 4.7K resistor to add extra battery life, and a 2N3904 since it is made for switching purposes. The 2N2222A is a GP NPN that will work just fine as well if you cannot find a 3904. What I did with the battery was salvage the actual phones battery holder and use that with the solar panel hot snotted onto it, This way I did not have to apply heat to the battery itself. Ok update, New weekend project on my end too! lol I got the t5 led lamp in today and I got the RGB LED tape in 3 days ago, so let the HAX begin!
I bought a set of these for $5 at a pallet store and they came connected to a solar cell with a battery. Not sure what kind of battery but after leaving the solar cell in the sun all day, the lights ran a very long time. Somewhere around 6-8 hours. They're really cool lights. I have an affection for LED lights. LOL You wouldn't believe how many I have! I burnt the piss out of two fingers the other day when the soldering iron slipped! I grabbed a cube of ice really fast. Didn't hurt much after that and didn't blister either.
Clive, I would isolate the LED drive circuit from the solar panel by using a 4N25 optoisolator. Here in the states they go for about 25 cents. The device input to output isolation is 5000 Vrms. Along with the opto you would need one extra resistor in the base circuit of your transistor and a 470 ohm resistor in the drive circuit of the opto.. I calculate the bias values at 3k Vcc to base and 820 ohms base to ground. That would drive the transistor into saturation. Connect the output of the opto across the 820 ohm resistor. When the solar panel is lit it will short the 820 ohm resistor putting the transistor in cutoff. Those resistor values should ensure that the LEDs will remain lit about up to where the battery voltage drops to 3v. I use 6N137 since that's what I have in my "junk box". Also for current switching I usually use a TIP31C NPN motor control transistor since it will handle 3 amps continuous @ 100v. They're about 39 cents each; cheaper in lots of 10. Probably overkill for your app. I use them to drive long strings of white LEDs for back up lighting since they draw about 1.2 amps at full intensity.
awesome, thanks for reminding us about BEAM..I haven't thought of tilden et al in oy, nearly 12-15 years? I'm sure I have some funky free-form circuits hiding in boxes dating back to 1999 or so. Remember photovores and the little walkers?
Clive, Thanks for this. I added it to your Joule Thief I built yesterday. Using the PV panel as a light detector and switching on the negative rail is so simple, effective and minimal parts. It eliminates the use of the photoresistor/transistor used by many. OK we may have to tune the transistor base current, but that is a small price to pay. Please keep these videos coming as they show that we should never forget to understand and then apply the basics that some us us forgot a long time ago!
It's one thing to do all those dinky projects to get my skills back, but I get bored with just blinky leds. This is a project with a useful endpoint and looks very easy. Thanks.
Its remarkable how much energy is in a these lipos. I was given a new bluetooth DOA speaker and swapped the dead chinese 700ma battery with a 1350mh samsung. Had to melt a few things with the iron to fit it together but its runtime is like two days at lower volumes.
Have you tried using a high value cap instead of a resistor across the solar panel? In a circuit I use for a night light it delays the switch on time by storing some of the solar power, thereby tricking the light circuit into thinking there is sufficient light. By the time the light switches on it is completely dark...
I had no idea what you were on about in the beginning at first. The schematic made no sense whatsoever to me. Then I saw the circuit in action and it all makes sense now :D
A nice little project. Since mine is targeted for indoors, I added a small switch to the output, so that I can turn the load off when I don't want it running. Otherwise, works well. Thanks
Hi Clive. Thanks for your great channel. This circuit is nice and simple but it switches on very early. Is there any simple way to change that? Does transistor type have an effect here? Resistor value does not seem to effect much. QX5252F chip is perfect for this purpose, but it only works with low voltage NiMh -batteries. I'm currently trying to find a similar solution for LiPo and LiFePO4 batteries.
Got the lights and Solar panels in the mail over the weekend. Put it all together tonight. Seems to be working fine. I still need to test it on daylight and see how well it charges.
you know for nerds like me (and i'm sure others) you should put together little "kits" of like the bulbs and boards that we could get from you and assemble while we watch the videos over! .. that'd be sweet! tho here in america we would use all different power factors, and connector types hmm .. didn't think this comment out lol
That's a pretty neat setup there, I have a 6v panel somewhere (came off a cheap "generic" solar fountain that broke after three days) that's begging for something to be done with it, may have to find it and figure something out with it... :D
That's the problem I had making "Auto ON/OFF lights" they came on to early, so I built a super simple circuit using a Photo transistor and a PNP Darlington transistor, oh and one Resistor. but yours seems to be very good and 18 hours fully charged WOW, Mine runs two 1/2 watt LED's for the chickens, now the only thing to hope for is a bit of sun now and again.
I think you're right about the transistor lead identifiers. The British drive on the wrong side of the road, so it only makes sense that their transistors are opposite (wrong) as well. (snicker, snort)
Maybe we drive on the wrong side of the road and they have the drivers seat and steering wheel on the;; RIGHT SIDE of the car, either way a slight head on collision with on coming traffic is almost certain death. Think about it,,, you'll find were both a mixed bag of nutts.
i should salvage something and build this for the fun >_> looks so easy! and that would hang on my balcony, charge on the day. Maybe add a charging port XD Finland is not the brightest place in winter :p
+Nova Light So far the full charge test lasted a very impressive 18 hours. And as predicted it was the lower voltage LED colours (red and yellow) that pulld that down a bit. With the amount of sunshine we get in the UK I'm expecting a run time of at least 5 seconds.
Recently I made the same circuit. But. Not every solar panel is suited. I found out that the monochrome solar panels don't work, and the black with blue ones do (like the one you did not use, that 6V/1Watt panel). So the monochrome panels leak (much) less current I guess.
I have this one saved ..... I wonder can you do a video on this but scaled up? I have a 12 volt car battery ''deep cell slow drain'' also 3x 12 volt 20 watt solar panels and led head lights that do not fit my truck . I want to make flood lights to shine into my house windows when it start's getting dark at 4 pm so it looks like it's still sunny out lol I have solar lights around my windows in the house but there not bright enough they work good for getting up in the night but i want real light from 4 to 7. im hooked up to 12 volts using led strip lights in my house for when the power goes out but id like to hook up some that come on by them selves. I was going to order some street lights after watching another video you did but if i can do it my self with the supplys i have then why not. I have more led cob 12 volt 70 watt on the way so ill be using them for this project. I seen you have some as well and thats why i ordered them i think they will work good for what i need.
i have made the same circuit before and i found out that it work better with a 22k resistor , if u have time u can try it and see but i havent done it with so many LEDs i was wandering how long is gona last with that cell batt, even i use that same circuit but instead placing a relay con the LEDs terminals and then driving a 12 led system , btw i like ur lights videos a lot .can u make a circuit like that with the same functionality but with a 12v sourse so i dont need to use a relay? because the relay runs the battery out really fast. thkz , very nice video
Mr. Big Clive, 2 quick questions on the lights: technically you can run just 1 tube at a lower voltage than the 7 volts that most of these are supplied with, yes? and, I have a string of 16 tubes and 10 tubes. They each have a 7 volt transformer. The 10 tubes are extremely bright compared to the 16 tubes. When I add the 10 tubes to the 16 tubes they become "normal" brightness. Can a resistor be added at the end of the 10 tube set to reduce the voltage to around 6 volts? The voltage at the end of the 10 tube string is around 7.6 volts, whereas the voltage at the end of the 16 tubes is about 6 volts.
Hi there, I watched you videos for a while now and this is the 1st thing of yours I'm going to make. I'm going to put this on the front of the house north facing about 2 or three stings of the meteor lights . I live in west lothian will this set up be fine for the amount of light I get? Thanks
Since you have so many of them... I am thinking of hacking some, and was wondering if the pcb material inside there is stiff or flexible like on many LED strips
Because trim pots don't come with readable dials, wires, clips, nice hand-friendly housings, and most important: They don't come with decent subdivision across 5-6 orders of magnitude in a single package.
Did you think of trying the QX5252F solar LED driver chip. It does the job that you are looking for it to do, but I am not sure what cell it uses. Mainly NiMH I believe. They go to battery when the sun goes down and when the sun shines it charges the battery. They work really well. They need a modest inductor as well.
I just received some of these lights from Amazon for free, and I was wondering why they use 7 volts. Most of these lights have the ability to connect up to 4 strands together.
Hi Clive, just made this, but the meteor lights i have are smd on a strip, only light red on the top of the strip , can i upgrade this to x4 AA 1.2v , these light the lights can i use the same circuit? Thank you.
I don't get why the value of the 10k resistor should have such an importance in regards to the sensitivity. (I don't think it shouldn't, I just don't get it)
note: if you are salvaging transostors from electronics you may find some japanese ones, they have left to right emmiter collector base. Kinda weird, I think it may be useful if you really want a clean looking circuit, it gives you more options when it comes to layout of components but other than that it only requires you to check whenever you take an salvaged resistor.
Sir bidclive could you show us how to build a ac dc test light with two leds that would light one led when put across dc and two leds will light when put across ac ty your videos help me a lot
Yes it should. The Nickel Metal Hydride batteries will handle continuous charging at around 100mA. You could use either three in series for 3.6V (4.5V fully charged).
Also, I've been trying to put this warning on any video which directly compares BC547, 2N2222, and 2N3904 as direct substitutes. While you could replace a Bc547 with either of the other two, you should NOT go the other way in many projects. The current rating is vastly different, from ~100mA on the 547 to ~800-1000mA on the 2N2222! Just keep this in mind when using whatever you have on hand. Be careful to double-check the current rating, and always look at the hFE of transistors to see what kind of current you'll need to get the same effect.
A quote from one of Peter Sellers's lesser-known masterpieces, The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu, always comes to mind when someone refers to British weather... "Is the weather always this piss-poor in England?" "Why no, we have several bright days every year!" WRT resistance wheels... For little more than double the price of what Wiltronics is asking (and significantly less than double Jaycar's price), you can get a full decade box from China; www.aliexpress.com/item/-/32309806626.html - not exactly a portable toolkit item, but far more versatile if you're tethered to the bench anyway.
+stonent I found this out of the US. Not as many choices and not as compact, but about half the price. www.parts-express.com/elenco-resistor-substitution-box-kit--320-076 EDIT: Apparently there is a US Jaycar site, and it's $18 or so there.
Another Elenco alternative that is very flexible, 1W@1% resistors with 1-Ohm increments possible. I have this model and only two values were slightly out of tolerance (1.1%) on the megohms side, all others were pretty much within 0.5%. Just be aware that turning *everything* to Off is essentially 0 Ohms resistance (for applications where such matters). Very easy to repair if you ever damage a resistor. www.amazon.com/Elenco-Watt-Resistor-Substitution-Box/dp/B0002KX76M
Greetings from the wet sands of Arizona USA, a state we fled to when the snows of November came to the Dakota's. I have been soldering onto those little gold tabs on used cell phone and pDA batteries for quite some time now and never ran into any problems doing so. I suppose if a person used to much heat some damage could ensue but those tabs seem to love solder. I have had some trouble with the wife, however, when she learned that i used her spare phone battery to power a ghost detector for my niece's paranormal group she was quite upset. She got over it, however when I switched my iphone over to her phone number and gave it to her. Now I am using a crappy Android, and she is overjoyed with her new toy. I do miss my iphone now but my niece loves her little ghost detector so I guess it was almost worth the trouble. I used one of those little batteries in a cheap china dash cam that I wanted for our trip south.
I tried this circuit with success and using 18650 li ion battery but there was aprox one volt drop from the battery to the LED light without current limiting resistor. Is there any way to get same voltage for light as the battery voltage?
@@bigclivedotcom I've been asked to try to fix a newer (slightly better) set of lights like this. I've identified the transformer board is faulty.. would you like a look at a TINY 8V board?
Hi do you have a link for the transistor please as i looked on rapid electronics and there are 5 different ones also eBay has lots of different ones. I'm very new to this and i love recreating your experiments thanks..
Any of the brands of BC547 will do. It's a very common transistor made by many manufacturers. Here's a link to a typical one. www.rapidonline.com/trusemi-bc547b-transistor-npn-to92-50v-81-0468
Big problem here. You're forgetting the base-emitter junction is one diode drop. That allows a potentially large current to discharge from the lipo, through the solar cell, and through the base-emitter junction. That is why you are still getting the lights to activate even with no base resistor. The solar cell is acting as the base resistor.
+Cyparagon I've just tested it with my bench supply and all the panels leaked roughly 300uA, so that would definitely have turned on the transistor. The question is... Are the cells likely to break down over time and pass more leakage current. I'm not sure about that.
+bigclivedotcom Thanks for the data. I haven't worked with solar panels often, but I've poked around google just now. It looks to be safe, and total energy losses are actually higher when using a blocking diode, except in high voltage systems. So not a big problem after all, but something to be aware of. Revised concern: The blocking diode isn't blocking at all, and is actually eating power when charging.
+bigclivedotcom You can easily fix it, just put diode between base of transistor and negative of solar panel to block current coming thru solar panel. That way you will help to fix problem of controlling on point and you not need to care if leakage current increases with aging of solar panel edit: i think you can't control on point with changing value of resistor, it will turn on immediately when voltage of solar panel is lower then voltage of battery
wiltronics. I get annoyed by sites that won't tell you the total of what you are looking at until after you have given them your info/registered. It's price - GST (ouside Aus) + p&p, and I'm not giving them my name and address/email etc to find out. ###edit### I mashed some random crap into the fields to get through and they won't tell me the postage until after I bought the item because I'm outside Aus.
@@bigclivedotcom How do you test for that? I have a couple of older cell phone batteries around here and would like to use them if that protection is in there...
Even though the battery has overdischarge and overcharge protection, don't you still need proper LiPo charge circuitry? I thought hooking it directly to a solar panel was a recipe for disaster, or at least greatly shortened LiPo life...?
+Aurelius R The solar panel acts as a current limited source. The LiPo has an internal protection circuit that would disconnect it if it was fully charged, and the solar panel would then float up to its maximum voltage of around 6V.
+bigclivedotcom , the circuit you designed would be a disaster if the battery didn't have a protective circuit built in, on both overcharge and discharge.
Isn't a collector , base, emitter -----emitter ,base, collector, transistor, the same thing merely flipped over ? Or was that just a poke at the yanks?Hmmnn.....
In the future, can you show the camera a close up of the orientation of the component before soldering it? it would help us idiots that are trying like hell to get a grasp on things out a whole lot. I'm still not getting why you used a couple things where you did n what they do...like resistor vs diode...n where the values came from. thanks ohmie!
+Walter Boxhead It might be worth opening it and checking the little ballbearings that click into the PCB holes are lubricated properly. Noting that they may try and escape when you open it, so do so in an area that will make them easy to find. Mine is ancient too. It's a surprise that they're still sold.
+Walter Boxhead I suppose that technically speaking the wiping action makes them self cleaning. And even with modest use it's not going to clock up a high mileage on the contacts.
+Markus Bates Yeah, I've been looking at the other options, but the rotary one with standard values is the easiest and quickest to use. I wonder if they are even still made any more, or if the ones from Jaycar are just remaining stock.
Nice circuit, looking for that for a while. I am quite conservative when it comes to using LiPo. How can i check "from the outside" if the protective PCB is present? And what Voltages will these protections usually take? I dont want to have them explode...
it seems to me the solar panel is acting like a resistor turning on the transistor? so any resistor you add is only makinh it turn on sooner. transistors to not float, it's not a mosfet! :)
