Solar powered garden lights electrical diagram. A short review of solar lanterns
Today, in garden plots, you can find lanterns or lamps that run on solar batteries. Gardeners boldly use them in landscape design and in the form of additional lighting of individual areas of the garden. It is advisable to use solar lamps in situations where it is not possible to install electric lighting or its arrangement is not economically profitable.
How do solar-powered lanterns work?
The following can be distinguished in solar lamps: elements:
A solar battery, when exposed to ultraviolet radiation, produces electricity and charges the battery, which in turn powers the LED at night.
When the battery is fully charged, the solar lights work 8 ocloc'k. Moreover, the operation of the lamp does not depend on weather conditions, because ultraviolet light penetrates through clouds. Only in late autumn the flashlight battery cannot be fully charged. This is due to the fact that daylight hours are becoming shorter. Even in such conditions, the lamps will work, although a little less.
Main Features of Garden Solar Lanterns
Solar lamps can be divided into three groups according to the following characteristics:
Advantages of solar garden lights
Flaws garden solar lights:
- required clean up for the winter, because their battery is not protected from low temperatures (with the exception of garden lights);
- light while charging it is advisable to install in such a way that direct sunlight falls on it;
- more suitable for decorative lighting;
- enough lamps are expensive.
Installation and operation of garden solar lights
Installing garden lights is very easy. For installation on a flat surface, it is necessary to use lamps with a special leg. If the lantern has a leg made in the form peg, then it is stuck into the ground. In hard soil, you must first dig a hole, then place a lantern in it and carefully compact the earth on all sides. Do not use a hammer or brute force. This will break the lamp.
By using solar lanterns can be distinguished:
Caring for lamps consists of periodically wiping dust from them, removing dirt and putting them away in the house for the winter. Although solar lamps very reliable, they may need to be repaired. First you need to check the charge level of the solar battery and only then turn it on. If the light does not turn on, you need to check the battery for serviceability. To do this, go into a darkened room and check the soldering areas. If damaged wiring is found, it must be soldered using cold welding. If the repair results are absent or insignificant, it is necessary to replace the solar battery.
Solar-powered garden lights can be an excellent alternative to electric lighting in remote areas of the garden. The variety of shapes, colors, and sizes allows them to be used in landscape design. Made in the form of figures of gnomes or animals, they are excellent will complement the alpine slide. At night, such lanterns not only focus attention on the beautiful corners of the garden. By illuminating the steps, you can go up or down the stairs without fear of falling. Lanterns can be arranged in groups or randomly. Which method to choose depends only on the preferences of the owner of the site.
Many people have probably thought about how to illuminate the local area so that it is both cozy and aesthetically pleasing. But this means additional energy costs. And besides, in order to supply voltage to each of the street lamps, you will have to ruin the landscape and dig ditches into which the cable will be laid. Well, wires hanging in the air from one garden lamp to another is completely unsightly.
And here the thought arises: “But you can install a lantern on a solar battery, and then electrical energy will be produced by such a free generator as the sun!” Naturally, a person goes to the store to buy such devices and, looking at the prices of these lighting devices, forgets about his desire, because their cost is very high.
But there are hands and a head, and this device was created by the same people, which means that it is quite possible to assemble a solar-powered garden lantern with your own hands.
Let's try to figure out whether this is possible and how difficult this work is.
Preparatory work
Of course, the ideal option would be if you have a faulty device - in addition to understanding its structure, you can at the same time understand how to repair a solar lantern with your own hands, but there is also a drawback in the implementation of this idea. Naturally, you can take several cheap garden lanterns that require repairs and replace them with solar panels, but upgrading their Chinese filling will still be necessary. Therefore, their base is needed only for training, since a repaired flashlight will not last longer than one made from scratch.
Before you start creating a solar-powered lamp, you need to understand the design of such devices.
Although all flashlights look different, their operation scheme is very simple. It consists of a solar battery (panel), a battery, a voltage converter and an LED or module.
The diagram of such a lamp will be clear to any novice radio amateur and it looks like this:
And now, having already understood the circuit and understanding the principle of operation of a flashlight that runs on the energy generated by solar cells, you can decide what brightness is required, which light elements to choose, and in accordance with this, choose a battery and solar panel.
Cree ultra-bright LEDs, 1–1.5 volts, 3 or 4 pieces per lamp, are quite suitable for this. With such elements, a battery with a capacity of 3,000 mAh and an output voltage of 3.6 volts will be sufficient. Such a battery will be charged from the solar panel for 8–10 hours, which is quite enough to operate the selected LEDs for up to 12 hours.
And, of course, the solar panel itself. The fact is that the solar battery of garden lamps produced nowadays is very small. A suitable battery would be 65 x 65 x 3 mm in size, with an output voltage of 4.4 V, 90 mA. It may well provide the necessary nutrition.
Electronic control unit. Now you need to assemble the “head” of the lamp, namely the control unit itself. For this you will need:
- four MLT 22 kOhm resistors;
- two KT503 transistors;
- one diode (Schottky 11DQ04 would be optimal).
Since all this will be placed on one board, it is of course better to etch it yourself. But there is an option that is more accurate and less labor-intensive. Nowadays you can buy universal breadboards in stores. In addition, stranded copper wire should be on hand when working to create tracks.
So, when all the elements of the future electronic control unit are assembled, you can start soldering. You need to assemble the following diagram.
4 LEDs are freely included in such a circuit. And if the build quality is at a high level, then such a control unit will last for many years.
Lantern assembly
Naturally, everyone comes up with the shape of a solar-powered lamp themselves; here there is complete scope for the master’s thoughts and imagination. Once the circuit of the electronic control unit is assembled, connecting LEDs to it will not be a problem. Of course, you can turn on a regular switch in the LED power supply, but it will be much more convenient if instead you install a photocell in parallel with the motion sensor. Then, at dusk, the solar-powered lamp, made by yourself, will automatically turn on, and turn off at dawn. Or it will trigger on a passing person, which is also convenient.
It is also possible to connect a controller when using RGB LEDs, then the solar lights will also be adjusted by the color of the glow, and remotely, but in this case you need to understand that it will also need power. Although we are also solving this issue. After all, the choice of solar panels on the shelves of electrical stores these days is unusually wide. This means that choosing the right ones will not be difficult.
Additional possibilities for using solar panels at home
conclusions
Of course, everyone decides for themselves, depending on their employment and financial situation, what to do - buy such a lamp or make it with their own hands. But it’s not even about the amount spent on new flashlights, although here the savings come out to be more than 4 times.
Isn’t it nice to know that there is a lamp working on the site of a house or apartment that was created not in a factory, but with your own hands, as they say, “on the knee”? This is probably the main reason why you should try to assemble a solar-powered garden lamp yourself.
Continuation, first part on the Belka House website.
Exactly a year has passed since the first article, it’s time to take stock. Finally I managed to take some photos of garden lamps in the dark, I posted them below in the text. It is also pleasant to note that other garden areas have become interested in night electrification. And what? Convenient and beautiful!
The seven original light green flashlights worked great last year, but after winter storage, two of the batteries failed. Instead of 1.1 - 1.4 volts, they showed 0.3, no matter what charger they were in. But everything went into winter storage fully charged and stored at a low temperature. Conclusion: the second place in terms of product failures is occupied by battery cells. Well, the first thing, I will remind you, from the first article, is the poor quality of the unifying installation of the product. If the manufacturer supplied the products with reliable batteries, the flashlight would be uncompetitive due to its high price.
Identify a faulty battery as easy as pie.
Every household must have a tester, preferably one with a digital display. With this device we measure the voltage of the battery. We set the limit = 2 V, which means constant voltage, it also corresponds to the symbol DC. If after being in the charger for at least an hour, the reading on the element has not changed upward, then its place is in the container for technical waste. The battery can be tested using a garden torch that is known to be in good working order. Moreover, you don’t need to wait for the sun, it’s enough to use a lighting lamp, preferably an energy-saving one, with a power of 11-14 Watts. Energy-saving light bulbs do not heat up much during the measurement process, so they will not damage the lantern.
In the same way, having a known good battery, they check the performance of the garden flashlight itself, namely the moment of charging the battery from the solar battery. For this purpose, it is advisable to use a slightly discharged battery with a voltage of about 1.2 volts. If, when the lighting lamp is turned on, the reading of the device measuring voltage begins to increase, and the digital device shows a change in the fourth digit in the positive direction within a few minutes, then the solar battery is working. The flashlight is fully operational when it lights up in the dark and goes out in the light.
Poor contact in power container- the main reason for the flashlight malfunction. Using active flux to solder wires leads to the formation of salts on the contacts of the power container. A similar blue coating may be present on the circuit board of the flashlight's electronic device. This product needs repair.
In addition, they gave me new flashlights in the form of glowing frogs. Time to build a small pond for bathing your baby or future babies.
True, a high snowdrift dismantled it into two parts, leaving it lying in a spring puddle. I picked it up, cleaned it of dirt, folded it, and put it in place. It seems like nothing bad happened. Yes, you can see it in the photo.
One of these flashlights failed immediately, last year. The design, as it turned out, was non-demountable. There was no way to even check the voltage on the battery. But that’s why there is a sharp knife, with which we get to the battery. In these lamps, the power container is a switch; by pressing a lever, it moves relative to the battery. The battery itself in the container shifted and did not contact. But now the hole was not made in vain, and the switch is no longer needed. For storage, you just need to remove the element from the container. 
The blinking garland has the most failures, and it all comes down to two contacts. I can’t imagine how to reliably connect them to a solar battery.
While disassembling the garland once again, the tester was well at hand, and discovered that one of the batteries was faulty, and there were three of them! During the charging process, they heat up, and the black housing of the electronic solar battery unit in which they are located is additionally heated in the sun. High temperatures are undesirable for batteries; the probability of failure of such a product increases three times, since there are as many as three batteries.
Added October 5, 2012.
It's autumn again, it's getting dark quickly. Lanterns are a must at this time of year. I was visiting my son and discovered that 2 lights were not shining. I didn’t have a tester with me, so I decided to take them with me and at home, without rushing to check them. Here they are in the photo. Everything is very simple, the battery showed 0 volts. I installed new batteries and everything worked. I already repaired my first flashlight last year. It had an interesting malfunction. If you hang it up, it doesn’t light up, if you put it down, it lights up. It is necessary to remove the upper cap and on the lower part of the flashlight body bend upward the 2 contacts to which the spark plug wires are connected. The design itself is original, the candle flickers as if the flame is burning for real. The second lantern is made to last, you can feel it being made domestically, its body doesn’t show signs of aging. You just need to change the battery on time.
It’s late autumn, we go to the dacha less and less often. There are fewer and fewer sunny days. The battery does not fully charge during the day. At dusk, the flashlight will light up for 15 minutes and go out. The battery is not operating very well, it’s time to take care of it and the flashlight itself. After all, a new battery costs more than the flashlight itself. Usually, in late fall, I disassemble my lamps, wipe off any dirt, and put them in shipping boxes until spring. I put the batteries themselves on charge. It’s good if you have a normal charger, in the sense that it can digest your very discharged cell, and not blink in fear, thinking that they slipped something wrong. Where did I charge my batteries: in the battery compartment of a pocket receiver, which was designed to be powered by batteries with subsequent charging, and in the container of a radio mouse powered by the same batteries.
Do you want economical lighting in your summer cottage? Lighting the porch, the approach to the gate and the bends of the path in the depths of the country garden is no longer a problem. Garden solar lanterns came into the lives of summer residents along with the development of new technical developments and a new approach to arranging everyday life. With the onset of dusk, when everything around is plunged into the darkness of night, multi-colored lighting lanterns of the most bizarre shapes begin to light up. They light up automatically.
Features of solar lamp
Product advantages and features:
- No cable;
- Independence from central power grids;
- No electricity bills;
- Automatic switching on at dusk;
- Easy installation;
- Environmental friendliness;
- Safety;
- Decoration of the site.
Now you don’t need to lay a cable or dig a trench for it to connect the lighting: you just need to install the flashlight, fixing it in the soil. You can easily change the location at your discretion by simply digging it out of the ground or removing it from the mount.
There is no need to purchase equipment to turn the lamp on/off, because the battery starts working automatically with the onset of darkness. Thanks to the generation of weak currents, the flashlights are absolutely safe for curious young children. And the absence of electricity bills and free lighting of a summer cottage is the dream of any owner. Now it is completely feasible.
Each product has its own disadvantages. Regarding salt lamps it looks like this:
- Break down quickly at low temperatures;
- Charge for at least five hours;
- Must be placed in areas accessible to sunlight;
- Do not work in regions with constant cloudy weather;
- They do not provide bright lighting.
The disadvantages of solar-powered garden lights include low-quality LEDs.
A little about the flashlight design
Design features of lighting devices:
- Frame;
- Photosensitive element;
- Electric battery;
- LED light bulbs;
- Controller.
Energy independence on your site is achieved by accumulating solar rays with built-in photocells. A battery with sensitive modules captures direct and diffuse rays of the sun, then converts them into lighting. The glow of battery-powered solar garden lanterns is provided by LED elements built into the structure; the brightness of the glow depends on their quantity.
The process is controlled by an electronic chip. The power of the lamps, their price and glow time will depend on the battery capacity. High-quality solar lanterns can illuminate an area for up to eight hours in a row, because the generated energy is not wasted on heating incandescent elements, as in conventional light bulbs.
Various types and shapes
Based on the mounting method, there are five types of flashlights:
- On a low leg. Such structures are mounted directly into the ground and illuminate the area near the ground. They are usually installed to illuminate paths and paths in the garden and to illuminate lawns.
- On a high leg. Such lanterns cover a large area around them and are used as main lighting. During a long absence, such structures can be placed in storage or dismantled and the battery discharged.
- Hanging structures with hook. These lanterns can be hung on tree branches, brackets or mounts.
- Built-in structures. Used on the facades of houses.
Decorative designs. The purpose of decorative battery-powered garden solar lanterns is to decorate the area. They are usually made with colored LEDs and come in a variety of shapes. Floating lanterns placed in a pond or pool look quite unusual.
How to choose the right one
Let's consider the main criteria for choosing a lamp for a summer house:
Don't buy cheap flashlights in bulk. Low-quality lamps quickly deteriorate and have low power: they shine for a maximum of three hours.
To distinguish a quality product from a “home-grown” one, take an interest in the technical parameters of the product. The instructions for a solar-powered garden lantern should indicate: the power of the charging battery, the number of LED bulbs, glow time, etc.
Watch the video for tips on choosing the optimal model:
Before purchasing, determine the operating range of the lamp: how much area it should illuminate. The size of the illuminated area directly depends on the power of the battery device and the number of LED elements. Low-power flashlights are also suitable for decorative lighting.
The material of the battery also matters. Nickel-metal hydride batteries are more efficient. Flashlights with such a battery provide illumination for up to ten hours in a row, which is important in the winter season.
The glass coating also has its own quality characteristics. Tempered glass for solar garden lights would be the best choice. But structured glass also does a good job of focusing scattered radiation. The smooth glass surface mainly reflects direct and diffuse rays.
An important point is the protection of battery-powered solar garden lights from dust and moisture resistance. This indicator has its own IP symbol. The minimum IP for a street lamp is 44. For water lamps you need an indicator many times higher.
If you do not need illumination of the entire area at once, purchase lamps with motion sensors: they light up when a person appears.
To decorate the holidays, you can buy lanterns with colored LED bulbs.
Watch the video and make the diagram yourself:
The choice of LED solar lamps is due to many reasons: independence from power grids, free electricity, decoration of the site. The issue is price: cheap devices costing 100 rubles will quickly break down, expensive designs will serve as a reliable light source for a long time. With the right skill, you can make and modify lanterns yourself, and they will cope with illuminating the area. Do not forget about timely care of the flashlights: wipe the surface for better accumulation of solar energy.
What you can do yourself
The disadvantage of solar garden lights is their low luminosity. It can be fixed.
Refinement methods:
- Replace the inductor with an inductance value of 33 μH. This will increase the brightness significantly.
- Replace a regular LED with a super bright one.
- Next, you should replace the battery with a larger capacity (1000 mAh). The operating time of the solar lamp depends on the battery power.
- For uniform illumination, you can mount three LEDs instead of one.
If you wish, you can arrange a real fairy-tale illumination based on serial solar-powered garden lanterns, modifying them with your own hands.
We measured the solar powered outdoor garden lights' power consumption and charging speed in direct sun, on a cloudy day and in the shade. The picture turned out to be interesting, although quite expected.
This article talks not so much about specific flashlights, but in general about the practical side of the operation of solar-powered lamps.
To conduct the experiment, we took two inexpensive solar-powered flashlights. One of them is a relatively new type (brown in the photo), which is now on sale at prices ranging from 40 to 150 rubles. absolute majority. The second (black in the photo) is an old model, which populated store shelves with the same high density several years ago at a similar price.
The main difference between flashlights is the solar battery. In both cases it is of the film type, but made from different materials. Also, the old flashlight had a Ni-MH AA battery with a capacity of 600 mAh, while the new one is smaller (AAA) and has 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 energy 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 one (only in theory) 45-50. But here it is important to remember that when 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 work a year longer.
Now let's look at the power of the panels and charging.
Solar Charging Efficiency
To evaluate the charging efficiency under different conditions, we chose a good day: the sun, which was covered from time to time 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 obtained values into the amount of energy produced, expressed in mWh. Here's what we got:
The power of the solar battery of the old flashlight turned out to be noticeably higher, but this is not so interesting. Much more important, and this is good news, is that in direct sunlight, the small battery of the new flashlight can be fully charged in about 2.5-3 hours. Now comes the bad news. If the flashlight is placed in the shade or the day is slightly cloudy, the charging efficiency will drop by 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, we present a small plate.
conclusions
The flashlights proved to be quite efficient. The new model can fully charge the built-in battery in direct sunlight in about 3 hours, which will be enough to operate the built-in LED for 8-9 hours. The old model is more powerful and has a more capacious battery, but there is no point in discussing it, because... You can't find these on sale anymore.
Another important point is that the efficiency of a solar battery in cloudy weather drops by 10 times. And on cloudy days, charging stops altogether. The same can be said about placing flashlights in the shade of trees, where, if the weather is sunny, they will not be able to charge their small battery even halfway during the whole daylight hours, and if there is light cloudiness, charging will stop altogether.
You may also be interested:
—
—
—