Hacking Poundland "2 for a pound" solar garden lights.
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- Опубликовано: 26 авг 2024
- As if getting a solar cell, rechargeable cell, control circuit with booster and an LED for a pound wasn't enough, Poundland are now doing packs of two solar lights for a pound.
As with most cheap solar lights they come with the standard cold white LEDs. No probs, it's easy to hack in a colour of your choice instead.
I hope you realise that by changing the LED you've invalidated the warranty. If it goes wrong now, you'll never get your 50p back.
I used the same tape to do a temp repair on a gutter that I cracked by leaning a ladder against it. That was 2 years ago and still not got round to buying a new length of gutter but the tape is still doing its job.
I held my breath when you were soldering lmao
These lights are available right now at DollarTree in the US. Where they cost $1 each. They also had another model, more of a floodlight with three LEDs. It runs off a 1/2 AAAA NiCD.
I've found these things make great emergency lights. Mounted in bathrooms or hallways where the light never normally turns off, it can charge these lights and if or when there ever is a power outage, the LED will turn on automatically. Quite handy.
+LS --> Amazon is finally offering fairly good quality garden solar lights like these and in other styles. Unfortunately it seems you have to purchase them in 12 or 24 pack options in order to get them for anywhere close to a dollar each. Oh, and you have to be a Prime member to get the free shipping :( However, still better than the $3-$4 each that Walmart is asking for the same thing when you don't live close to a Dollar Tree, Family Dollar or Dollar Store location.
Once again you have amazing dexterity, I assume bigclive has big hands, so all the more amazing. Oh and thanks for your very informative analysis.
John Doyle I do indeed have big hands. But I probably never really appreciate my own soldering skills. It's just a technique that has evolved over time.
The tape looks like polytunnel repair tape.
I had a bunch of them in my garden but I used green and red leds- that looked very nice. and those were the classic lights with full size aa cells, which I changed to better ones. with some hot snot and dealing they lasted several years
AvE watcher detected!
I also replaced the daylight LED with warm white 3528 I salvaged from broken LED bulb. It uses the same chip that controls the charging and LED, but the position of the switch and LED is different. I also modified it a bit so the switch actually switches the LED from dim and bright using the 1K resistor in parallel with the switch and series with the LED and bodged the negative wire to the other side of the switch and cut one track going to the LED, in dim mode the AAA 600mAh Ni-MH battery actually last the whole night and LED is quite effective as a night light that way. I used it indoors on my window sill. Thanks for sharing.
Thumb upped at the mention of warm white led. :D
I solved the water ingress issue using good quality silicone sealant.
Lidls Greek silicone sealant is surprisingly good (when its in stock that is)!
I tried the tap from eBay but it went crusty and hard and fell off so I use your other method and put a thin coat of silicon across the top that has worked for over a year and looks the same it works. thank you
Rite Big Dude, Watching this with my apocalypse solar powered orange Halloween led's 🎃 A wee bit of heat on that tape will really help it stick and mould to shape! TFS, GB :)
I like your tip about taping the top, which I'm curious to try. I had quite a lot of these fail also with water leaking inside around the solar panel.
just picked up the "Charlie Dimmock" stainless steel version, and the trim makes a well on the top.
Will have to look for one where you do the circuit as I'd like to use one of the drivers to convert an old push light to LED
They sell these in Australia for $2 for a pack of two roughly £1 but they have brushed metal on the top and the base they work pretty well and the metals looks a lot nicer
I've just stumbled on this after 5 years, and I'm wondering if those lights are still glowing up Clive's secret garden
I was just wondering with all your lights do you get the occasional Jumbo jet landing through the 8 foot
I bought a pack of 20 of these from Bunnings for and it was $15. It has warm white leds same build design with a different diffuser {in my opinion that looks better}. It has a 100mah 2/3 aa battery in it. Pretty good a 75c AUD like 40p per light
Ah, Poundland, the penny drops! Like our Dollar Stores or Dollaramas? Yes, there's always interesting bits of kit in those places that can be scavenged for projects. (Currently, the $3 CDN phone battery banks.)
The 4 pin boost converter chip is usually the yx8018 - lots of information available on re-purposing it.
David Pilling Have a look at the ZXSC380. Not fancy, but looks like a good replacement for the joule thief of Big Clive (this guy) fame.
I think Plumber's Grease between the two black plastic parts may have provided an extra weather seal.
Why use a "straw hat" led instead of the usual 5mm led ?
+Charles Penn Wide angle output as opposed to a focussed beam.
+bigclivedotcom thanks
"2 for a pound" is a reference to the character Tom Gallagher in the Scottish comedy series "Chewin' the Fat". He is a merchant who sets up stalls around Glasgow in an attempt to sell sports socks at the price of "two for a pound".
I don't use the tape idea - I just use Poundland epoxy , making a thin bead around each solar panel ...seems to work well ....I used it last year and the lights work fine
Could you please write all stuff used in description so I could find it online and fix my solar lights as its not working anymore.
I got a bunch of these
4 in total.
one is old. tripleA sized NICD rated 200mAh old from 2015. Flat enough it measures full on my charger almost as soon as I put it on.
the other 3 are new from 2016 work just as good as NIMH although they are the same capacity. rated 200mAh (i do notice NIMH have ever so slightly higher full-charge voltage of 1.45v for NIMH vs 1.4v for nicd
they can output much higher current vs mAh rating compared to my NIMH AAA's
They feel as light as old carbon zinc batteries. so maybe the high output and low weigh could benefit something. RC cars maybe.
Ive always had this amazing idea of internally combining multiple NIMH together for a single cell rated a higher voltage.
For example you could put 3 in series inside a single cell. to make a safer LI-ION cell sized battery even though its NIMH in chemistry. That would be super interesting. I dont know how anyone would be able to do it successfully though. They'd have to be careful. but I do believe it would work! Nobodys ever done it though.
You could have custom voltage packs from a single cell and they would be more efficient than multiple smaller cells!!! Saving space AND making more power! just wire them in series internally with spot welding or whatever method would work to tie them in series internally.
You could have much higher rated 9v NIMH cells that consist of multiple cells wrapped in series inside each other with the last one to form the 9v shape! Now wouldn't that be something?? It would be super efficient!
Those steel button batteries have a habit of exploding.
The normal AAA are okay.
I have heard thjem go off as a dull thud when put out in the Sun for the first time.
I wished that you compared the two.
Hello, there. Thank you for bringing informative, interesting videos in a low (understandable) way. I know this is an old video, but I am searchimg for a matter that I can’t find anyone has ever bothered to mention, allthough to me it seems to be a common problem. The manufactures of these cheap garden solar lights seems to have got a hangup on putting in these small on/off switches, that (for the price naturally) is very, very poor quality. I don’t know why they bother, who turns these lamps ever off, anyway? When the go bad, I usually just short them.
But could you explain, maybe in a video, what happens when the battery gets charged, but the lamp is always staying on (no need to cover the sun cell)? This also seems to be a recurring problem. Regards from Norway :)
Sometimes when the battery is old and has high resistance the voltage across it rises high enough to light the LED from the solar panel. The on/off switch is to try and protect the battery from being kept in a discharged state for too long during storage after manufacture.
bigclivedotcom I know I started my comment regarding this switch. Along I changed the team, for some reason, to write about what component that has the job on waiting for darkness to lit the LED. In a amateur way. Sorry about that. Thank you for answering :)
What mixture of solder does Clive use? I use 60/40, silver/lead solder.
i got 6 (with fancy stainless steel tube) for 2.40 pounds it makes 40p each....... they have the same schematics but actualy have a stand for that 1.5v bateryand its ultra compact , serving the same efect i am curious to know the life time.. for curiosity the brand is "in the garden with charlie dimmock"
Given they would work out at just 50p each, is there anything worthwhile that could be done with a few of the little solar panels?
Hey Clive is there any particular reason why you like warm white LED's rather than any other Colour LED's or Bright White ones? I was just curious? Also would it make any difference to the power consumption? Great Video. Keep up the great work. Nick.
+Nicholas Aarons (Nick Mini) theoretically the cold white LEDs are slightly more efficient. In cold climates people tend to prefer warm white light, and in hot climates people tend to prefer cold white light.
It's a trending issue here in the US that new LED street light fixtures have a warmer (say, 3000 Kelvin) color temperature. The IDA is spearheading the change to warmer saying that the "blue" color (around 6500K) is detrimental to human health. Here in Southern California (a relatively warm climate), we are pushing the 3000K temps for our solar street lights to customers. They seem to be satisfied with it. Just a bit of the gossip this side of the pond. Great videos, by the way!
bigclivedotcom Thank you for the reply. That's interesting and very true. Nick.
Nicholas Aarons I heard warm white makes it calm and sleepy cool white makes you active or something with the melotonin production
How would you boost the batteries individually from a power bench supply
What can you make with these garden lights?
try chucking a rechargeable lithium battery from a 1 pound e-cigarette in there?
How have these lights held up in your garden?
is the solar panel really bad or somthing for 50p?
Hi, any idea where I can buy replacement solar units just like the one you changed the bulb on? I bought 20 lights from Poundland and some need “tlc” 12 months on. How do I contact you?
Thanks.
would it be worth it to get a bunch of these just for scavenging the solar cells and batteries?
What is the voltage for every led?
I don't suppose you remember the name of that tape do you? I've been using it for my garden lights ever since this video came out but now I can't find it.
It's often described as greenhouse or cloche repair tape.
2700- 3000k warm LED's are the way to go
When warm is cool ;>)
Do they still run? I mod them with a 100Farad supercapacitor
Hey where did you get your screwdriver from looks great! Nice vid.
Jack English It came from Poundland. It has a selection of bits that store in the barrel.
Hi do u think that the lights could be modified to wire a very simple mp3 player
You can get solar powered MP3 units, but they tend to have bigger cells and batteries.
Last week I was walking back from te$co (who won't sell heinz mayo now, the bastards), and I saw a glowing from the gutter on the side of the road, turned out to be the batter-end of one of these (or at least a very similar one with a metal sheath round it and a NiMH AAA inside) lights, and it had been run over by a car, and was still working, so I had to salvage it to see what the chinese did wrong to make something that survived being run over... :P
Dunno what I'll do with it though cos the light output is pathetic... :P
How do I update it to use copper wire led string light to make jar lights?
If you get some of the copper wired LED string you can connect it where the original LED was.
Can you use SMD's aswell? About 4 that you get for w5w car side light? Or wouldn't there be enough power ?
They will just run at a lower intensity or higher intensity and last a few hours
is it just me or are you using a 40w soldering iron and being quite quick about it?
How long does the battery last once the light turns on? What kind of battery is it? Wouldn't branded AAA last longer sice it seems it would fit?
Years ago when I was getting lamps from eBay they all had cheap AAs, usually 2xAA which I was replacing with good brand ones. Then I was soldering 1 additional LED in parallel to existing one and it was brighter than original.
It runs at low intensity, so with a decent sunny day it will run all night. It's engineered to be cheap, so uses a NiMh button cell.
Krzysztof Cygan That tiny NI-Mh cell probably has about 45mAh tops. A regular AA size battery in these cheap lamps are rated for 600mAh usually but they all test about 130mAh when new with a very high internal resistance and in a bit of time and use the capacity drops down to 30-50mAh and stays there for a while and then Kaput! So basically you don't gain anything with these cheap products, that's why their cost is pretty similar. Hope this helps, Cheers :)
ciprianwiner I've never actually tested the capacity of one of the 300/600mAh cells in the solar lights. One of my "smart" chargers systematically rejects them. Probably because the high resistance shows up as an unusually high cell voltage when the charging current flows.
I've just taken apart a solar light with an AA cell rated 150mAh.
bigclivedotcom Yes, that is a problem with these cells, their high internal resistance makes the charger overshoot and sometimes it stops charging them, you could charge them on a more "dumb" charger and then discharge them on a smarter charger. 150mAh seems more honest to me. :)
i cant seem to find what the voltage is for the leds.
Typically around 3v, but you can use any ordinary LEDs.
thanks for the quick reply, here i was searching the interwebs for 1.2v leds :D but this makes it much easier since i already have them laying about
So that's where my side cutters went - oi ya thieving git :))
Is that a poundland screwdriver?
I use the small multi-bit set from Poundland because it is actually really good quality.
I noticed, because I have one.
bigclivedotcom and cheap as chips....even though that's £1.20 now, so cheaper than chips!
Oh dear god, i've slaughterd like 20+ of those for their solar cells a couple a years ago.
super cap??
+john cajka
Good one! Probably more like whatever leftover or salvaged components they could find to make it work for at least 10min. Seriously, if that lasted past midnight on the first night I'd be shocked. Would be nice though.
2 for a pound you say? can it be a pound of anything? flour? rice? dirt?
Why
Who talks like this. Wtf
there is a reason they are 50p each its cos they are crap
how much effort are you putting in to this accent to try and sound english
Callum Docherty None at all. This is my normal voice.
bigclivedotcom i can hear your pain its ok I'm here if you need to cry
What the shit are you on about?
+bigclivedotcom
I had picked yours as an Edinburgh accent, sorry if that's wrong, am I close?
+Oscar Goldman Glasgow, but not a standard Glasgow accent.