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Make a garden solar light worse by replacing the battery with a supercapacitor.
Make a garden solar light worse by replacing the battery with a supercapacitor.
By Julian
Youtuber, shed dweller, solar charge controller aficionado
Nice tutorial.
awesome man thank you for sharing …
You need 500 farad for a solar light. Also 10 farad may be little more than 5mah. So you need a 330 to 400uh inductor so it uses less current.
Where do you get this soldering iron stand? Please provide a link or something 🙏
Amazing content, deserves more subs, cheers!
Yeap cheap Chinese LEDs…. They make led Christmas lights with the same crappy LEDs…. Imagine 100 corroding LEDs…
What was the farad of the capacitor???
I would think restoring optical clarity to the cover of the solar panel would be absolutely critical… it looks like it needs every photon of sunlight it can possibly get. The “Tech ingredients” guy showed how much difference it can make to simply place the solar panel down into a concentrator sort of reverse lens that the sides are mirrored and tilted in such a way that the sunlight bounces off of these surfaces and on to the solar panel. Casts a bigger net, so to speak..
Before you completely replace a wire that isn’t taking solder very well, try brushing on some strong vinegar, some dissolved citric acid crystals (it’s in the aisle with the canning supplies), lime-a-way, CLR, swimming pool acid (AKA muriatic, or hydrochloric acid) really anything acid based, rinse that off with distilled or at least purified water, then brush on some ammonia or ammonia-based cleaner which will remove any remaining grime as well as neutralize any remaining acidic anything- basically restore a completely neutral Ph to everything. I will then pull the stripped wire AND the length of solder I’m about to use through a folded piece of 320-400 grit sandpaper, and give both a final purge with a tissue soaked with alcohol. By now, the copper strands should be super light in color, and super shiny, and the length of solder wire should look like polished sterling silver. As to the solder tip itself, after trying all kinds of things, the current front-runner is a very specific type of kitchen scrubbie. DO NOT USE ANYTHING RESEMBLING STEEL WOOL! I hate that stuff… its not good for anything except ruining a surface while leaving behind whatever you were trying to remove. This includes “brillo” pads or anything like it. What I’m talking about is a very specific type of scrubbie made out of tight coils of very narrow and very thin strips of stainless steel or copper… Instead of gouging, like steel wool,they use more like a “shaving” action; with your solder tip hot, pull it through on of these a few times, and it will squeegee off all the contaminants and kind of refresh whatever tinning method you used on your soldering tip. Final step: apply a fresh coating of clean flux paste to the stripped wire, any terminal, plate, or surface you expect to accept solder. Dip both the solder tip and the solder wire itself into the flux paste, and try to get a little droplet of melted solder to ride the end of the solder tip. As soon as that droplet comes in contact with a clean, but flux-coated twisted bundle of copper strands, it should flow on and just disappear as it “wicks” into the bundle. Once the stripped end is in this condition, it should melt and bond instantly once it is heated to melting point while it is being held in contact with whatever it is supposed to bond with. Once I started using this method of making sure that everything involved is meticulously cleaned and thoroughly doped with flux, (including the solder wire itself), the whole process was a totally frustrating hit-and-miss proposition that I would just come to dread. One more thing I was doing wrong was not paying attention to the tinning on my soldering tip. I finally found this product advertised as a “tinning paste”. I think it is a combination of rather high temperature solder and some kind of adhesive because once its on there, it doesn’t seem to just come right off as soon as its melted again. It comes in a little round metal container, and I highly recommend it. Good luck! Hope this helps!
You can polish the surface of the solar cell clear again with toothpaste or jewelers rouge and a felt pad on a dremel in a minute or two also. Same for the light cover. Get crazy with the hot glue gun to water proof the seals of the enclosure also. 😛
I would have coated the board with paint or hot glue to keep the water/oxidization to a minimum. It sucks to have to take it apart every year to clean it up and rework the board. Especially here in the rainy Pacific NW.
I'm learning how to solder, so your video was very helpful. I had many of the same problems repairing a thermostat, but I didn't know why.
Should wire a few together more solar