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Solar Switcher

Simple replacement for controlling Solar Lights

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Due to the NUMEROUS possible combinations of Transistor, Resistor, Diode, Voltage Source (i.e. Solar Panel or other substitute), Energy Storage (i.e. Battery) and Output Load, I'll just give an example.

  1. Let's consider a 2N3904 Transistor, a 5.1K Ohm Resistor and a 1N4001 Diode.
  2. In my case, I also used a 6V solar panel (60mm x 60mm) and an 18350 Lithium-Ion Battery (with charge/discharge protection).
  3. For the load, I rigged 4 different sets of LED lights running at 12.5mA, 25mA, 37.5mA and 51mA (different value resistor).
  4. All other things being the same, the batteries should all charge to the same level, so I'm really seing how long before the lights go out. To measure this I put them all near each other and within range of one of our security cameras.
  5. So far, they all stay on all night, but the larger loads start to dim towards the end of the night. I need to run them for a few more nights to average things out, but I suspect that after 12 hours of charging I'm maxing out the capacity of the batteries.
  6. For reference, the charge time is about 12 hours and the discharge is about 12 hours.
Your results may vary.