Marc's Public Blog - Electronics Hacking

vvv Click on the categories below to see other topic specific pages vvv

All | Aquariums | Arduino | Btrfs | Cars | Cats | Clubbing | Computers | Dining | Diving | Dreamstate | Edc | Electronics | Exercising | Festivals | Flying | Halloween | Hbot | Hiking | Linux | Linuxha | Monuments | Museums | Oshkosh | Outings | Public | Rc | Sciencemuseums | Snow | Solar | Tfsf | Trips

Table of Content for electronics:

2025/01/18: Extended Festival LED Shoes Version 4 (single page)
2025/01/17: House Lights with Pixelblaze on ESP32 monitored with Raspberry Pi (single page)
2024/11/20: Festival Dreamstate Hat Built with RGBPanel, Neopixels, and Lipos (single page)
2024/11/10: Getting Things Done in an ADHD World (single page)
2024/11/02: Pasadena Hackaday Supercon 2024 Yo Dawg Micro SAO and SMD Soldering (single page)
2024/11/01: Pasadena Hackaday Supercon 2024 (single page)
2024/11/01: Pasadena Hackaday Supercon 2024 SAO Badge (single page)
2023/09/22: Testing 1.5V AA Lithium Batteries (single page)
2023/08/29: 2023 Burning Man Illuminaughty LED Meetup (single page)
2023/06/16: Party LED Outfit Version 6: Self Contained Power System on LED Panels (single page)
2023/05/17: Party LED Outfit Version 5.5: Flexible P15 LED Strings, LED Fanny Pack, Rez Inspired LED Goggles, LED Laces and LED Shoes (single page)
2023/04/07: Managing a chicken coop door and checking water level with RC Plane Servo and ESP8266 (single page)
2023/01/10: The fun of solar garden lights (single page)
2022/11/28: Comparing Newer LED Flashlights (single page)
2022/01/09: LED Pants and Shirt v5 on ESP32 and Raspberry Pi with P2 RGBPanels and Wifi (single page)
2020/05/04: Hacking Power Supplies and Battery Pack To Get Around ThinkPad P73 Broken Power Supply Design (single page)
2020/01/14: Linux.conf.au Open Hardware Miniconf 2020: Dingo Car with Tensorflow Video Analysis v2 (single page)
2019/12/01: Using a Tesla Model 3 as Emergency Power Source In Case of Grid Failure (single page)
2019/04/09: Trying Diffusers for RGB Panels run by SmartMatrix::GFX (single page)
2019/01/24: Linux.conf.au 2019: Using Open Hardware from my shirt to OS testing for Google's Fuchsia (single page)
2018/06/30: DC charging with DC to DC conversions when off the grid (single page)
2018/05/29: EDM Party Shirt powered with FastLED::NeoMatrix and Adafruit::GFX, plus 160Wh (10Ah/4S) worth of lipos (single page)
2017/06/02: LED Pants and Shirt Programmed With Arduino on ESP8266 (single page)
2017/04/03: Arduino 328P Uno Teensy3.1 ESP8266 ESP32 IR and Neopixels (single page)
2016/05/24: Hacking LED Shoes (single page)
2016/02/29: Hacking a thinkpad slim tip adapter to output more than 90W (required to charge a Thinkpad P70) (single page)
2015/11/22: Solar Powered Lights Shed (single page)
2015/10/29: Controlling 5 and 12V swtiching with SmartFPV RCCCv2 Video Switching Board (single page)
2011/08/05: Hacking a Lipo Voltage Meter on a Ladyada Breadboard Power Supply (single page)
2011/07/01: Back Into Electronics (single page)
2011/05/06: PC/Breadboard Xbee Adapters: Sparkfun and Adafruit (single page)
2010/06/18: Powering UPSes with Marine or AGM batteries (single page)

More pages: January 2025 November 2024 September 2023 August 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 January 2023 November 2022 January 2022 May 2020 January 2020 December 2019 April 2019 January 2019 June 2018 May 2018 June 2017 April 2017 May 2016 February 2016 November 2015 October 2015 August 2011 July 2011 May 2011 June 2010

2023/01/10 The fun of solar garden lights

π 2023-01-10 01:01 in Electronics

I've been using solar lights for a bit over 10 years now, they are easier to install since they do not require garden wiring (and the original wired lights in the garden stopped working after yard work, or sometimes gophers. When that happens, it really sucks to dig out the yard to figure out what wire went bad). So yeah, solar lights have downsides, like:

they ship with too small batteries I replace as soon as I buy them

the solar panels are sometimes too small to properly recharge them except during full summer with short nights

the plastic can be cheap and fall apart after several years of sun (lots of plastic actually does disintegrate in the sun after a few years)

and then, this, the coating/cover on top of the cheap solar panels, also gets damaged by sun after a while (less than a year for a few I got)

Sometimes, I'm also a bit of an overachiever, and analyzed the actual lights in power draw vs amount of light coming out since all the specs online are a lie:

But despite the downsides, it gave me a chance to upgrade them over the year to better ones, including color changing ones which have somewhat held up so far:

The color lights are the best ones I have found and they hold up after years. If you only buy a single solar light, get this one from Beau Jardin: https://amazon.com/gp/product/B07VDCYXXH?

Oh yeah, I also got firefly lights, and here is the end result:

Sadly, I have to write two years later (2024/12) that most firefly lights are shit and break after a year or less, from bad solar panels, or otherwise.

See more images for The fun of solar garden lights

More pages: January 2025 November 2024 September 2023 August 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 January 2023 November 2022 January 2022 May 2020 January 2020 December 2019 April 2019 January 2019 June 2018 May 2018 June 2017 April 2017 May 2016 February 2016 November 2015 October 2015 August 2011 July 2011 May 2011 June 2010