Solar Led Garden Globe --modification?

[JohnRussell]

My wife bought this solar powered led garden globe. http://tiny.cc/2oLHU

There are three leds (red green blue) that turn colors and make the globe a nice garden feature at night. However, it has a VERY small solar collector that powers a single rechargeable battery. The light only lasts a couple hours or so before it poops out. She asked if I can somehow modify the light to work with our 12 v outdoor light system.

Any ideas on a modification or another light with a bigger collector and battery?

Thanks,
JR

 

[Oznog]

You could give it a bigger collector and battery. One without the other will probably do little good.

It's not really going to be an LED question, you just need a bigger panel of the correct voltage, and you can get a bigger NiMH batt anywhere. Just don't try to parallel them, that setup is unstable and one battery typically sucks the charge out of the other one, even overcharging itself in the process. There's no easy fix for that problem.

You could wire it into the 12v system too of course, but those are usually AC so you'd need to make a number of changes there.

 

[Foxx510]

You often find with these that the battery is big enough but the solar panel is not, so it could be as simple as adding in another panel in parallel with the other one, making sure you match the voltages. Electronics surplus suppliers often have the panels quite cheaply. You can do some measurements to work out what you need. Measure the current drawn by the globe, and the current delivered by the panel, and see if you can find the mAh rating of the battery.

 

[Hellbore]

She asked if I can somehow modify the light to work with our 12 v outdoor light system.

To me that sounds like the easiest solution, if you already have a 12v power source available why not tap into it?

The easiest way I can think of is first to take apart the device and find out what voltage the battery is. Depending on the voltage the device will accept, you may simply be able to use a DC-DC voltage regultor to step down the voltage to an acceptable level from the 12v line.

How good are you with electronics?