solar powered LED front door light hack?

[Weylan]

I am trying to consider a front door light.

I was just reminded that bright lighting might be nice for our front door. Since we don't own the house we live in and I like solar power also, I was considering something small and portable and like you all brighter then what is currently available from the standard white LED pathway lights you can get at Homedepot or Costco. For a man on a budget, can you make a few suggestions?

I was thinking of starting with one of the solar outdoor lights and adding to it for esthetics, but this is not necessary, since the lights can be concealed by the eaves of the house if we can also consider the mounting aspects too.

Some constraints.
The light should run only at night.
The light should run 20+ hours on a charge. Consider 5 hours of charging should fill the batteries full.
I was considering adding a 200-400mah 6V solar panel to charge the light.
Using 2-4x >2000mah AA nmih cells
I have a few white luxeon stars I got for free as a starting point.

Ideas for a hack to get this to work ok?

Somethings I thought of to help things along on the cheap is to wire the solar cell to the + and - of a flashlight, steal the circuit from a Dorcy AAA flashlight or just use a dorcy flashlight put in the eaves. The light would run 7/24, but the solar cell should keep the flashlight running for some time. The problem with this is the capacity is ~5hours of runtime. We need really a minimum of say 10-15 hours to get me through the night in the winter. But the concept of puting a flashlight in the eaves and is a very close and cheap solution. Especally to get the driver circuit for the light.

Ok, more ideas?

 

[raggie33]

i thought about doing that to even bought the solar light but the solor cell on the unit i bought stinks its white led only last to like 12 pm. my dads last longet but have a ugly amber led

 

[Lynx_Arc]

depending on the ambient light around the area you may find yourself rather underwhelmed by anything less than luxeons to light up the area. It may end up costing you more in solar cells, batteries electronics than just figuring out how to get a 120vac solution instead. Considering if you ran several luxeon 1watt LEDs in series off 120v with proper circuitry your power consuption would be on the order of about 240 watts a month figure up the cost of 1/4 killowatt hour and compare that to the cost of replacing batteries every 3-5 years or so. You will probably have to go with Lead acid or gel cells in order to get cheap enough capacity with ability to be able to handle constant trickle charging needed.

I see the LED pathlights on houses everywhere... most are dimmer than a lethargic lightning bug after about 2am and look purple to boot.

 

[cobb]

Ive seen those things too in the lighting section of home depot and lowest. Most look rather behind technology wise and use amber leds. I did see one that used a mini cf tube, but think the run time was like 5 hours or so.

I think you have hit the nail on the head, but it is going to be up to trile and error considering how much light you get in the area you will mount the thing and or solar panel, size of light and run time for the battery.

I believe the ccrane.com company sells a few of those solar things, may not be a bad idea to check out or pick the brains of the tech guys there.