Welcome everyone! Solar Power is a technology that is not totally understood by the general public. Yes solar panels produce electricity but its the way the power is "held" that is how viable the entire resource can be. A few years ago I acquired a few Luci solar lights that have been the base and crux of my camping life over that time. Recently it came to my attention that these vital components of my outdoor world had given their last shine. I'am not sure if it was leaving them on the dash, to power, while driving hundreds of miles in the desert or just the shear use of several hours illuminating around a hot camp fire. No light would come on from any of the LED's. I decided to take one apart to see if I could still utilize the panel or LED's.
I first noticed a few tear down posts on the #steemstem community by @proteus-h and a lot of what he was deconstructing were things I use on almost a daily bases. Visit his steemit page if you would like to see the common items he breaks down. Its those posts that drove me to cut apart this Luci and see exactly what was inside. Now its not hard to understand that if the lights are not working on a solar setup, the battery that is charged and used to power the LED's is bad. I set out to see exactly what type of power dump was used in this setup. I took my cheap knife and cut away.
I first cut off the inflatable portion of the light to see what side to access the electronics below.
The portion where the lights illuminated the inflated mass seemed to me a proper point of attack. The plastic was already deformed to a point were the LED light was mostly reflected inward. Peeling apart the two layers seemed logical.
Before tearing into the situation I noticed a small tear in the side of the plastic. This seemed to me the best way of accessing the internals. I started pealing the glue that held the seams together and slowly they came apart.
I rotated and pealed off the plastic that was between the inflatable surface and the LED lights
The Light Emitting Diodes encompassed what appeared to be a battery. This strange "tea bag" battery that was affixed to this devices confused the hell out of me. Why have a "Faraday cage" around a battery supplied by solar power? I had to dig deeper, as I figured an old style cell phone battery that I could replace.
The Battery was rated at a 1000mAh at 3.7 volts and had some sort of logic board between it and the LED lights. No way of knowing what voltage the LED's were rated at as I didn't see anything.
I cut open the aluminum bag to reveal several layers of "paper" with electrodes delving down into them. This was not a battery I have ever seen. I dug deeper.
The battery seemed to be a small taped up wad of paper with some sort of black material inside.
Now I have several 3.7V rechargeable batteries laying around from a bunch of 5v battery banks I took apart. I might utilize one of them to replace this strange rechargeable battery so that at least the LED's can work. Does anyone here happen to know what type of battery this is? Please comment below if you happen to have an idea. I'm interested in knowing. Thank you for taking the time to read this post and I hope you enjoyed it!
All photos, unless otherwise stated or sourced, were taken by @csusbgeochem1. Animations and cover photo created by @csusbgeochem1 using GIMP.
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Its a lithium-ion battery. the circuit attached to it is some sort of battery protection circuit. seeing as its a single cell, its probably just a low and hi voltage cutoff that keeps the battery from over charging or discharging. make sure you use that BCM if you add a cell that doesn't have an internal one.
Hey man. That is a lithium battery. The little board isw a battery management system. You could replace this with a single "18650" Lithium Ion battery. You can also get a new BMS board from adafruit.com. It does two things... Steps the 5 volt usb charge down to proper voltage, and keeps you from over charging and cooking the battery.
We sometimes use our LED head lamps and water jugs when camping to get an 'area light' (2.5 gal jugs make for really big lights). I really like the mason jar; might have to do something like this in the back yard...
That is a great idea, discovered a few youtube videos a while back about a similar subject where glow lights would hang from a ceiling area to give interior light. Now sure if that is what you were going for but non the less fascinating as hell. Maybe if you have not already tried silicone to seal the jars? 100% silicone I found works wonders. Please disregard my similar responses above. I know those two and will have them both contribute in discord as its too hard to distiguish an answer between them
Its a lithium-ion battery. the circuit attached to it is some sort of battery protection circuit. seeing as its a single cell, its probably just a low and hi voltage cutoff that keeps the battery from over charging or discharging. make sure you use that BCM if you add a cell that doesn't have an internal one.
Socalsteemit for the win. You both are science material! great minds think alike.
Hey man. That is a lithium battery. The little board isw a battery management system. You could replace this with a single "18650" Lithium Ion battery. You can also get a new BMS board from adafruit.com. It does two things... Steps the 5 volt usb charge down to proper voltage, and keeps you from over charging and cooking the battery.
Socalsteemit for the win. You both are science material! great minds think alike.
I did something similar a few years ago and made my own solar powered LED glow jars kind of like this.
They worked great but I didn't get the seal right and water ingress basically killed the electronics.
Oh well.
We sometimes use our LED head lamps and water jugs when camping to get an 'area light' (2.5 gal jugs make for really big lights). I really like the mason jar; might have to do something like this in the back yard...
That is a great idea, discovered a few youtube videos a while back about a similar subject where glow lights would hang from a ceiling area to give interior light. Now sure if that is what you were going for but non the less fascinating as hell. Maybe if you have not already tried silicone to seal the jars? 100% silicone I found works wonders. Please disregard my similar responses above. I know those two and will have them both contribute in discord as its too hard to distiguish an answer between them
Well done... So you just basically opened it up to see the led lights, lithium batteries and the likes.
yeah pretty much, the damn this stopped working so i figures i could salvage the parts. Pretty funky litium ion battery if i have ever seen one.
Wow that's cool.. Thanks for showing us the parts.