Poundland Solar Powered 40 LED String lights revisited after 3 years

[@deslomeslager]

I have a box full of small solar panels and I have zero batteries. Hmm, what will be the weakest part? I know! Nad those tiny batteries are rather expensive to buy, so I have started experimenting with super capacitors. You do need a fairly big one to run all night. And theire range is not suitable for 1.2 to 1.5 Volt, as most supercaps are 2.60 to 2.75 Volt. And the most capacity is in the top range of their voltage. (v is squared in the equation for the capacity). We need better joule thieves!

[@GrandadIsAnOldMan]

Good luck 👍👍 I actually decided to use the solar panel for something else. Although I got the string working, there are several LEDs that need replacing and I decided it really wasn't worth the effort. The other Solar light shown on the table at the start was more fun. It uses discrete components for the charge control and I was able to replace a faulty transistor to get it working. On the way to fixing it I used Tinkercad to emulate the circuit, which was interesting to do. I then went on to convert it to run on a Lipo from a vape.