Tuesday, August 4, 2009

Solar Powered Lights for the Garden House

We received a couple of the 12V LED light strips in the mail and have constructed simple light fixtures for our new Garden House.



If you recall, we have built a solar-charging circuit to keep a 12V battery recharged, which these light strips will run off of.



First step was to tack the light strip to a piece of left-over aluminum flashing. The light and flashing were also held to a 1x2 strip of board, using white plastic wiring brackets.


Here are 2 of the fixtures. One is white LEDs, the other is BLUE LEDs for variety. More are on the way, too.





Not too shabby looking... but will they work?







Yes! Here they are wired up to the battery, which charges off the solar panel during the day. Both the LED strips are quite brite!














Here is one of the strips installed in the corner of the Garden House.



Our next experiment (along with tracking how quickly and effectively the solar panel charges the battery) is to monitor how much drain all of these lights puts onto the battery when left on all night!



Oh well, at least the sun will always rise!