I have still not got the complete delivery from China (I’ll tell you what shop in China when everything is tested).
Still, two things I got (well, 2 items of the same type) gave me some trouble. Two nice solar powered LED lights (30 white LEDs).
The text said that they had a on/off button, but no. They turn on when the light on the solar panel goes down…
So, what’s my options? Send them back (and pay as much in freight as they cost) or doing it the hacker way, making them work as I want?
The hacker way, of cause!
Since the function indicated that the important stuff is in the solar panel, I opened one and found this:
OK, maybe that PCB can be changed a bit…. Let us take a closer look:
A quick schematics layout (not 100% proofed yet…)
U1(WS01) and U2 (8205) are the battery recharge circuit. I will try to remember to come back to them in a later post…
What was interesting to me was how to get the LEDs to go on even if the solar panel has light on it. The answer was quite easy. Remove R1. Then Q1 is closed and Q2/Q3 will turn on the light. After that it was just a matter of placing an external switch on the cable.
(ToDo: Get a better picture of the schematics….)
For those interested I’ve added data sheets for the two ICs and a PDF of the schematics (Made in KiCAD).