There was mockery at Aldi and the LED boards are from Aliexpress.
What I’m missing now is a charge controller!
I chose this charge controller on Ebay.
Unfortunately, I can’t get any precise information from the sellers.
One says it works, the other says it doesn’t.
Do you have any idea what I can use for a charge controller? Addendum
I forgot to mention that I bought a solar panel from Ebey: 300W 12V Solarzelle Solarpanel Solarmodul Ladegerät Dual USB für Camping | eBay
My take on this is that it is an engineering project. I find it difficult to engineer with products from e-bay and AliBaba given that the products usually do not provide engineering grade specifications.
I am working on a garden slug killer. At first I will do testing with a cheap wall plug power supply and a bunch of extension cords strung together. But if that all works, I want to then power it from a solar panel and something like a gel cell lead acid battery. But I find it difficult to find good specifications for the portable solar panels (such as one for maintaining a charge on a car battery) and I expect some guesswork in using such a panel with the gel cell battery.
For your situation, why did you choose the lithium battery instead of a gel cell lead acid? I think that a lithium battery is much lighter and may be better for deeper cycling, but if your application is stationary then a gel cell battery might give you more energy storage for the cost. Also the ~12V rating of a lead acid may be easier to work with. I could be mistaken…I do not claim to be an expert on rechargeable batteries.
I have a partially completed analog design for a “maximum power point” charger, but I deem this to be experimental and I may never complete it. I think that most “maximum power point” chargers are digitally controlled. But I have no digital design skills, and I prefer to avoid specialized single sourced ICs when I can. (That becomes difficult to do these days.) BTW I suppose one could do a Power Point presentation on “maximum power point” charging, but the two terms are unrelated.
This is a newer version of the pendant light.
Since I replaced the pendulums with spots, I worked intensively on it. The regulator of the pendant light outputs 3.2V.
I selected a lifepo4 3.2V 86Ah lithium battery as it is very close to the 3V LED light board used. The next thing I needed was a PCB board, and I quickly found what I was looking for. The next question was: How do I charge the battery? I require a charge controller that fits the solar module.
A solar module was also quickly found.
I may have to explain that although I learned the basics of electronics 30 years ago, I have no practical experience. Now that I’m retired, I want to do some small projects. I always take finished modules and then adapt them to my project.
There is one more thing I have to mention, apart from a multimeter and a soldering iron, I don’t have any electronic devices such as a laboratory power supply, etc. By the way, the latter is my next project, which I would like to present here in the next few days.
Thanks. My next project is (something like) a lab power supply that is powered by a laptop power supply adapter. (There are some caveats) I have the bare pcbs already and will start building a couple once I am done with my slug killer.
