Thursday, October 9, 2014
Solar Power walkway marker Led display
These are the little lights with the stake on the bottom that you can push into the ground along your driveway or sidewalk and have the solar panel on top. The solar cell charges a AA NiCd battery during the day and at night the battery powers the LED. The circuit board in this particular model was originally designed to hold a pair of 5mm amber LEDs, but the manufacturer apparently found a source of higher power 10mm amber LEDs and the final product only needs one of these. Due to the limited space, many of the components are surface mount. The transistors are both 2N3904 equivalent surface mounts. Unfortunately, the capacitor is also surface mount and is unmarked.
The charging circuit is fairly simple and has a photovoltaic solar cell to charge the battery and a diode to prevent the battery from powering the cell when it’s dark. Now moving along, there is a cadmium sulphide (CdS) photo resistor, a 10k resistor and a 1k resistor that forms a voltage divider at the base of Q1. When light hits the photo resistor, it has a low resistance which is amplified by the transistor. The collector is tied to the base of the left hand transistor, so when it’s on it clamps its base to ground and prevents it from oscillating. When it’s dark and the CdS Cell has a high resistance, the right transistor is off which allows the rest of the circuit to begin oscillating.
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