Wife picked up a couple of lantern style flame lights. Wall mounted solar carriage style. Wife loves them, but the solar leaves a lot to be desired. The only last an hour or so at best, especially in the winter. Then they were acting flaky. Only work randomly, etc.
So I thought I would beat the system. I rewired them with a 1.5 volt battery eliminator. They worked great for several months. Then last fall, one went out and the other worked fine. Winter hit and the one that went out started working again. Thinking a component went thermal on me and cold fixed it. Then the one that has been working fizzled. (strange the one that was bad last year has been working great for months now) Anybody work on these? When I did the rewire, they had a flexible circuit board (wrapped in a 1-1/2" circle) with a few tiny LEDs and a few other components. I guess I could replace all the guts, but I don’t see anything with this style. The ones I could gut for parts are stupid expensive. (Like the 2nd one below) (Sorry I don’t have any actual pictures)
I got a solar motion-light and dusk-to-dawn light, both solar, both on the shaded north side of the house.
Not much activity on the motion-light, so it always kicks in full brightness whenever it triggers.
The always-on d2d light I have set to minimum brightness, and still it never lasts beyond an hour or so until it just barely glows like a nightlight.
Anyhoo, no port on the motion-light, yes on the d2d light. So I grab a cable, rest a powerbank on the windowsill, and “jumpstart” it when I want to make sure it’s going to light up at night.
Wellp, unless I want to make that a daily ritual, I figured I’d just rtv a charging cable in-place and into the house through a small cut in the doorframe, then just plug into an adapter for a few hours on a timer. Got most of the parts, just measuring out the wire for the final cuts.
Worst case, tap into the solar-cell connections (unless it uses that to sense darkness) and trickle-charge it that way.
I tried the solar connection and it would not turn on. Since it was sensing daylight. I removed the battery and tapped into those connections and disconnected the solar panel. I wired it to a wall power supply. (1-1/2 volt).
It seemed to work well for quite a while. I think at this point the cheap electronics in the flame are failing. Not sure if there is something to upgrade them. It does not look just like LEDs. Hacking a new light would be ok, but a set of similar lights was close to $200. A lot to spend to hack up.
