Greetings to all of you flashlight freaks, and thank you for dragging me into this new financial bottomless hole
Long time reader, first time writer. Lately I’ve been here nearly every day, and you’ve managed to persuade me to my first Convoy C8 light as I’ve required something to illuminate nightly rabbits that chew on my fruit trees.
Anyway.
I’ve bought this outdoor PIR LED light from BG, and it has a really annoying feature - it NEVER turns off during night. It has some dimmed mode that turns on as soon as the sun is gone (about 50% full strength), which drains the battery absolutely unnecessary during the night. When it registers biological movement, in brights on to 100%, which is okay. I’ve read about a similar Litom light (few posts back) which has modes with the ability to circumvent this annoyance, but it is not available to me.
Anyway.
Do any of you guys think that this light could be hacked/rewired, with relative ease, to eliminate the constant nightly glow? I could post a pic of circuit board by request.
Or, if you have some similar light in mind, please feel free to recommend it.
It’s been months since I looked at it, but I bought a Harbor Freight model like this on sale by mistake and didn’t like that “feature” either. I do recall a quick check with mine showed that the always-on section is what powered the PIR so disabling one also disabled the other. I’m sure a circuit redesign would work but I didn’t have time for that so it’s on a back shelf till I get totally bored and all the other projects done first. That may take years if ever.
I soved the problem by connecting two protected 18650 (cheap blue Ultrafire “2500mAh” batteries with a real capacity of 1900mAh) in parallel to the liPo battery in the light (the “battery pack” is in the garage).
The 18650 batteries are charged with another solar panel and a very simple charging circuit (zenerdiodes to prevent the voltage to go above 4,1V and 1 diode to prevent the batteries to discharge through the solar panel during the night).
I bought the solar panels earlier from DX for experimenting (4 small panels connected 2s/2p).
With the extra capacity (solar panels + 18650 batteries) the light worked all night during the longest winter nights.
