I am in the process of repurposing a circuit I found in a solar lawn lam. The circuit turns on two LEDs when it is dark. The original circuit used a solar panel to charge a battery and removed the solar panel to use standard batteries and I plan on powering it from an outlet eventually but I must figure this out first.

When a battery is inserted, the LEDs glow faintly and then when the light sensor is supposed to switch them on, they light up full power. First, I would like to know why this is. Second, there is a spot on the board for a R2 that was never there, could this be affecting it but I don't think so because it functioned fine without it originally. Third, what is the green bodied 'resistor' looking thing.

Thank you so much for any help.

Notes for the pictures:
It is very possible the drawing is incorrect and I left the solar panel in the drawing but during testing I did not have it.

The gray wires are what the LEDs are attached to

 

The green bodied devices is an inductor.

If you have identified the colors correctly then it is probably a 120 microHenry in value.

hgmjr

 

Thanks for that bit of info hgmjr.

 

Is there a readable part number on U1?

hgmjr

 

Yes it is ANA608.

 

Is that same part number visible on the body of the device?


hgmjr

 

Yes it has ANA608 on the body and 68236 written below that

I also found this link on a very similar if not identical circuit from another forum

 

I have about 26 solar garden lights. Many were free from my electrical utility company.
Nine of them slowly fade from red to green to blue. They all use discrete transistors in the voltage stepup converter.
Usually the cheap ******* (I am not allowed to say where they were made) NI-Cad cell fails within one year then I replace it with a much better name-brand Ni-MH cell.