I'm a novice and wanted to hack a $15 solar/battery led porch light that walmart sells to be able to charge and run off AC in case there's not enough sun or bad exposure for the panel (i'm finding it only gets 2 hours worth of usable charge on some sides of my place). They use a 3.7V lithium batt and obviously the solar is 12V. So what I was planning and started to do was hook up security camera 12V dc pigtail jacks to the wires than run from the panel to the whole board unit and run cheap security camera cables (4 pack of 100' for $20) to an AC adapter with 4 way splitter. I figure that way the board should have a charge controller that stops the charging feed from the panel (or ac) once the battery is full. I was going to put a manual switch and/or timer on the AC adapter so I could control that at will or on a schedule. My question is what I need to do so that in the rare instance that the battery is full and the solar panel is still outputting some charge so that it doesn't back feed upto and damage the AC adapter which I assume aren't designed for reverse flow. Some type of zener diode I'm assuming? And where do you think is the best place to locate that? My thought was right between the AC adapter and splitter so that they could possibly charge/balance other units and just prevent the damage to the AC adapter.
light is 500 lumens, I'm assuming about 5W max
the security camera ac adapters i got are 2A
As always thanks for any assistance and advice.
light is 500 lumens, I'm assuming about 5W max
the security camera ac adapters i got are 2A
As always thanks for any assistance and advice.