[ELECTRON] Solar power.

[Clive Mitchell]

Since solar power was mentioned elsewhere...   Can I just say that the
Poundland solar lights are actually very good, and also very hackable.
 Whether changing the LED to a high output coloured one or scavenging
the PCB, battery and panel, they are a lot of fun.

Tenement dwellers can also get some use out of them if they have a
window that gets some direct sunshine at some point during the day.

One of their most interesting features is the use of a little chip and
inductor to boost the voltage from a single cell to drive an LED
(Joule Thief style) so that they can use a single NiMh cell and a
simpler solar panel with lower voltage output since it only needs to
charge a single cell.  The other advantage of this is that because
there is only a single cell it doesn't suffer from the reverse charge
issue of running a few cells in series, where the first to run flat
gets current pushed through it in reverse by the other cells.

The Poundland with the widest range of these solar toys is in Union Street.

-- 
Clive Mitchell.

http://www.bigclive.com