I need an electrical engineer for a little project.

~TABASCO~

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Hey guys,

Looking for an electrical engineer for a little project. I want to build a little project that uses a small solar panel with a dusk to dawn feature, that powers a 11" LED strip for the night. I have bought a small dusk to dawn garden LED lamp, but it says its only 5.5v, and probably not even truly that. I might need more power to run my little strip of LED's.. I came across this video, should this be the direction I go ? I was kinda hoping to retro fit some Amazon parts together to 'try' out on this little project... I came across another video that someone has taken two of these little solar panels and run them in series. Is this another possibility?

Solar power (the little garden powered solar/battery has a 3500mh batt that came in it, I think)
dusk to dawn
powering 11" LED strip

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BKKwEm1n6E

Thanks
 

patrickg450

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I dont understand what you are asking. Is this for you bike or for your house? When wiring solar panels in parallel, the amperage (current) is additive, but the voltage remains the same. So if you had 4 solar panels in parallel and each was rated at 12 volts and 5 amps, the entire array would be 12 volts and 20 amps. You say you need more power (amps) for more, well then you need a 5 volt power supply with enough panels to supply the current for how ever many lights you have, what are the lights rated at?
 

~TABASCO~

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For the house...

I believe the little LED strip is rated at 8-12v... The first little experiment with the solar panel was 5.5v. Ive watched a video he ran two in series to bump up to make it work....
 

Bryce

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~TABASCO~ said:
For the house...

I believe the little LED strip is rated at 8-12v... The first little experiment with the solar panel was 5.5v. Ive watched a video he ran two in series to bump up to make it work....
2x in series would give you the sum of their output voltage, but amp would be the same. if you exceed the input voltage of the light, you'll probably fry something in the lights. you need to combine the panels in parallel or series to get the proper input voltage and maximize the amperage. I assume these panels have some sort of battery that they charge, or they won't work at night anyhow.
 

~TABASCO~

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Yes. Little POS batt. I think it was 2800mh


I could be totally wrong.
 

Bryce

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so you treat these list like any battery in a circuit. if you need to boost voltage, you put them is series. if you need to boost amps or Ah (amp hours), you put them in parallel. If you need to boost both amps and volts, you'd do a combination of both.

For example, you have 4 solar charged batteries that are 3v 1000mAh each.
all 4 in series, you'd get 12v, 1000mAh
all 4 in parallel, you'd get 3v, 4000mAh
now take 2 in series and the other 2 in series, each would give you 2x 6v, 1000mAh. Take those 2 pairs that are in series and put them in parallel with each other, and you'd get 1x 6v, 2000mAh

you don't say what the draw of the light strip is, so you'll need to find that our so that you can tell how long your light will run. divide the mAh (or Ah) of the battery/solar circuit by the amperage of the light to give you hours of run time or multiply the amperage of the light by the hours you want it to run to tell you the mAh you need in the battery circuit to give you total needed for your specific run time desired.


this page give a good explanation. just consider the solar charged batteries as regular batteries.
https://www.batterystuff.com/kb/articles/battery-articles/battery-bank-tutorial.html
 
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