{"id":2334,"date":"2016-02-24T22:49:22","date_gmt":"2016-02-25T06:49:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pididu.com\/wordpress\/?p=2334"},"modified":"2016-02-24T22:49:23","modified_gmt":"2016-02-25T06:49:23","slug":"salvage-a-solar-yard-light","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/pididu.com\/wordpress\/blog\/salvage-a-solar-yard-light\/","title":{"rendered":"Salvage a Solar Yard Light"},"content":{"rendered":"

I had six broken solar yard lights lying around outside for years. \u00a0Was there anything I could salvage from them?<\/p>\n

\"yard<\/a>
Here is one of the yard lights.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"take<\/a>
A simple twist, and the top came off. There were two LEDs underneath the top of the lantern. Note the reflective plastic mirror at the bottom of the body.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"tea<\/a>
The lantern part could be cleaned up and used with a tea light candle.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"lantern<\/a>
The translucent inside part could be separated and used as a pencil cup. The lattice could be used as a decoration, too.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"convex<\/a>
That mirror at the bottom turned out to be cheap plastic with silver paint. Still good enough to put on a monitor, to see if anyone is looking over your shoulder.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"lantern<\/a>
This is the top part of the lantern. There’s a Ni-Cd battery in there.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"NiCd<\/a>
Amazingly, the battery was still good, and held a charge.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"battery<\/a>
After some cleanup, there’s a nice AA battery holder, if I needed one.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"top<\/a>
Remove 4 screws, and the top comes apart. Note the tiny circuit board with a photocell standing up on leads. The top part held a solar cell.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"solar<\/a>
The solar cell consisted of 4 polycrystalline cells in series. Unfortunately, the cell was no good. In fact, not one of the solar cells was good in the whole lot of six lights.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"pcb\"<\/a>
There was a small printed circuit board in there, with through-hole components. When I was in high school, I would have gratefully salvaged the transistors. Today, this goes right into the electronic recycling bin. There were a few parts worth saving though – see the next picture.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"photocell<\/a>
Each lamp contained a photocell and two yellow LEDs. The LEDs were actually through-hole parts meant for PCB mount. I could remove the wire leads and use them that way. All tested out fine. Ultimately, LEDs and photocells were the only things I kept.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"metal<\/a>
All metal went into metal recycling. In fact, all the plastic and electronics went to recycling, too, except for the photocells and LEDs.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I had six broken solar yard lights lying around outside for years. \u00a0Was there anything I could salvage from them?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[202],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/pididu.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2334"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/pididu.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/pididu.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pididu.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pididu.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2334"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/pididu.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2334\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/pididu.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pididu.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pididu.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}