DIY solar powered radio

[Chef]

I imagine that many of you already have a solar powered radio amongst your kit or have seen this mod before but for those of us who don't & haven't here's a nifty way to make a standard 2-3 AA battery radio run from the sun very cheaply using the panel from a solar garden light.

http://gotwind.org/diy/DIY_Solar_Powered_Radio.htm

Some other great little projects on this site too.

[chris8472]

going to give that a try have a old radio like that and a old solar panal from a solar power shed light the light had a bad runing with a lenght of 4x2

[Chef]

I've seen some of these cheap solar lights in the 99p shop, he mentions an 8 strip panel but even if these cheapies have only 2 strips it's not hard to join them together, so for a few quid you have a little panel that'll run your radio, or pretty much anything else with 3-4.5v low wattage.

Also fancy a go at the Sturmey-Archer wind turbine maybe for running a battery charger just to re-charge my batts for torches and headlamps, etc., hey if it's free I'll have it and that one doesn't cost much either.

Some good links on his page too.

[Steve268]

What a fantastic idea! I'll be giving this a go

[grenfell]

I retrieved several of those solar garden lights from a skip . Quite often people throw them away because " they stop working " when in reality it's just a defunct battery and some models use standard AA 's. An even simpler way is just to have several sets of rechargables with one set always in the lights meaning the batteries can be taken out to put in radios or whatever or used to power the light itsself.