Soldering a Solar Light in the Sun

I bought a pair of cheapo outdoor solar lights from Amazon. One is on my shed round the back of the house, the other is on the shed at the front of the house. Yes, I have a bit of a shed obsession. After a few days the front one stopped working. I took it apart to find out why…

The one on the back works fine and actually gives out a decent amount of light, and even seems to maintain its battery charge. I am generally quite surprised.

The one at the front worked for a few days then died. I’ve finally got around to taking it apart to see what’s wrong.

I think the problem is the connection to the solar panel was poorly soldered. I probed the solar panel and it was giving out 6v, and the battery had 3.3 volts in it. So what probably happened was the battery came with enough charge to work for a few days, but was never charging.

Hopefully a few days in the sun will recharge the battery and it’ll start working again. If not, I have an LED panel, a lipo battery and a solar panel to play with. I can’t see it being too hard to shoehorn some sort of ESP-Home based microcontroller in the case to make my own smart light.

Or for 16 quid I could just buy a new one…

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