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Solar AA battery chargers?

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Neil W

Jan 1, 1970
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I'd like to start off small with my solar experimenting. Can anyone
recommend a good solar AA battery recharger? I have read a number of
reviews about products that simply don't work. Can anyone recommend one out
of first hand experience? Thanks.
 
R

Randy

Jan 1, 1970
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I usually sneak out to my front yard when my wife is not looking and swap
out the batteries from the malibu solar lights:)
They charge quite nicely.
(do it before dark though)
 
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Blue Cat

Jan 1, 1970
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Neil W said:
I'd like to start off small with my solar experimenting. Can anyone
recommend a good solar AA battery recharger? I have read a number of
reviews about products that simply don't work. Can anyone recommend one
out of first hand experience? Thanks.
I don't even need a commercial recharger. Just set up a charging circuit
with the charging current equal to one tenth the battery capacity. If the
rechargeable cell is rated 1.5 amp-hours, charge it at 150 ma. Use the
formula below:

Series Resistor = (PV panel voltage - battery voltage)/(Charging current)

The PV panel voltage is not the open circuit voltage, but the voltage at the
charging current.
 
G

Guest

Jan 1, 1970
0
Hi AC Me;



This uses a PIC12F675 microprocessor.
This clearly has a clock rate greater than
9.6kHz. I could find nowhere that they say they
have passed either the FCC nor the CE mark testing
that would make it legal to sell it in the US nor
Europe.

Is it legal?
Do you have more info on this subject?

I make solar trackers and I don't use micros because
the legal testing costs are quite high, maybe $10,000
or so. I used to do this testing while I was employed
by Unisys. Some of my competitors do use micros and
they are really taking a chance. However, since I'm
one of the worlds largest manufacturers of solar
trackers, I think I'm the largest by far, I just can't
violate these rules as I would be one of the first to
get caught if I violate them.

Yes, I have micro designs, but I can only sell these
designs to people who are OEM manufacturers as they
will undertake the required testing.

Do they have FCC or CE mark certification?


What is the risk for the end-user? Simply being non-reliable?
Or overheating/fire?
 
S

SJC

Jan 1, 1970
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Neil W said:
I'd like to start off small with my solar experimenting. Can anyone recommend a good solar AA battery recharger? I have read a
number of reviews about products that simply don't work. Can anyone recommend one out of first hand experience? Thanks.

No first hand experience, but here they have some that do not cost much.

http://store.sundancesolar.com/unsobachwime.html
 
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ssupermatch

Jan 1, 1970
0
http://store.sundancesolar.com/unsobachwime.html

This is a good place to start above. I've gotten their charger. Takes about
4 hours using this type in direct sunlight to do AA,AAA. C and D's take
closer to 9 hours. But its just sit it in the window and forget about it
till your ready to get a freshly charged one for your needs. Gotten another
type its used to charge up Cell phones, and AAA. Charging up the AAA u can
use them with the PV to use your cell phone even if the Cell phone battery
is dead. It will charge up the Cell phone but I've never charged it up from
a dead state, not sure how long it would take. I just kept it in the window
with the other one.
 
L

Landline

Jan 1, 1970
0
From their website:
"Charges at 160mA charge rate. If you used 2 AA 1600mA batteries, it would
take 10 hours of sun"
2500mA NiMh take in excess of 24 hours charging. Found the unit pretty
useless.
 
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ssupermatch

Jan 1, 1970
0
I'm sorry the link I used was the wrong one. The charger it showed me was
differant from the one I bought. Yes its not as good as the one I bought.
Check out the site there is another solar charger there. That should do
better then that.
 
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