How to Make Solar Light at Home From Recycled Parts

Hello friends, In this instructables i will show you how i made this lamp that is powered by solar light and can give you a long backup whether it is your camping or just a night out this lamp serves all the purpose

This solar lamp is made just to show everyone that if we switch using energy sources that are clean we can contribute to pollution control to some extent

When this idea is expanded to a large scale we can see significant changes to the environment

This project may seem simple but this can make people rethink the actual meaning of recycling

I will explain this considering an example

Imagine you build this lamp, In the other way round instead of dumping the plastic here and there we are using the same materials to build something useful

A small household will dump enough plastic waste that will remain in the soil forever (almost every type of consumer plastics)

This plastic waste will remain in the soil and block the passage of water to the earth below and in other way this plastic also makes the soil infertile to grow crops

Even if we are burning plastic it releases toxic gases to the environment that is also an impact to the living organisms

The problems caused by plastic are more and more, so i would suggest rather than throwing away plastic to garbage consider recycling the plastic to some extent

If this is followed by thousands than the pollution can be controlled to a very large extent, Also you are giving the plastic a second life!

The solar lamp that i built is made from recycled electronics and a plastic jar that was upcycled from candy jar

Solar panel was from old lamp and the LED panel was also a recyled part, by consolidsting all of them i made something useful that will be useful in many ways

If you have more ideas like this to recycle the plastic let me know in the comments and i will be happy to have a look

The materials used to make this project is almost recycled in one or the other way

Solar Panel (5v, 200ma)

LED panel

TP4056 charging module

Lithium ion battery with holder

Jumper cables

Plastic Jar

Simple on and off switch

Hot Glue

Soldering iron

Elastic bands

Empty PCB or some insulator material

The circuit connection is simple if you are already familiar to the basic electronics or a hobby builder, If you are not, don't worry i will explain the connections

The solar panel and the LED panel was soldered first with jumper cables

Solar panel was connected to the output side of TP4056 and to control the panel i added an on and off switch between the connections

Next the power source to charge the battery is the solar panel that is connected to power input side of the charging board, Solder these components well to the board

In the end solder the battery to the charging board, I will use the battery case to hold the batteries that will help to easily remove and insert the batteries whenever needed

If needed you can also insulate the joints, But it is not necessary since we are csaing all the electronics inside a jar that is water proof

The choice of solar panel is left to you, But i strongly recommend to use rectangular ones like the one that i used since they were a perfect fit inside a jar and also the size of a LED panel

Now we can head over to assemble all the components together

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The main reason for uisng LED panels is because they wont heat at all and if they do it is very negligible, so to the backside of this i will add the solar panel

In the other way round when we are exposing solar panel to the sunlight it will heat up the led panel if it is attached directly without any insulators

I didnt want this to happen so i will use a smal piece of PCB that is sandwiched between these 2 layers

I recommend not to use any glue here, i coupled all this components using a elastic band, One is not enough you will need 3 of them altogether and you can see how i placed them

After this is complete you can add hot glue to the bse of these panels and attach to the base of the jar as shown in the steps above make sure the glue is not too hot or not too less hot

It will take some time to dry completely and now we can attach the battery holder to the base of the lid followed by the switch

In this point we are done with the assembly part and we are all ready to test the lamp

Using this is everyones favorite part including mine! This will show how hard we had worked to reach this stage of the project its like fruit for the effort

To use this solar panel all you have to do is loose the lid and have access to the on/off switch

Turn on the switch and now you have LED light panel glowing and later close the lid, Now you can place it in rain also no matter what the water will not enter inside and the light keeps on glowing

When you want the led to be off all you have to do is loose the lid and tuen off the switch inside

Now if you want to charge this lamp, Simply keep the light to sunlight exposed areas and in some time the battery will be charged

If the sunlight is bright enough the charging time is less and in indoor light the charging time is more and i wont recommend using indoor or artificial light to charge this lamp

I recommned to use plastic jar to build this lamp because we are giving the jars a second life which on the other hand will be dumped as a waste and it will later cause some sort of pollution to the environment

If you have any queries drop it on the discussion box and we will sit and work on it!

You can watch this video to see how this solar lamp works and also this video also includes all the build steps that we discussed in the above instructables

Well now we are in the last step of this project, Now it is not over yet! It is your turn now to continue building and sharing this idea with your loved ones so that we can help to share this knowledge to everyone

This is all for now, Thank you for your time and always remember we have only one earth so let us all put maximum effort to keep it clean for upcoming generations to come

Stay creative and help others to be creative:) Bye