Solar Lamp with Chip Inside?

[Tapisvolant]

Hi all.
I am completely ignorant about electronics circuitry, so I hope somebody would help. I was looking for quality solar lamps (not the unreliable ones sold at Home Depot) and found this page:

**broken link removed**

These Solar lamps have chip inside, says the ad, but nothing inside the unit looks like a tiny chip to me. Have I been conned?

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

No, you just don't know what you're looking for - it's the black blob on the track side towards the left. It's called 'COB' (Chip On Board).

 

[audioguru]

I have many solar garden lights. 10 were free (I had to pay only a small tax) and they are the best ones. The rest were on sale.
A few rusted away. (The cheap on-off switch that I replaced with a piece of wire)
A few had their Chinese Ni-Cad battery fail. I replaced them with modern Ni-MH cells)
One had its fading rainbow colours LED fail (its blue became very dim).
Some have the clear top plastic cover clouded from sunlight. (Cataracts like I have in my eyes).
None have an IC and they work fine at night following a sunny day.

I think the ones you found are also cheap Chinese ones and the sellers want all your money.

 

[mneary]

The workmanship on that board is incredible!

 

[whiz115]

indeed...smds are perfectly soldered...

 

[Tapisvolant]

Thanks all,
Well, it is harder and harder to find quality products and not see cheap ones ending up in the landfill. Sad world...

 

[Hero999]

indeed...smds are perfectly soldered...

I think he was being sarcastic.

All the SMT components are crooked.

The epoxy covering the chip hasn't been applied correctly. Some of the bare copper has been exposed and it's nearly splashed a transistor.

The weirdest chip on board I've seen is in an amber traffic warning light. The IC was light sensitive covered in a transparent rubber compound. The dark the LED would come on in the dark and go off in the day. The light from the LED shone on the IC so I imagine it used some sort of PWM so it could gauge the ambient light level and turn off. There was also a delay in between turning on and off.

 

[rjvh]

The workmanship on that board is incredible!

Tipsy machine