Solar powered car

[Paukets]

Hey, I got a bunch of solar powered garden light and was thinking of making a solar powered toy car. Any ideas or diagrams?

 

[Marks256]

How many volts/amps do they produce in full sunlight?

 

[things]

well the typical garden light has 1 AA battery in it. and yes you can make a solar powered car, i made a solar powered boat out of about 5 of the solar panels once. it just depends on the motor and terrain and of course weather.

 

[Souper man]

1 AA? I have a solar light that had 4AA NIMH rechargeables with 1800ma of power (each AA had 1800ma)! The solar pannel was rated 5 volts at 100 ma though.

It would be easy to connect the solar pannel(s) up to a dc motor which would in turn power 2 wheels, creating a simple car.

Also, if you have a low power-demmand robot or circuit, bingo, power one of them.

 

[audioguru]

Souper Man,
Rechargable batteries are rated in mAh, which is milli-amp hours, not mA. They can deliver 20A (20,000mA) or more for some seconds.
Your 1800mAh battery cells can supply 180mA for 10 hours and maybe 1A for 1 hour when fully charged.

New solar garden lights use a single 1.2V Ni-Cad battery cell, a small 2V solar cell, very efficient LEDs and a voltage stepup circuit.

 

[things]

how does the step up circuit work? all my lights only have 2 transistors and a couple of diodes and resistors? how many lights do you have to use, what motor are you using?

 

[Hero999]

It's probably a Joul theif style circuit.

 

[things]

the thing that makes me think, is that there is no inductors of any kind

 

[Hero999]

It probably uses capacitive voltage multiplier.

If not then one of the components that you think is a resistor is really an inductor!