Erco's Ebay Deal: $1 Solar Flashlight

erco

Another pleasant surprise from China: you can get these solar-charged flashlights starting at 99 cents: http://cgi.ebay.com/Mini-Solar-Power-rechargeble-3-LED-Flashlight-orange_W0QQitemZ180637303735QQcategoryZ73340QQcmdZViewItemQQ_trksidZp4340.m263QQ_trkparmsZalgo%3DSIC%26its%3DI%252BC%26itu%3DUCI%252BIA%252BUA%252BFICS%252BUFI%26otn%3D10%26pmod%3D180632939634%26ps%3D63%26clkid%3D7618832676837822509

They have a nice little solar cell (45 mA, so says the description) and a rechargeable Lithium 2032 coin cell inside. Three bright white LEDs, a blocking diode and a pushbutton switch complete the deal. Photos tell the story.

Useful as-is and well worth the price of the parts. The battery alone sells for a few bucks on Ebay China.

HollyMinkowski

erco this is simply an amazing find!! Thanks :-)

Perhaps there is enough room inside for stuffing in a few parts even if you leave
the original board in there? Perhaps enough room for a tiny85 and a few parts?

You could also use the LEDs as sensors as well as for illumination and
thus have 3 more input switches that way.

If there was also a piezo speaker included it would be just perfect...

When you win the auction do you get an option to order multiple units?
I'd want several and it's a pain to bid on multiple auctions.

One simple idea comes to mind, replace one LED with an RGB,
one with a UV and one with an IR and you could display any
color using the RGB, use the UV to detect counterfeit currency,
and the IR one for a TV-B-GONE signal....lol

ctwardell

First off, I'm NOT picking on Erco, the stuff he finds is cool.

It's just that I wonder are we turning into something sort of like the post WWII cargo cults. We have this strange ritual where we sing the praises of ebay to have them bring us low cost hackable items from China that magically show up on our doorstep from this person in a brown uniform that climbs in and out of this big brown truck.

It just seems somewhat depressing that so many projects depend on scavenging around in whatever the Chinese are currently dumping on the market, and it seems like the rate at which we have to depend on "hackables" is increasing rapidly.

Maybe I'm just old and cranky...

HollyMinkowski

ctwardell, I understand the feelings you have.
But can you imagine what this stuff would cost
if it were turned out in a union shop in the USA?

Until we have desktop nano-assemblers we must
depend on Asia for cheap stuff.

ctwardell

Holly,

I'm more concerned about the "need" that seems to be developing that we have to find something "hackable" to turn into the thing we want to create instead of doing it from scratch.
I get the whole why reinvent the wheel argument, but it's like we are headed toward some strange Mad Max like world where there is nothing new, just a bunch of stuff cobled together from the left overs of the previous culture. Just sort of this strange pondering about how a post-mortem of our current culture might look, it is like we are no longer predators, but are now carrion eaters.

C.W.

Tubular

Erco someone showed me these about a month ago, but they were $3 then! They had pulled it apart and were admiring the simplicity of the design, no resistor for the LEDs, just the internal resistance of the cell. And the 9 solar cells to give the correct trickle charging voltage. The voltage range of the circuit should suit the Prop.

The external dimensions 60 x 35mm are the same as one of the hammondplastic boxes. I wonder if its possible to combine the top half of that torch with the bottom half of a hammond box? That would allow more depth for a prop board.

That gigxon.com site is interesting, I quite like the sub $3 solar crickets.

Coincidentally I just sent a prop keyfob design off to the fab last night. Coin cell, prop, and two stackable DIP8 columns for i2c devices such as Rayman's 3AD, eeproms, etc

Martin_H

Please be sure to post when a desktop nano-assembler goes up for sale on E-bay!

erco

Several new units just arrived today. No blarney, I paid 79 cents each, and these new units have steady on and blink modes. Aye, there's a wee bit o'logic in these pots o'gold, begosh & begorra!

Humanoido

I just got burned on a large number Chinese breadboards and I'm absolutely sick and tired of their cheap defective cr@p. Previous to that it was Chinese switches that were bad, 9 bad out of every ten. Prior to that it was parts and components that had 80% failure rate. Prior to that it was bundles of hookup wire that had hidden broken connections cleverly concealed. My Chinese oscilloscope didn't last long either. If possible, I would pass by Chinese products. My garbage can is already filled.