Doing a DIY project learning about electronics. Is it possible to use a bunch of old calculator solar strips to provide a power extension to something small like a small light or even a PDA?
You would need a LOT of them.
You need to read up on some basic principles like voltage and current. Measure the current needed by your proposed load (the thing you want to power), and measure the current produced when those solar cells are running a calculator.
The solar powered calculators were feasible because they didn’t have backlights – hence they consume very little power. Consider that similar calculators without solar cells were powered from a few button or coin cells (357, 2032, that sort of thing), and could run for more than a year on such sources.
Now consider that no modern PDAs exist that run from such batteries… although some of the old primitive things like the Casio B.O.S.S. series could do so, they didn’t have backlights either.
There *are* keychain LED lights that run from just one or three coin or button cells. However they don’t run for nearly as long as a calculator would.
It is of course axiomatic that to power a lamp (any lamp, LED, CFL, any lamp) with solar cells will require far more light hitting the solar cells than the lamp is going to produce.
To power a PDA is possible… your best bet would be a very old Palm Pilot without a backlight; at least, do not try to turn the backlight on… but you’ll need an area of cells at least as large as the PDA, if not quite a bit larger.
Possible, You can spec them and get more info, such as voltage and current output. It would also be an experiment to just hang a meter and a load on them (in series and/or parallel) and see what they can do.
I think it is cheaper and easier to buy a new solar cell based on how much of a load you need. Like Sullivan said, calculators don’t need much power so their cells are small and inefficient.
You would need a LOT of them.
You need to read up on some basic principles like voltage and current. Measure the current needed by your proposed load (the thing you want to power), and measure the current produced when those solar cells are running a calculator.
The solar powered calculators were feasible because they didn’t have backlights – hence they consume very little power. Consider that similar calculators without solar cells were powered from a few button or coin cells (357, 2032, that sort of thing), and could run for more than a year on such sources.
Now consider that no modern PDAs exist that run from such batteries… although some of the old primitive things like the Casio B.O.S.S. series could do so, they didn’t have backlights either.
There *are* keychain LED lights that run from just one or three coin or button cells. However they don’t run for nearly as long as a calculator would.
It is of course axiomatic that to power a lamp (any lamp, LED, CFL, any lamp) with solar cells will require far more light hitting the solar cells than the lamp is going to produce.
To power a PDA is possible… your best bet would be a very old Palm Pilot without a backlight; at least, do not try to turn the backlight on… but you’ll need an area of cells at least as large as the PDA, if not quite a bit larger.
Possible, You can spec them and get more info, such as voltage and current output. It would also be an experiment to just hang a meter and a load on them (in series and/or parallel) and see what they can do.
I think it is cheaper and easier to buy a new solar cell based on how much of a load you need. Like Sullivan said, calculators don’t need much power so their cells are small and inefficient.