On Jan 31, 7:29 pm, John Rumm wrote:
Mary Fisher wrote:
We've been using ours for about five years.
LEDs ARE small ...

I take it you keep them turned off or in the dark for a fair amount of
the time though?

Most NiCds won't survive 1800+ crude charge/discharge cycles - even
decent cells on a smart charger will have a job.

--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

Got some Maplin models form 4/5 years ago, 2 Jump Sun 600mah NiCd in
them, decent size solar panel on top. Retrofitted couple with 3 green
LEDs, green LED will light on microamps, one lights all year round
even over Christmas for couple of hours and has done for at least 4
years.

White, green and blue all need over 3V to light so the single and
double battery models use a charge pump to boost the voltage, amber
and red dont need it, but are usually a sign of really naff solar
lights.

Looking at the size of the actual panel gives a gues lot of them are
couple of stips of ofcut buried in large amount of black gunk, look
for something where the black area is actually panel.

Adam