{"id":3519,"date":"2016-08-26T13:48:15","date_gmt":"2016-08-26T13:48:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/41j.com\/blog\/?p=3519"},"modified":"2016-08-26T13:48:15","modified_gmt":"2016-08-26T13:48:15","slug":"the-cl0116-solar-lantern-controller-ic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/41j.com\/blog\/2016\/08\/the-cl0116-solar-lantern-controller-ic\/","title":{"rendered":"The CL0116 Solar Lantern Controller IC"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/41j.com\/blog\/2016\/08\/the-cl0116-solar-lantern-controller-ic\/solar_kit_assem\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-3523\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-3523\" src=\"http:\/\/41j.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/solar_kit_assem.jpg\" alt=\"solar_kit_assem\" width=\"340\" height=\"340\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve been playing with these simple Solar lantern controller ICs recently. They&#8217;re the chips used in most cheap solar garden lights. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.freaklabs.org\/\">Akiba<\/a> and I have built a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.whitefordresearch.com\/products\/kimono-lantern-led-solar-lantern-kit\">couple<\/a> of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.whitefordresearch.com\/products\/solar-flower-kit\">products<\/a> around these chips and have more in the works.<\/p>\n<p>They&#8217;re pretty amazing ICs given that they cost almost nothing and contain a complete NiMH charge controller, boost converter, and PWM LED driver.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/41j.com\/blog\/2016\/08\/the-cl0116-solar-lantern-controller-ic\/sch_cl0116\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-3521\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-3521 alignleft\" src=\"http:\/\/41j.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/sch_cl0116.png\" alt=\"sch_cl0116\" width=\"198\" height=\"176\" \/><\/a>The basic circuit from the <a href=\"http:\/\/41j.com\/blog\/?attachment_id=3520\">datasheet<\/a> is shown to the left, and aside from the IC itself you just need to add a single inductor, NiMH battery, solar cell and of course the LEDs to complete the circuit.<\/p>\n<p>It uses the solar cell both to charge the battery and as a light sensor. When voltage from the solar cell falls below 150mV the IC will switch into illumination mode and start powering the LEDs. Rather than a typical current limiting configuration, the IC slightly overdrives the LEDs but uses a 100KHz pulse-train to drive them which they suggest results in &gt;90% efficiency.<\/p>\n<p>Considering the IC basically costs nothing this is pretty impressive. I have a set of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.whitefordresearch.com\/products\/cl0116-solar-lantern-ic-inductors\">10 ICs+inductors on my shop<\/a> if anybody else wants to play with them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve been playing with these simple Solar lantern controller ICs recently. They&#8217;re the chips used in most cheap solar garden lights. Akiba and I have built a couple of products around these chips and have more in the works. They&#8217;re pretty amazing ICs given that they cost almost nothing and contain a complete NiMH charge [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3519","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1RRoU-UL","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/41j.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3519","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/41j.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/41j.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/41j.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/41j.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3519"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/41j.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3519\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3526,"href":"https:\/\/41j.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3519\/revisions\/3526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/41j.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/41j.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/41j.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}