Tiki Torch - BATERY Powered, NOT Solar

scottandgaye wrote:

Side note: I'm a EE for the last 40 years. Instead of a response like "cool" or " that's great", I got a "how come you didn't know that?". You just can't win.

Scott

Well you'd not know that less you opened one up.. I'm not a professional EE (though that was the plan 50+ years ago) I'm a Ham Radio Operator. We Tinker so naturally I opened mine up... All the ones I opened had either AA or AAA batteries and I have that handy dandy 4 bay charger.
NO reason to sever the wires.. it won't hurt the batteries to recharge a little bit and due to slightly different voltages they might not recharge at all. YOu do need to pop in new batteries every so often however if you use regular ones or they leak and damage (But you know that)

Thanks I think I might get some.

opnspaces wrote:
I just noticed those rechargeable tiki's at Lowes the other day. Do you like them? Do they look somewhat realistic? I have an embankment in my yard that I always wanted to put Tiki's on. But don't like the idea of an open flame in that location. And Amazon only has short LED tiki's on plastic poles.

Yea, the are not bad. They don't put out a ton of light (just 1 AA battery), but they do they do give the area a nice soft light pattern. Our problem was that where we put them, it was always in shade and never recharged. These have an on/off switch, so I can left them out there and just turn them off when we go in for the night. Hope that helps!

Scott

I just noticed those rechargeable tiki's at Lowes the other day. Do you like them? Do they look somewhat realistic? I have an embankment in my yard that I always wanted to put Tiki's on. But don't like the idea of an open flame in that location. And Amazon only has short LED tiki's on plastic poles.

wa8yxm wrote:
The solar ones are battery powered usually AA or AAA and you can recharge them with an external charger off line (120vac)

Here is one such charger
Xtar charger

And here is another.. I have th4 4 bay model

Another Xtra Charger

Well, I just took one of the ones that we bought at Lowes's last year apart (the top just screws off) and saw that it was nothing more than a single rechargeable AA battery! I replaced it with a standard AA battery and severed the wires from the solar panel down to the control board (don't want to charge a non-rechargeable battery).

Side note: I'm a EE for the last 40 years. Instead of a response like "cool" or " that's great", I got a "how come you didn't know that?". You just can't win.

Scott

Thanks for the info. I just assumed that it used some sort of soldered in battery pack. I will look at those. I appreciate it!

The solar ones are battery powered usually AA or AAA and you can recharge them with an external charger off line (120vac)

Here is one such charger
Xtar charger

And here is another.. I have th4 4 bay model

Another Xtra Charger