From bigclivedotcom.

Sometimes you find a style of solar light that you really like, and it can be kept operating for a long time by customising it a bit.

I’ve had this one for a very long time, and I’m sure I made a video about it in the past. This time around it’s getting a cell capacity upgrade and some more modern high output LEDs in interesting colours. The LEDs supplied in solar lights are often not the best, and degrade in intensity over time, so a worthy update is the LEDs alone.

I hadn’t planned on changing the top, but the old one had degraded badly in the weather. The new one has a nice lensing effect for the lower intensity LED in the top section.

Any suggestions for LED colours are welcome.

Here’s the openscad script I wrote to create the new dome:-

//Solar light cap
$fn=100; //Number of cylinder facets
difference(){
union(){
//base disk – height 2mm and diameter 76mm
cylinder(h=2,d=76);
//main cone (40mm high, tapering 71mm to 0mm)
cylinder(h=40,d1=71,d2=0);
//raised lip to align in cover
cylinder(h=3.5,d=71);
}
//hollow cone interior (Same cone as above, but nudged down by 1mm)
translate([0,0,-1])
cylinder(h=40,d1=71,d2=0);
}

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