6V 50mAh Solar Cell Encap

Comments about RadioShack 6V 50mAh Solar Cell Encap:

I was trying to explain what this was to someone and realized the problem with naming it. This is not a solar charger...exactly. It's a BATTERY with its OWN solar charger. Like a backup battery. That's why it has an amp hour spec. They really need to coin a term for this. I'm just calling mine "Norman". ROFL!!

Comments about RadioShack 6V 50mAh Solar Cell Encap:

I tested this product under a variety of conditions.
This device's best use is outdoors. It will not produce enough power under artificial light to do much.

I am able to charge a 3 nicad cells with a measured current flow of 40 milliamps. The short-circuit power output is > 50 milliamps as advertised.
However, for practical purposes you would never use this device in that fashion.

If you are building a project, I would suggest anticipating that you will get a little better than 1/2 of the ratted current power. This is not because of poor quality, just the complexities of rating the performance of a solar cell.

My use is for a prototype wireless sensor network. The device works well.

One word of caution: When testing indoors, I used a halogen light as a light source. I looked away for a moment and when I looked back the plastic case had melted! Yikes.

Cooler fluorescent lights give you the 6 volts but a current flow of only around 12 ma. I guess it has something to do with the limited spectrum of the light.

Now, if radio-shack only sold super-caps...

Comments about RadioShack 6V 50mAh Solar Cell Encap:

Great product, this gets 5.8V in Ohio winter sun, so the voltage is great. The current output of this is low, I can only get 20mA max under huge light. Call me dumb, but I thought ONLY batteries are rated in milliamp-hours as in the current, at most, it can give off for an hour. Radio Shack says the solar panel has 50 milliamp-hours (50mAh) so I am not quite sure that means, but oh well. This solar cell is good enough to power simple circuits with LEDs. Overall it is pretty good.

Comments about RadioShack 6V 50mAh Solar Cell Encap:

Well, I bought this at my local Honolulu RadioShack.[...] And there's also the issue of the one I bought, they don't look alike but they have the same model and catalog number. Might be a bug or something. Okay so this was so supposed to be used for my school project. I tried it using some LEDs. It worked pretty well. I am planning on using it with two more of this to make a solar powered charger. It is really expensive but the performance is great. Though I am thinking on buying solar powered garden lights(10 sets) which is priced $30 here. I would get 10 panels and can produce up to 30v that's more than this product. Great for kids and teens to learn more about conserving energy for the betterment of our world.

Comments about RadioShack 6V 50mAh Solar Cell Encap:

This product is great works perfect & took me little to no effort figuring out or trying to figure out how to power a dc motor .. It was as hard as reading the back of the package to find the following words.. *DC motors can be powered by conecting multiple solar cell modules in parallel ... So much for the uneducated disapointed scientist

Comments about RadioShack 6V 50mAh Solar Cell Encap:

This is a great product! I used this for a science fair experiment to test the effect of various wavelengths of light on solar cell output. This product will last long, and won't break easily.

Comments about RadioShack 6V 50mAh Solar Cell Encap:

This thing is GREAT. Although it requires sunlight to hit it to get the max 6v, it still produces about 1.5-4v in regular lighting conditions.

Comments about RadioShack 6V 50mAh Solar Cell Encap:

It works great, the only down side of it is that for the full 6v, you need to get into the sunlight.

Comments about RadioShack 6V 50mAh Solar Cell Encap:

Great little solar cell. Works great in direct sunlight, 6 volts as advertised. It comes in a plastic housing so it is very durable and wouldn't break if dropped.

Comments about RadioShack 6V 50mAh Solar Cell Encap:

I found this product to work great, my only downfall was the fact you need to make motors work. However, I used this on my 555 oscillator for an ignition coil and it worked great. I supplied it with its own 12V battery (ignition coil) and put the solar panel on the 555 timer, led and timer worked great. Plan to buy more to get more current, maybe someday have 4..for 6V 2X current..