Solar powered landscape lights - old scanner batteries

jonwrice · #1 (**permalink**) 01-07-2011, 10:43 AM

I have some solar powered landscape lights around my yard. They come with some pretty lousy AA nicads installed. When the AA rechargeables I use in my handheld scanners start to get weak I put them in the yardlights. If I have plenty I tape two batteries side by side with the polarities reversed and use a piece of foil to put them in series.

Works great!

hertzian · #2 (**permalink**) 02-08-2011, 4:27 AM

Pretty handy! Just don't do what I did and forget to take the batteries out when it got dark. All my nicely charged AA's started to discharge into the yardlight led's.

jonwrice · #3 (**permalink**) 03-01-2011, 6:51 PM

Oops. i could have been more clear. When i said "start to get weak" I meant wouldn't hold a charge long enough for me to listen to the radio for many hours. The batteries were still better than what was in the solar lights and I replaced the POS 300 mah batteries in the light with old 2500 mah batteries that had been in the scanner.