The ebay 10$ solar powered flashlight FM radio and mobile phone charger

The ebay 10$ solar powered flashlight FM radio and mobile phone charger ebay item 370856410707

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This is my second option to put the Geiger counter in. the thing arrived late this night, curiosity opened it:

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nice screws..

No headphone jack, but a real very loud speaker:

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also note the nice Lipo battery, estimated at 600 mAh, enough to power geiger for days... Now this mysterious chip, same probably as in the 2$69 FM radio, well, here it is no longer hidden:
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It is a HXL1618.

Some ebay search for the datasheet find this in Chinese, but the circuit diagram speaks universal language:

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site takes a long time to load, but scroll down to page 3 or 4 for that circuit diagram, the RST and UP button confirm it is the right chip. Seems the Chinese are ahead again... they are inventive. Only drawback with this tuning system is if your station had fading it will skip to the next station, and that most likely is not your favorite one, bit annoying. Datasheet says chip is made by HONGCHENGWEI ELCETRIC CO., Ltd, should that be Chinese for ELECTRIC?

There are some more chips, likely for the charger and LED driver.

Solar cell and 4 bright white LEDs shining:

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I like this thing very much actually, it misses a headphone jack, but comes with all sorts of USB to DC plug adaptors.

So far the best candidate to put my counter in, OLED or LCD display can go on the back.

I tell you, an empty plastic box of this size here plus local shipping costs more.

Reply to
Jan Panteltje
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Is the other chip (covered by the battery wires) the charger chip ?

Can you tell how the battery is charged ?

hamilton

Reply to
hamilton

A better translation of their name would be Hong Cheng Microelectronics.

The character

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(dian4) means electric, and it appears in their Chinese name.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

Reply to
Spehro Pefhany

On a sunny day (Fri, 24 Jan 2014 17:38:40 -0500) it happened Spehro Pefhany wrote in :

Lightning!

:-)

Reply to
Jan Panteltje

On a sunny day (Fri, 24 Jan 2014 15:35:43 -0700) it happened hamilton wrote in :

Have not had time to draw a circuit diagram, but there is a red LEDs on the side of the box that lights up if the solar cell puts out current into the battery (or phone, there is a selection switch for that too). I have some more of these LiIon, and those have a protection circuit build into the package. I replaced a 160 mA Liion in my very small (2 inch) video player with a 600 mA one, and it now has 3 hours plating time... I tried charging these things in various ways, and it seems this protection circuit limits charge, as long as you stay below 4.1 or 4.2 V (IIRC) it is OK. These are actually very nice batteries, the voltage is usable, the size is nice, comes in many sizes, they are cheap too. Usually glued or with double sided sticky tape, easy to replace, only 2 wires. Will power a PIC no problem, for a very long time too. You can have the PIC monitor the voltage and use a MOSFET to switch of the battery if too low. Every thing I build with PICs lately also has the battery voltage monitor, usually I use a ADC channel, but I guess you can use one of the comparators and internal reference. With these batteries you do not usually need up-conversion.

Reply to
Jan Panteltje

Sort of. I think the actual name for lighting is (can't do it here) flash + electricity. A bit more insightful that the English name, which just refers to the flash of light.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

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Reply to
Spehro Pefhany

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