Solar Lights?

[canesisters]

canesisters, Why don't you show us some nice pictures of the lanterns?

Here ya go. I tried to get some of them lit up but my cheap camera has issues with anything other than plain'ol daylight picts.
The solar panel is on the top and there is a plastic 'difuser' on the bottom. The sides are open - just the grid. There is a tiny little white light bulb up in the top. They light up a decent area around the base of the tree, enough that with 4 of them between the gate and the door, I don't worry about triping on anything if I forget to leave the porch light on. They only burn for about 3 hrs. then go out till the next evening.

 

[897tgigvib]

Here at the lake we are off the power grid. Quite a few folks use outdoor solar lights. It just seems that there should be better ones by this time in the development of solar panels and LED lighting. Main weakness is that so far most of them have teeny little panels and batteries that don't store enough power for 24 or more hours of light, at least 12 hours.

If outdoor LED lighting came with solar panels 18" x 18", and larger batteries, say at least the size of power tool batteries, then they would be much better. This would seem at first like oversize powering for small lights compared to what is now available, but that is what it would take for some serious small lighting outdoors. It may not be what most folks on the grid would want, but for those situations such as at the end of a long driveway even on grid, serious panel and battery size for small lighting would be good.