I've got one of these1 connected up to number one sons ride on fire engine, and I'm hoping it will charge the battery. I've checked the output of the solar panel and it is about 20v but a low current. The battery is meant to be charged with a 9v charger but we'll see what happens. I was having no joy with the charger it came with, nor with the replacement charger (which turned out to be duff), this is a bit of a last ditch attempt. If it doesn't work for this, I'm going to get a car battery for the shed and use that to run an arduino or raspberry pi doing outdoor automation tasks.
I fitted a new lightwaverf socket today so I have a couple more devices in the house set on timers. I need to have a look at how my lightwaverf remote that I use in the lounge is set up because last night (slightly tipsy) I turned the lights and the tv on up in the bedroom, where Clare was sleeping. She was sleeping, until I turned the tv on that is. Oops.
arduino: Microcontroller, hardware prototyping platform, a tiny specialised computer.
raspberry pi: Credit card sized super cheap computer, awesome.
Paul Clarke's blog - I live in Hythe in the deep South. Wed + dad to two, I am a full-stack web engineer, and I do js / Node, some ruby, other languages ect ect. I like pubbing, parkrun, eating, home automation + other diy stuff, history, tree stuff, TV, squirrels, pirates, lego, and TIME TRAVEL.