House Numbers Solar Powered

You might be surprised by the fact that house numbers are a deco-thing. We re-invented the front yard this year. One more reason to thank COVID from the bottom of hell where it belongs... I guess...

We built a pathway to be used when the driveway is busy with cars or otherwise deliveries. At the end of the pathway, there's a ramp and a short fence for decoration purposes. We wanted the numbers to stand out on that fence and work at night as good as during daylight.

So we went fancy and solar. This is the story of how we pulled that off.

We purchased deco numbers, they are supposed to be used for interior but the plastic is mostly UV resistant and the LEDs are sealed with hot glue (as purchased). So effectively can be used outside as well or if you really want to go wild you can use them as a mold for concrete casting. Which was an option I considered before I realized how much welding I would have to do to make them stay in the location we wanted them to be.

Once we received the numbers, all of them (oddly you can't order all the numbers in one shipment), I opened them up, removed electronic parts that I didn't need it nor I wanted to insulate from rain and tested the polarity of the wires because in some were color-coded in others were all the same color.

At first, I wanted to re-use some yard solar lights that have a good charging battery and a light sensor built-in into the solar panel structure. Then it occurred to me that I would have needed one for each number. Increasing the overall packaging once installed. Didn't like that, so instead, I purchased one that had enough battery and was driving plenty of LEDs to match my power load. Ironically as most things built in China, it was cheaper this way than what I was originally going for.