I'm Building a lighting system for my tree house with 4 LED work lights I picked up at the hardware store. I want it to have solar charging and be operable via one switch.

^{simulate this circuit – Schematic created using CircuitLab}

I have made a schematic and I want to know if it will work. The LED Lights are made to run on three AAA batteries in series. I wanted to be able to turn them on with one switch so I have them hooked up to a 4.5V Dry Cell (1.5V X3). And to extend the battery life I connected another one in parallel.

For the solar aspect I found some cheep 4.5V 80mA Solar cells online and put three of them in parallel to give me 240mA charging, staying under the 10% recharge rate of the two Dry Cells. Adding a diode ensures that the cells won't draw power out of the battery's when it is dark.

From there, a switch is wired into the circuit, and then a two pole cable will go from the battery/switch box up to the celling where each wire will be soldered to the respective terminals of each Light.

Here is a diagram of the Layout to solve any confusion (And cause diagrams are just cool).

---So, If anyone has insight into why this design might fail or how it could be Improved, I'd love to hear it!---

I'm Building a lighting system for my tree house with 4 LED work lights I picked up at the hardware store. I want it to have solar charging and be operable via one switch. Theres alot of background so skip to the end for just the question.

^{simulate this circuit – Schematic created using CircuitLab}

Here is my plan so far; I have made a schematic. The LED Lights are made to run on three AAA batteries in series. I wanted to be able to turn them on with one switch so I have them hooked up to 12 AAA batteries in series/parallel as shown. The ends of the battery holder(s) will run up to the celling where the lights will be hooked up in paralell.

For the solar aspect I found some cheep 4.5V 80mA Solar cells online and put 5 of them in parallel to give me 400mA charging, staying under/at a 10% recharge rate (1000mAh on per battery X 4 parallel groups of batteries). Add a diode to prevent backdraw from the solar cells and a switch to turn the lights on and off and thats about it.

Heres as much specs as i can get from each component and a link to each.

Solar Cells-4.5V 80mA

Batterys-1.5v,1000mAh,NiMH

Lights-Run off 3 AAA batteries usually, 27 LEDs in parallel with a 0.25Ohm? Resistor(red,green,gold,gold). I know theres a way to calc. the current draw but I'm having real trouble with that.

Here's my two main questions that I'm concerned about:

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1: Will the batteries charge and discharge correctly? Elaborations:Are the solar panels hooked up so that they will correctly charge the batteries? Can the batteries actually charge and discharge in series/parallel like that?

2: Will the lights being powered With the correct current and voltage? Elaborations: If each light is supposed to be powered with three AAA Batteries, will they each get about the same amount of current and volts in this setup?

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Also here is a diagram of the Layout to solve any confusion (And cause diagrams are just cool).

This is an update from my previous question witch I left open ended without any specific questions. After a little more digging, I was able to ask the right questions and find out what I needed: Lesson Learned