Re-purposing a circuit for solar garden lamps...

[Externet]

Greetings
This application-specific integrated circuit charges a 1.25V cell at daylight and boosts the voltage to energize a white led at dark. ( common solar garden light )
Finding how its guts work is guessy; but if a largish capacitor replaces the solar 'cell', would it flash ?
The point is at power-up, terminal 'CE' would then get an inrush current similar to daylight behavior, turn the LED off and when the capacitor becomes charged the current would stop and behave as night time turning the LED on.

How to discharge it when turns on to create cycling ? Or, how to make it flashing ? Anyone knows how that IC works ?

 

[FvM]

I don't see why a capacitor in place of the solar cell should cause flashing.

 

[betwixt]

The CE pin is a current path to GND so the solar cell can charge the battery. When no current is flowing it starts the oscillator so the LED voltage is pumped up. You can use it as an inhibit pin but you would also have to supply it from a 'permanent' Batt source.

There are numerous similar devices.

Brian.

 

[Audioguru]

I have many solar garden lights. For most of them I removed the white LED, added a series Schottky diode and a 0.1uF filter capacitor to ground to smooth the high frequency pulses then added a colors changing or flashing LED. Here is my schematic but it uses a different but similar IC (there are 17 slightly different ICs available):