Let More Light Be With You

New smartphones comes in, older goes away, but many chargers remains. So why not turn our heap of smartphone chargers to something useful?

This is just one of many ideas, if you have some nice lights for decoration. It uses batteries, so durig one year it consumes many kilograms of batteries, and money also..
This is about replacing batteries with some smartphone charger. It´s easier than it seems and you are not dealig with high voltage, just 7V maximum - like with batteries.

• unused old smartphone charger
  (rather don´t use new quick chargers, they are much stronger, it´s too risky)
• double wire (from telephone line, or long data cable), or one, but you will need to intertwine them
• sharp knife
• lineman´s pliers (or scissors if your wife wouldn´t mind)
• soldering iron with soldering tin

Pick your favorit one :) Cut off jack connector. You can cut also line if you prefer to replace it for less visible white wire, but don´t forget to leave 10 cm of original charger line - we need it.
Now carefully remove outer isolation rubber with length 2 cm, and then 0,5 cm of inner isolation of each wire to naked copper.

Steps are same as in preparing charger - remove isolation on one side of both wires in length 0,5 cm. Other side leave untouched, as is, we can trim it later at the end of project.

Now we have to solder charger wires with line wires one to one properly. Then isolate naked points separately. And when you are sure there´s no naked wire or tin point, you may again isolate both wires together to make it stronger and safer with long tape, to avoid water to percolate through.

Most beautiful thing about pairing is to get together (somehow) two who don´t belongs to each other and let them live together (even tonight) :)

Don´t be shy, just grab wires and try to connect with contacts of decorative lights source. With bunch of luck you find right combination of placing: find two contacts on source side with light wires. Sometimes try change between wires - one is plus, second one is minus. When the led lights will light on remember position and combination of wires. Then place charger wire into source box into contact gap after thin plate with plus, and other wire to gap after plate with minus in source box. Now just carefully close box lid.
For turn lights on and off you can use the main source switch.

If everything works fine, it´s time to place our lights with new power source into some attractive position. Now we may find our new line too long (or too short?) so we can cut it on side of source box of lights, not on isolated soldered points.

Couple of days check charger if it is not hot, but it won´t be.

I have couple of decorative lights also with automatic on off control - 8 hours on and 16 hours off and it works 6 months nonstop already without problems, always in wall socket. And I´ve made new one - in glass decorative bottles, for you - it´s actually two devices connected together in serie (not in paralell) and it´s also better - it uses less volts so it maybe will shine and live longer :)

If you decide tune up this idea to something else, just do it carefuly, with exclamation mark in mind:

• any electricity powered device can be source of fire in some circumstances, check it occasionally
• don´t overwhelm power sources
• electricity and water or humidity are not friends