<p>Hello, I would like to get my small chicken coop to be lit at least 14 hours a day for egg production. I have bought an LED solar bulb on amazon. There is an IR remote and it is powered by a 18650 1800mA battery which is kept charged with a small 5V 1.2W solar panel. The wiring to the battery and to the bulb are easily accessible. The issue is that I cannot find a timer that will work because they require at least 5V to be powered. So, what I need is a very low power timer that could switch the bulb early on the morning and then turn off after a few hours (it does not have to be turned off when the sun is out, I live in South Florida). The closest I could find was a Timer control relay YYC-7 but I am not sure it will work since I cannot get a hold of the manual and what I saw online was that the timer can only go up to 999 seconds (Not sure there is a way to switch to minutes as time unit).<br />
Please, let me know of my options. Thanks!!</p>
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Ashutosh
PermalinkHi serge,
Using the relay would not be a good option beacuse your bulb is operating on 18650 (4.2V) and a relay is a bit of power hungry device that will consume power even when your bulb is turned off. This will reduce the run time of your bulb.
The best way to go from here is to use a low power microcontroller operating on 3.3V with an RTC module and a power switch (like mosfet). Your microcotroller and RTC module will help you keep track of date and time and the mcu can be programmed to turn on/off the bulb at any required time of the day.
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Joined August 27, 2018 25Monday at 04:18 PM