[debbietownhead]

I am looking to pick brains here?   I need to put some lighting on a timer to encourage my birds to lay throughout the winter.  Ideally as my hen houses dont have electricity I am looking for a small battery powered light with a timer?  You can get such things on ebay which are solar powered and expensive.  As money is always tight does anyone have any practical ideas?  The hen houses are too far away from the house to run a cable to them.

Over to you!

Debbie

[landroverroy]

 Before we had electricity to our cattle buildings, we ran the lights off an old car battery. We bought some 12volt strip lights from a camping place and they use very little power and lasted for ages before we had to recharge the battery. In your case, you'd probably only need one light so the battery might last all winter.

 However, I know someone who has got a small solar panel which charges the battery for her stable lights. She got it off the internet and it is so much better than having to cart heavy batteries back to the house for recharging. Like you say - solar chargers aren't cheap, but it's a lot more convenient and it is Christmas coming up........

[tizaala]

If you can get your hands on an old car alternator , fit it with a propeller and swivel mount it with a vane to keep it turned to the wind. It will charge a 12 volt battery.

[Victorian Farmer]

leisure battery 12 volt strip lasts 3 months on time 6.till 9 and 5 till 8.30 cost £80

[Plantoid]

Before I got crippled I used to be a city and guilded industrial electronics engineer so....

I'd be looking for a few led panels about 4 inches by six  and see what voltage they run at ie the number of 1.5 volt batteries used

 A standard triple A cell is just over 1.5 volts  so if they are in series youd be looking for nine batteries to make the 12 volt of a battery  ( infact a fully charged healthy car battery will be at 13.2 volts .


 The voltage drop across an individual LED is 0.6 volts so you could in theory quite easily make your own  lights in series strings of 20 bulbs  and then wire the strings in parallel .

LEDs are polarity sensitive so to check which way round you would put them use a single AAA battery and some fly  leads to see which way  they go with respect to negative and positive .one of the legs will normally have a shoulder on them which If I recall correctly wil be th cathode and go to negative.
But do check as I've had a stroke a weee while back and have lost some memory of intricate data things like that.

 radio spares , radio shack and ebay are a good source for bulk buys of bright leds .

 I have recently swapped my caravan internal lights from incandescent bulbs to run on LED bulbs of the 21 watt turn light replacement types. so you could get the correct bulb holders and bung in the led replacement bulbs again the current drain is very small for around six bulbs you should be able to leave then on over night and top up the battery once a week .
 
 Prior to changing the bulbs out a fully charged battery would last us four nights for around five hours light a night .
After change over of the bulbs we have had 18 days without a battery recharge .

 The drain on a car battery is negligible for leds

I've also made up my own external over the door strip light using a 50 cm strip of bright white leds ( ebay Hong Kong £ 4 . 60 inc p&p ) slipped in the gulley /grove of the aluminium rail shower curtain rail where the ring clips that hold the shower curtain went and sealed it in place with  clear silicone ... had to gently burn off the tails of the LED strip which is polarity conscious , clean & tin  with resin cored flux solder and solder extension wires on of a better quality and strength as the  fly leads on the strips ar little more than a couple of copper strands as thick as cotton . then sleeveed the leads to prevent chafing and shorting and put them into a normal domestic wall type switch on a patriss

A time switch .....  battery operated , no volt contact  ..just thinking of one but the mind is blank at the minute

 Video machine timers have been used for all sorts of IED timers in the past from days to months ahead .
So it leads me to believe that with a bit of thought and a meter you should be able to identufy the gubbins used and build one.... as the electronics of a VCR are stepped down to 12 volts

 or  better still bung " battery operated time clock circuit diagrams "  or similar  into google etc and see what comes up  you might get as simple micro chip scircuit or even use capacitors and resistors etc
 

When we had 2000 chooks in the late 1950's We had High Pressure Paraffin ( HPP ) pump up lamps that we lit just before dusk and hung up on secure chains in the sheds ..

They usuallyhad gone down to a glimmer  when dad went out to turn them off at 0615 each morning but paraffin being around the same price of petrol nowadays might make that an expensive proposition as it's only going the become more expensive and would be an ongoing cost.
You also have to know how to repair and clean them out .

[Plantoid]

Just been playing looking around to see whats on offer wrt  low voltage operated low volt switches and event timers.

 http://www.reuk.co.uk/buy-REUK-SUPER-TIMER.htm
 seems to have a simple  repeatable on off event timer that will easily run an LED stop of 50 or so LED's direct from a car battery with out too much power drain

 For those  looking for other low voltage stuff  they are into lots of low volt & solar gear etc.

[JEP]

the lights we put up is to help me when i get in and is going
or gone dark
on a 12 volt timer LED lights solar panel and battery
works well