Why all solar panels are secretly LEDs (and all LEDs are secretly solar panels)
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 3 ก.พ. 2019
- Part 2 - explainer video is here: • How diodes, LEDs and s...
LEDs and solar panels are both made of diodes. A diode is just designed to allow electricity to flow in one direction but because we make them out of semiconductors they can do all these other things.
Video produced in cooperation with Merck ( / merckgroup . Merck is known as Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany in the United States.
Here's the link to the curiosity report (interactive): www.merckgroup.com/en/interac...
And here it is as a PDF:
bit.ly/StateofCuriosityReport2018
Animations by Dom Burgess. His brilliant channel, Every Think, is here:
/ @domburgess
Thanks to these amazing patrons on Patreon for supporting my channel:
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Resistors can also emit light but only once
They also emit smoke for quite a long time before starting to become light emitters.
@@SeanBZA pretty unique design!
@@SeanBZA All computers run on smoke, thats why when the smoke comes out they stop working.
@@SeanBZA Every machine is a smoke machine if you operate it wrong enough
Resistors actually emit light all the time, the problem is we can't see it because it's around 6000nm in wavelenght.
But you're right - visible light is usually a one time event.
1. electric motor generator
2. mic speaker piezo
3. solar panel diode led
galvanic cell Electrolytic cell
Beer Hangover Hair of the dog...
Now I'll waiting for the next generation of phones to have a solar panel screen charging button
roomy's toothbrush toilet cleaner
cattle corn car fuel
condoms rifle protectors
crazy glue wound sealer
microwave oven hair drier
Lol, maybe not the last one but I liked this video.
ceramic microphone ceramic capacitor buzzing ceramic caps
Diodes are not necessarily LEDs. Depends on the band structure, e.g. silicon makes solar cels and diodes but will never electrically emit light.
So, should we call solar panels Light Absorbing Diodes (or LADs) instead? I think so.
or LSD : Light swallowing diodes. Sounds better to me.
Smart LAD
Funny Tad
lad lol
Nope because a) all diodes are light absorbing (so there is no reason to distinguish that property of them by a different name for the particular ones used in a solar panel) b) the diodes are only a component of the *panel* hence we name the entire *panel* according to what it does so a *solar* **panel**
I had a long career as a circuit designer, and several times, with high gain circuits, with diodes, I had to take the light sensitivity of the diodes into account.
Neat!
Care to share what you know?
@@mrwess1927 Any opamp circuits with high gain can be affected by diodes connected to the inputs. I think an audio preamp with a pair of clamp diodes (glass encased 1N4148) across the inputs, for static protection picked up a hum from room lighting. and a high gain DC amplifier (for a seismograph) connected up as an absolute value circuit, had offset problems, if operated in the light. In both cases, either switching to a black epoxy cased diode, or using a black plastic transistor as the diode, cured the interference.
That’s interesting, a lot can be learned from experience.
Aren't they usually encased in non-transparent mold?
'You can use a speaker as a microphone.'
Hello, CIA.
Hello CIA my old friend...
*NSA joined the chat*
LEDs can also act like a pixel from a camera 😉
If you take a microphone apart, and a pair of head phones, you will find the diaphragms look very similar.
Vincent Robinette depends on the mic. Dynamic microphones are closest to speakers
I first had that eureka moment when I was sat playing with an LED and was reminded of the 'equal and opposite reaction' law. I thought if LEDs emitted light when a voltage was passed through them, would they create a voltage if light was shone at them. To my amazement this was true as I also connected a volt meter across an LED and shone a bright light at it. It was a few years ago when I did this, and now I have discovered this video and it has made me smile! Thank you! True scientific discovery and learning :)
That feeling must be amazing
So if I push my car the tank will fill with gasoline?
@@stargazer7644 🤣🤣🤣 I wish 😛😂😂
yea now hook a load up to an oven burner and see if it powers your device by pulling heat out of the air
@@stargazer7644 and if someone pushes you..
we just learned that in school, but with this video I understand it
@@jatre5938 You're stupid.
@@Hallowed_Ground Dud just gave the man an advice..tf is ur problem?
@@fantaisiechopin8240 You're stupid.
nalyd doow you got him there
Mantresh perhaps they’re not a native speaker, but hopefully it improves!
I spent over 35 years of my life in electronics; how did I not know this until now? Thanks for another eye-opening, insightful video!
The energy companies would lose money probably
Maybe you worked in the warehouse?
@@DakCuh No this way is not efficient i think, all diodes contains this property but I think there is a reason we don't really use them like this.
I saw a video by a professor who researches solar cells. He talked about how LEDs get some amount of their energy from the heat of the crystal lattice. He said if you could get the efficiency of the LED high enough (80ish percent of electrical power into light) they would actually act as refrigerators rejecting heat as entropy in the light emitted. He talked about putting such a super LED across the vacuum of a Dewar flask from a high efficiency PV cell to make a heat pump from the inner wall to the outer wall. All this is pretty well known by people who study PV cells and LEDs, but I had no idea and find it super interesting.
I imagine a massive bank of these super LED's would make for a nice cooling system for a spaceship.
Wait. Are you saying that LEDs at a high enough efficiency can actively absorb heat in molecules and emit it away as visible light? So is it theoretically possible to pump heat away out of a spacecraft in vacuum just by shining a spotlight with this super LED in a direction?
@@BrokenLifeCycle yep. It has been demonstrated in laboratory settings but isn't practical at the moment. It's infrared light not visible light though. www.wired.co.uk/article/230-percent-efficient-leds
Man, thanks for sharing thats so cool to know...
@@sunmoon1234 Peltier modules are certainly semiconductors that act as heat pumps. But they don't turn the heat into light, they work on a different principle.
“Diodes are really simple electrical components “... my electronics textbook thoroughly disagrees...
The Shockley equation is quite simple ;)
I've seen someone that was determined enough to make their own semiconductors, and I have to agree.
What a crazy process.
And she was just about capable of making transistors...
Maybe at a stretch an integrated circuit consisting of about 3 components.
When you see it as small-scale improvised production it still looks nuts, but not quite as crazy as the real methods.
And of course this improvised stuff was using commercially available wafers, which are really difficult to produce in their own right...
My textbook on the physics of electrical components also thoroughly disagrees.
@@KuraIthys It's Jeri and we all know her. She wasn't "close" to making transistors, she actually *made* transistors.
They are super simple, just like every other element in modern electronics, its confusing due to the scale(small) and materials used (compounds) but in actuality every peace is just an arrangement of positive, negative, and dielectric materials, even rocks have these various properties, everything dose to some degree, when arranged properly you get what we call electricity. Look into how all these components are made: transistor, diode, compactor, battery, you will see it's just various arrangements of P,N, and dielectric.
I have forgotten so much of my electronic knowledge from the late 80's ...seeing this video makes me want to learn everything again.. Ty
I also learned Electronics in the late 70s and 80s. I'm not sure what type of diode they use in solar panels. But I always thought they were made up primarily from what we knew as LCDs light-collecting diodes versus LEDs light emitting diodes.
I love how you get right to the point and explain it in a way everyone can understand
Solar panels should be used as outdoor lights.
OLED screens should trickle charge your phone.
Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.
I’m sorry but solar panels emits Infrared which is invisible to human’s eyes, also power generated from OLED is not enough to charge your phone as it is so low it turns into useless heat when charging.
Also thank you for hosting a TEDTalk.
r/wooosh
Cole Ikr
@Nopparuj r/wooosh
This reminds me that the earlier Raspberry2 B models had a single diode that caused the computer to reset when a sufficiently powerful light hit the board. For example, a photo flash... this is why those earlier models were called "camera shy".
Fun stuff.
Wow thats true
Daniel Leal it happend with risc proccessors.
Sometimes the led right in rpi begins to glow with our any external power supply
It wasn't a diode, it was the power IC (component no. U16), which was a WL-CSP chip. Basically an integrated circuit without any packaging, attached directly to the board. Still caused by the photoelectric effect, so the principle is the same, but it wasn't a diode.
Realistically this applies to any component, but as far as i know risc is extremely low power, so essentially it's much easier to overvolt.
This video gave me the idea to test old film camera shutter speeds for servicing them. I made a really simple device which is just an LED soldered to an input jack connected to an audio interface to my PC and then on the other side of the camera shutter I put a laser pointer pointing to where the LED would be on through the shutter, shoot the camera while recording the "audio" signal and then see the audio clip to check the interval. And it works perfectly :)
holy shit. that is absolutely fucking mad genius
this comment is extremely underrated
The first observation of the led dates to 1907 when Henry Joseph Round noticed for the first time that when a potential of 10 volts was applied to a carborundum crystal, it emitted yellowish light.
So why don't they just plug in solar panels so they light up and power themselves? I can't believe I'm the only person to think of this. Engineers with their fancy degrees pfft
Bloody medics.
STOOPID IT DONT WORK THAT WAY
@@drewadkins4099 hey man good luck in the Wooshlands
@@SteveMould Hey! The medics our thing (biomeds/nurses) to lay into
Entropy
In my next concert I will sing on a speaker powered by a LED
That would be LED Soundsystem
Don't forget your solar power microphone!
Make sure to use a generator as a fan for wind effects
that would be a massive waste of energy! )
Well, technically the speaker used as a microphone also produces a voltage across it. What you mean is an amplifier connected to a speaker all powered by an LED.
In case anyone's wondering, the term that encompasses both microphones and speakers is "transducer", or a device which converts between acoustic information and an electrical signal
Coming up next :how your fridge can work as a tv and your tv as a fridge
Hahahahaha!
After that: How your toaster can be used as the pc that runs all my teammates computers
Well you can use a fridge to be a heater and a heater to be a fridge
I mean with a Samsung smart fridge you can do at least the first one
I can drive my car forwards and in revverse.
It's also the same for electric motors and generators. Heh, it's a fun world we live in.
also peltier elements, put a power in one, and one side gets cold and other hot, create a temperature difference and you get power out of it.
And piezoelectric crystals!
All I heard was, you reverse the polarity to solve all your problems.
And unlike diodes or speakers/microphones, electric motors are actually quite often used as generators as part of their normal operation. Eg. regenerative braking in electric vehicles (cars, trains) or pumped-storage hydroelectric power plant. They can be designed in such a way they're effective at both.
NoLlama Yeah, in fact most motors are also good generators, and vice versa.
hey Steve, I'm studying electronics and I gotta say, pretty well made video! if you want to look at other "reversable" electromechanics stuff here's a few examples: Peltier-/Seebeck-Effect (voltage creates temperature differential, but temperature differential also creates voltage), Piezo-Effect (voltage -> crystal lattice deforms, crystal lattice deforms -> voltage), or coupled inductors (current in one coil -> voltage in the other, but also it affects itself. pretty weird.)
Also some motors and dynamos. I was very happy when I found out you can wire two Lego Mindstorms motors together and control one directly by turning the other.
I mean, he touched on the reversibility of the piezoelectric effect when he demonstrated that microphones and speakers are interchangeable :)
@@IceMetalPunk oh yea that's true, i kinda forgot about that video until he mentioned it and even then the memory is foggy...
IceMetalPunk Actually, that’s not really the piezoelectric effect at play, it’s EM induction on the speaker and something more complicated (that has to do with capacitance) on the microphone.
There is no single correct answer to this. There are many different techniques to build a microphone. You can use a magnet attached to a membrane. This membrane is vibrating when you speak on it and the magnet induces a current in a coil. Other microphones use a capacitor with one electrode being a charged isolator (electret). The electret electrode is attached to a membrane similarly as in the previous example. The sound waves make the membrane move again which causes the distance between the electrodes to change. This movement causes a change in capacitance and eventually a change in voltage across the capacitor.
Microphones which use the piezoelectric effect exist, but they have a rather bad sound quality. But they are mechanically sturdy which makes (or made) them useful for some applications.
Steve Mould: "I like to have my old projects at hand"
Me: "I'm a pack-rat too"
"LEDs are solar panels"
By that logic, I can make a solar panel by only using christmas lights
Actually, if you search you can find projects of homemade solar panels using only LEDs
YES, AFTER CHRISTMAS YOU PUT YOUR TREE OUTSIDE in the sun to provide electricity until the next christmas
@@RabbitholeIsrael dayum!
But a very inefficient one
What about old LED TVs? Maybe a way to recycle them instead of sending them to the trash pile. Saving the planet one TV at a time.
As always Steve...this was _illuminating_ ! 💡
But for real you’re by far one of the best Science communicators on this platform chap! 🙌
That's interesting considering you commented this 3 minutes after this 5 minute video was uploaded. And every other science video I've watched today. Hmmm...
Rhyme Bito Aha I type comments whilst watching the video bud :) Nice to see you’ve got a similar taste in Science TH-camrs though!
This guys simply does not understand the physics involved here.
_Illuminati confirmed_
Aspect Science
You’re great as well!
First CGP Grey uploads and now this video? Today keeps getting better!
Within 30 minutes of each other. What a time to be alive.
Now if only vsauce would upload I'd be in heaven.
dont forget Tom Scott
Quick! Someone calculate the odds.
Hah, I came here straight from CGPGrey's vid :).
The reversibility of PN junction is a classical well known into engineering labs.
I remember as a young experimenting with the germanium OC71 transistors, some manufacturers used a glass case painted with black varnish. By removing some varnish from the top of the transistor with a razor blade, the OC71 behaved just like a phototransistor. I built an electronic rooster, a control system for model railways, an RPM counter and a motorised gate control, all with scraped transistors.
Thank you for the inspiring video; the electronic as an hobby has disappeared almost completely (especially the analog parts, which are erroneously considered obsolete), so a video like your is able to recall the spirit and the curiosity of experimental electronics, which appears nowhere along the Internet. Regards, Anthony
Imagine having your phone screen act as a solar panel to charge your phone
well apple did upgrade there firmware so you can charge your phone in the microwave
You could do that, but you’d need infrared vision to read the screen.
@@jamesdeegan7365 It's faster than using their chargers too!
@@jamesdeegan7365 screw you guys because of you not just did my Phone not charge but i wrecked it and my microwave and my phone now i have to buy a new one
Screw you
Nah im just kidding
@@fayenotfaye you ever heard of a window lol
So my LED tv is not only a microphone but a 70” camera? Hello big brother!!
Woke
Life=lie
@@superjeffstanton c
LED TVs are just your usual LCD with LED backlighting instead of the usual CCFL bulbs.
LG=Looking Glass?
This is one of those channels which always makes me so happy when there is a new upload! Put myself in knowledge absorption mode! 🤯
That was really cool and informative thank you for taking apart your camera so that we can see that
where did you find that concentrated solar cell?
Thanks for the awsome video
Great video! I remember using my cheap on-ear headphones as a microphone when I was a young teen in the late 90s! I always found that whole idea cool :)
2:59 here you go, your daily dose of nightmare fuel. You're welcome.
Good video. Illustrations such as these are needed for my brain to understand anything. Must have some diodes crossed in my head.
that is so cool. i never thought about how you can literally reverse the roles of solar panels and leds
"I know there is no one there" LMAO. You're my new favorite human being, at least on TH-cam. :)
Every diode is a light emitting diode, but sometimes only once!
Same applies to almost any component!
Also smoke emitting diode as well.
Nopparuj Oh, yeah, the SED
Yeah and after that once, it becomes a Dark Emitting Diode !!
*ElectroBoom agrees
Great content!
Keep the good work mate!
Always good content on this channel. Thumbs up
Light Emitting Solar Panels! Amazing. Seriously, I always wondered how you know if the solar panels on cheap garden solar LED lights are good or not, without testing and benchmarks and stuff. This is a super easy way to test them. This could probably even be done "in the field" which is while you're at the shop, so you pick out only the good ones.
Does that mean that a led panel with lots of led under the sun (like those on road signs) are constantly sending a reasonable amount of power when off?
yeah, but not enough to induce a change/imbalance in the circuit
But you have a good point :)
The problem with your statement is the word “reasonable”. LEDs are optimized to emit light, and that makes them poor solar cells. Solar cells are optimized to generate electricity, and that makes them poor LEDs.
I love the speaker-microphone analogy!
Amazing video Steve. Being a Civil Engineering I can confirm that this video was a great CPD for myself.
Well, you still call it infrared “light”, so yes, IREDs (including those designed for that, like those in a remote controller and solar panels) are also LEDs.
Indeed, most light is outside our visual spectrum.
Omar Omokhodion Yep, though we can still see some NIR from remotes and perceive FIR with our skin as “heat”.
@@0MVR_0 light, electromagnetic radiation, same difference.
One thing I noticed about solar cells is that covering them from one side, even just a little bit, caused the voltage to drop dramatically, but covering from either adjacent side, even a lot, doesn't lead to as much voltage drop.
damn this guy really answered all of my questions! so thankful that you're here on TH-cam! just subscribed
I worked in a Solar Panel Factory for some time and we used the exact Infrared method shown here to diagnose faults and cracks before we sent them out the door! The crazy thing is that I didn't understand how it worked until I watched this video nearly ten years later!
2:53 my 13 year old emo self would've created a TH-cam channel just so I can upload videos with visible light filtered out
Filtering out visible light is easy. Just put the lens cap back on.
Cellphone makers listen up - I wanna charge my phone by leaving it in the sun. Make it happen
except the display heats up pretty signifigcantly by absorbing all the light
heat degrades overall lifetime of any electronics, but especially for the battery :/
I had my phone shutting off due to overheating (on a relatively hot day, mind you) after I left it in the sun for a while
You can get USB power banks that have solar panels to charge them.
@@marcusfred4480, that solar panels on powerbanks aren't made for charging them, but only for keeping energy
@@Unerty What??? Lol! I can assure you that the solar panels absolutely put charge in the batteries.
But then they will want $3500 for a phone.
Serious topics like this with real life application and example is what I am here to watch.
Thanks for shining light on such an interesting topic
What was that solar cell at 4:00? I would like to find more information about it.
google hcpv
When you find a really cool TH-camr and you're like:
Ohhhhhh this awesome dude!
This is pretty cool. Well done.
One of the best physics demonstrations I’ve seen was when Mr. O’Neil put a wire coil between two plastic cups, strung them to an led, and played music through them by shining a laser he had hooked up to his ipod on it.
*_why don’t we just use redstone?_*
just a quick question, does this mean Infared leds will act better than regular leds as solar panels?
Great question! Didn't even think of that.
Infrared LEDs can absorb a broader range of the solar emission spectrum than visible LEDs, yes. But both IR and VIS LEDs are bad solar cells.
Thanks so much! I needed this information, I'll make a solar cell form diodes and LED's.
I vaguely remember seeing a write up of a display that exploited this principal. It was interlaced, and the currently dark diodes we're used to measure reflected light from the line that was currently active.
I do this every day at work - load up a module into the (pitch black) EL chamber and run a current through it, and use a camera with special aperture and exposure/ISO settings to capture the pattern and check for any cracks. They become very obvious under these conditions. Oddly enough, some of the extremely cracked modules sometime still produce an OK amount of power. Depends on how the damage happens.
If you have solar panels, clean any leaves that fall on them. If they shade the exact percentage of a cell needed to cause a 'kink' in the electrical flow, heat builds up and it can literally catch fire. We do a test called the "hot spot" test that puts various sizes of square tape over a section to find the magical % of a cell that causes the "kink" so the manufacturer can put it in their specs/manual.
Hey there, my father (village mayor) has issues with a company providing public illumination powered by solar panels. We would like to apply this method to check if are some panels faulty. Could you give more practical insight? How much current and what voltage is needed and is a laptop camera or front facing Iphone camera (lacking UV filter) sufficient? We tested both cameras on a TV remote and they worked just fine. Thanks
They use Victron Energy SPM150-12/3a 150W-12V Mono. Optimum operating voltage of 17.86 and opt. operating current of 8.399 A
@@josefhula9811 While I am a somewhat knowledgable tech when it comes to solar panels, my expertise ends at testing and identifying problems. I can tell you a good resource:
th-cam.com/video/8huUsh9eu8U/w-d-xo.html
At around 7:20 ish he starts explaining what is needed to capture an Electroluminescence (EL) image.
This video shows how to use a multimeter to measure volts and amps, which you can compare with the info sheet on the back of the solar panel.
th-cam.com/video/eh6hzMb69gY/w-d-xo.html
I haven't had the opportunity to vet everything from these videos, but they seem like a good starting point. Sorry I can't be of more help.
Aren't the circuits' schematics at 0:13 reversed in relation to what the battery is doing in the experiment behind?
Shorter is positive.
@@time-lapserpro4370 might wanna look that one up again. (yeah, they're reversed)
i was wondering the same
Hi Steve, Tks for the interesting findings sharing. Now I understand why the HS code of solar panels/modules is leveling LED. Excellent.
Great video. Learnt a few things about led and solar relationship.
Can you explain the bandgap, and why efficient blue LEDs require other elements in addition to gallium nitride? (But I can't promise a Nobel prize)
BitDancer easy. Circle.
the same goes for electric motors and alternators, every motor can be used as an alternator and other way round
No it can't, a motor with a commutator acts as a dynamo ie it has a DC output. If you put a DC voltage across and alternator* it will just twitch and not rotate. Some types of washing machine pump motor will act as an alternator.
* I mean a basic alternator, not an alternator with a rectifier &/or regulator built in.
Dear Steve thank You! You've just opened a window as when i understood microphones and speaker are two ways of the same principle with Sound frequencies. Now You added Light frequencies!!! 😎🙏🏻🙏🏻
Presentation Excellent. Immensely interesting in a short time. Likable chap. Thank you.
Is there a link between the frequency of light emitted by a diode and how it would absorb light? That is, for example, do solar panels absorb near-IR better than other frequencies when they emit near-IR?
This is related to resonance. My hypothesis is that if a solar panel is "tuned" (like a string instrument) to resonate at a specific frequency or wavelength, it should be very efficient at absorbing it AND emitting it.
However, ultraviolet light has *A LOT* more energy than infrared, and more than visible spectrum. This is why the sun is used as source, because it generates more energy without the need for "tuning". Quantum Dots have the special ability to be "tuned" (only at build time), so if you make a QD solar panel with a lot of QDs tuned to multiple frequencies (specially UV) you get A LOT more energy than traditional panels!
Film scene idea, geeky hero jury rigs a blinking infrared beacon on the roof of a bad guy building by feeding a voltage into the solar panels that their backup can spot on night vision.
Now that would be cool.
Very informative and interesting.thank you. Please keep it going ☺️
This is a very interesting topic, I liked this. Thanks man!
BTW cameras with the IR filter removed might not be able to do thermal imaging BUT they can act as a digital night vision.
And it's super easy to modify most webcams!
But needs IR illumination
@@sidharthcs2110 you can do that with your remote control led
No video camera will do thermal imaging. Glass lenses wont even pass the light.
So if I leave my deadflash light in the sun, diodes up, it should recharge my batteries?
You can charge those dead 1.5 V cells right up to 0.25 V. LOL
What could have been a good addition to the microphone/speaker analogy would be the TV Remote control diode and the receiver unit diode. Both units have a diode, one sends the pulses of IR light- one receives those pulses of IR light.
Beautiful way of explaining 🤩
Super one bro, you kind of superman the way your voice and briefings its all awesome, you rock and einstein
So basically, solar panels , when connected to a voltage source, emit light but we can't see it because they do this in the infrared region and not in visible wavelengths. Good! Thank you.
Manan Varma No, it's just heated up absorber that emits light and wears off in process.
After few minutes of that solar panel loses effectiveness and dependig on type and absorber it could completely stop working
@@Phantom-el6oe So, doing that isn't advisable. LOL I was thinking of doing this. Thanks for saving my solar panel :-)
Manan Varma Always to your service sir
@@Phantom-el6oe Roger That! Thank you sir!
@@Phantom-el6oe No, it's not true, and that is not how diodes generate light! If you had a GaAs or a direct gap semiconductor panel, it would glow, once you apply voltage bigger than the bandgap. But it would not emit IR. In the case of Si diodes, they will not emit light because they are indirect bandgap semiconductors.
Thanks for sharing this amazing information . I was totally unaware
To this before.
Its appreciated that he explains a very complex thing with the laymen understanding way
1:52
Solar Panels, they don't make great LEDs ~ Steve Mould 2019
I had to check this wasn't a troll video after the speakers and microphones fact
2:15 lol, i love the cut of you almost looking at the camera, but stopping just before you get there
solar panels would be pretty cool for sending secret messages, flashing text in infrared if you could apply a very specific current to them, though maybe they need more control to be used to display data
Thanks for sharing this insight. Been in electrical electronics for several decades and never heard this concept. Of course never had an ir camera to test it out either but thanks I learned something today. I remember in the 70s that they were called selenium solar cells but not sure if that was an led then. Anyway thanks for your lesson.
Her: "Did you put the Christmas lights up?"
Me: *looks at solar panels* "Get a camera." (I am so lazy)
Her: (He's so intelligent)
Me: *Buys Steve a drink*
*Wears off solar panel that cost more than whole Christmas*
can you light up a LED just with shining a light on a different LED?
Yes! It's not very effective but it should work.
Yeah, though you'd need multiple LEDs to power the one LED to a good enough standard
That is if you're not artificially powering the LEDs, but then again you'd probably need quite a few LEDs
Yes! It's similar to an optocoupler.
Yes but you generally need to have a lot of light shining on the first LED and the second must have a lower voltage drop. done it shining a blue LED onto a green GaAsP led and using the voltage generated to light a hyperbright red LED. You generally will have to shield the blue LED and the green one, as otherwise the light from the red is nearly invisible in the glare, the efficiency overall is so low. You also have to couple the blue and green together well, so flat top ones are best with some tubing joining them.
Wouldn't that just be using a solar panel to light an LED? Hahaha
Hey Steve, thanks for sharing!
So if I shine a torch at my tv when its turned off I wont be using electricity that I've bought for running the fridge, freezer, washing machine etc etc?
solar panel camera next
0:29 I gues you mean a solid state diode, as opposed to a vacuum tube diode?
Actually, any vacuum tube diode would probably work as a photodiode to some extent, and will emit X-rays with a high enough anode voltage.
@@gcewing Won't pretty much anything emit x-rays with high enough voltage?
very nice, using things for the purpose, they are not made for is really a fun and good learning as well. thank you
Its interesting how every informational video regarding electricity somehow makes me understand electronics even less
Does this mean that you can turn a led tv screen into a solar panel for off the grid purposes?
No. While all LEDs do exhibit the photovoltaic effect, to some degree, they are not at all optimized for this purpose and as such are extremely inefficient.
I feel like I've lost all curiosity at work. how do I fix this? Is it because my work and hobbies overlap too much? I used to do so much experimentation at home. now I can't bear to look at technical things in my spare time. I know I haven't lost my interest because I get excited whenever I see videos like this.
I go through the same thing. If I'm too concentrated on work or am deeply engaged in something, I don't feel like working more at home. When I am bored at work, I can't wait to come home to my projects
puffin juice it sounds like burnout to me! It happens to everyone, your best bet would be to separate your job from your hobby as much as possible.
That’s not to say they cannot be the same type of work, it’s just having them be different helps keep things interesting. If you are working on one type of electronics at work do something else at home.
I love your speaking, you’re so chill🤞🏽
Interesting video! Hey where can we get the small "concentrator photovoltaic cell" board you have?
Question: how many usual LEDs would it take to make a decent solar panel ? Thanks for the awesome video 👍
LEDs don’t make decent solar panels. If you optimize an LED to efficiently generate electricity, you end up with a solar cell.
Do you have a part number or link to the concentrator PV cell?
For Real! I've been wanting to get my hands on even one for quite a while now.
Great work Steve
Using an infrared camera to check for defects in solar panels is literally my job lol!!! I use a machine called an EL (electroluminescence) to check for cracks. Thanks for teaching me more about this!