Using a hacked solar charged path light to power a Moteino?

[hexibot43]

     After reading about using a single AA battery to power a JeeNode I'm thinking about taking a solar powered  outdoor lamp and hack that into case and power supply for my Moteino.  It is driven by a rechargeable 1.5 volt battery, and recharged by solar panel.  I think everything could fit inside one of those easily.

     Has anyone used one of those boost regulators to power a Moteino? I'm going to have three sensors.  Ond dht22, and two DS18b20s.  That is it.  One DS18b20 in the soil.  One DS18b20 in direct Sun.  And one the dht22  in the shade.

[jbeale]

I've though about it but not tried it. It's possible it could work, but many yard lights are built to be extremely cheap, so there are a few reasons why it might not:

1) output may be pulsed DC instead of true DC, for LED yard lighting it doesn't matter much, but you may need to add a lot of filter capacitor (and cheap boost chip may not even work with large filter capacitor).

2) boost circuit probably provides about 5 mA for LED; may not be able to provide RF Tx current (15 mA or even 45 mA with newer RF module?) Might need a very large capacitor to support that.

Of course there are many different types of solar yard lights and some (eg. the bigger and more expensive ones) probably work just fine.

[hexibot43]

      I was thinking of using one of these

http://www.ebay.com/itm/like/231083181020?lpid=82

     I called it a boost regulator.  They call it a step up converter.  I was only going to use the solar cell, and the battery out of the light.  I was hoping to find one of these local and have it together by the weekend.  Oops.  Weekend pretty much already here.