Solar Garden Lights Workshop

I taught this workshop a few times at the Boulder Public Library Makerspaces and it was a special one. In a nutshell, attendees learned some soldering techniques and crafting techniques to create bespoke solar-powered garden lights made out of mason jars.

I always kicked off the workshop by taking a close look at commercially available solar powered garden lights with participants. One light is assembled and fully operational, and one has been taken apart so we can see its inner workings.

We talk about how these lights work - when a light sensor is covered up with a hand (or when it's dark outside) the light turns on, when it's bright the light turns off. We talk about the solar panel too - this is what collects energy from the sun and allows that energy to be stored in the battery. Then, we make connections between what we discussed, and the soldering kit that we will assemble during the class.

The soldering kit comes from Kitronik:

I love this kit because of the high quality resources that come with the kit, the way it's designed for learning, and how the circuit board is the perfect shape to fit snugly into the top of a mason jar.

We talk about how our kit has a solar panel, battery, bright LED light, and instead of a separate light sensor, it actually uses the solar panel as a light sensor.

For the purposes of this class (it's a ~2.5 hour long workshop) I actually pre-solder many of the smaller components in advance and attach the wires to the solar panel in advance. This is a strategic tradeoff. In the first iteration of this class we soldered everything together and it took too long, people didn't have enough time to focus on crafting and decorating their lights. I soldered a lot of the smaller items, but left just enough for participants to do that they could practice tasks like stripping wire, and experience soldering different kinds of components (LEDs, battery holder, etc.)

Another thing I like to do for the soldering portion of the workshop is give step-by-step instructions using the document camera and big screen in our space, but I also create printed instructions so that people can work at their own pace. I invite them to choose whichever pathway works best for them.

This is an excellent use case for the soldering stations that I talked about in a previous post!

After we've soldered the solar-powered light components, it's time to work on decorating the mason jars.

There are so many ways someone could go about decorating these jars. In a time-constrained workshop like this, it can be paralyzing to have too many possibilities. Saying "decorate it with whatever you want, however you want" to someone who is new to the space, and is maybe less confident with their crafting or art skills can be anxiety-inducing rather than freeing.

For this workshop, I constrained our design space in a few ways.

First, I prepare the mason jars by coating about half with a frosted glass spray. The frosted glass effect diffuses light nicely, and obscures any visible electronics inside of the light. Coating only half gives people the ability to choose whether they want that effect or not, and doing the painting in advance is necessary because it takes about an hour to coat the jars with a couple of layers of the paint, and for it to fully dry.

Then, I offer a couple of different pathways for decorating the jars.

Participants can use mod podge and tissue paper to create something like a faux stained glass effect. When the tissue paper and mod podge dry, the light shines through the thin tissue paper and it makes a nice colorful effect. I provide sheets of tissue paper in different colors and patterns, as well as tissue paper that's been pre-cut into shapes like squares and hearts.

I also pre-cut several adhesive vinyl shapes with our silhouette, and participants can add those shapes to the outside, or inside of their jars. They can combine the vinyl decorations with the tissue paper decoration, or it can stand alone.

Then, it's work time!

It's hard to get great photos of folks' finished lights inside of such a brightly lit space, but a couple participants sent me pictures of their garden lights in action after the workshop.

I said that this workshop was special, why? There was something wonderful about deconstructing something that we all see at the store, or in a neighbors yard (solar garden lights), deconstructing it together, breaking it down to understand how it works. And then reconstructing it together, learning how to make the electronics function, and creating a unique design for the lights. By the end of the workshop, participants had come to understand how something works in more depth, and practiced creative expression in a supportive social environment.