I am hoping to run the LED's off a battery that is recharged by solar.. Not power it by solar :s sorry if I made it sound like that. Anyways, I don't really have much of an objective for it yet, seeing as how this is mostly educational for me, with the added bonus of keeping a dark light in my bedroom (if it becomes effective like that). I guess I COULD make some sort of flashlight thing out of it, but for now, I think I just want to take a box or board of some sort (be it thin styrofoam, wood, or just the computer board) and wire a bunch of LED's to it, and have it light up at night.
Like I said, this is my first electrical project of this kind outside of grade 9 science... I wired a few simple circuits in a construction course, but thats all with common cables and household switches and plugs... Obviously this is a little different.
Anyways! Back to the point
If I use a solar cell to charge a battery, what would be the simplest way to do it? I've read about diodes to stop the drain of the battery at night, and then I've heard of the issue of overcharging the battery. What kind of battery, solar cell, and diodes do I need to set this all up? I'm assuming I can get the battery, battery holder, and diodes at something like radioshack, but could I use a solar cell like this to charge the battery?:
**broken link removed**
The major part of the battery charging is how fast it will charge based on the specs. of hte solar panel... Not that I can't comprehend it, but I haven't found much literature on it to tell me.
thanks again in advance for all your help!