Overview
Light up your front door or those darker corners around the house with these solar powered gutter lights – no wiring, no wasted energy.
Easy to install with no messy wiring
Solar powered for optimum energy efficiency
Automatic sensor activates in darkness
Light up the front of your house for increased visibility and safety
No more fumbling around with keys at your front doo
Save $60
Free shipping as well.
Pretty usual price for gutter lights. Kogan usually have an inflated price, but now reduced & includes delivery.
Aldi sell much the same ones (2 pack $10) at their sales. I've also bought online from China cheaper.
Those provide good light (depends on model bought) eg above doorways. But light goes off after a few hours of good sunlight & may not work at all when overcast. May not be as useful unless you have single story house.
Quality of construction is major issue (have not bought from Kogan). LEDs used vary with model / seller so may give more / less light, & last longer / shorter time on charge.
Adding higher capacity batteries as often suggested in comments is pretty useless as the amount of charging from cheap solar panel pretty well matches 600mAh capacity of the cheap batteries. As batteries cycle from charged to near discharged (1.1C in my tests), that's a lot of cycles over a year - approaching the life cycle of most rechargeable batteries. Charging circuit is just a resistor. Don't want to wreck your Eneloops on cheap solar lights!
Have frequently found faulty switches. As switches fail, batteries don't charge & light does not operate. Switches are included so it arrives with semi-charged batteries but of no practical purpose otherwise (who climbs up to their gutter to turn these off/on?) - better to pack batteries separately.
Connection to solar panel is just glued not soldered & fails.
Solar panels quickly become opaque reducing charging & so length of time light remains on.
But I enjoy solar gutter lights. Just don't expect too much from them.
Have frequently found faulty switches.
Yep, half my solar lights have this issue (bought from eBay, but these things are all pretty much the same).
Ended up taking them apart and bypassing the switch as I never use it anyway.
Aldi sell much the same ones
The ones from ALDI (Lightway) that I've seen don't have a rubber membrane over the switch to protect against the elements (not sure how effective it is).
Was just adding…
Have to get up the ladder again to retrieve a non-working Aldi with switch failure - just open up & bypass the switch.
Membrane is the least of the troubles… Switches on units from Aldi failed when I tested them in the store (just rattle switch while covering solar panel). Should not be much issue. These will have an expected life of about a year, membrane or not.
It irritates me that there isn't a well made product, with double the panel size and battery capacity that will last for a few years (even if the battery needed replacing in time).
The plastic doorbell at my parents has been working for 40 years, so it is possible engineer an outdoor plastic device that lasts, at consumer level prices.
@mskeggs:
Agreed. I'd pay extra for stuff that's lasts a few years than stuff which struggles to last a year and then I replace it with another cheap ass China product :(
My gutter lights from The Reject Shop are similar to these but black in colour and square. Have rubber membrane on the switches but I suspect either the panel or the battery has died. Need to retrieve them and sort that out now :(
@mskeggs:
It may be out there, but unlikely to be seen on OzBargain. We buy (like many in Australia: on price, not value (longer lasting, less hassles, better quality).
It irritates me that there isn't a well made product
The only decent solar light I've ever bought was an ALDI Lightway solar shed light.
Has a bigger and better panel and the light is really powerful (10 LEDs).
I have it above my carport and the motion sensor works great.
It only remains on for 30 seconds with no movement detected and I suspect it wouldn't be as good if the light had to stay on for a while.
But it works great and lights up the entire driveway and in the 18 months I've had it has been flawless.
@nafe:
Batteries only have a short life, solar panel efficiency drops as cheap plastic covering goes opaque, switch contacts fail whether membrane is there or not. These are cheaply built, poorly designed & sold at a cheap price. The effort of retrieving & working out the fault is not worth the price of a new unit :-(
@Scab:
Yes, neighbours have solar flood light from ebay - great motion detection units. They cost more & designed for a different purpose. I bought similar ones at Masters & was disappointed & returned them.
If it's not a quick fix, I won't bother. They were $5 each from Reject Shop.
If it's a simple swap of the battery then I can be bothered with undoing a few screws.
I've got an external one which is going great guns, it's mounted under the eaves though, so it's not in the weather. Bought from Reject Shop - big rectangular LED panel that's bright as anything. has a range of different brightness and timer settings. Motion detector, so we set it up to shine near our side gate and it also works great for collecting the mail after work in the dark, picks us up quickly. Had to angle it down so it didn't shine out onto the street too much, even on the lowest setting it's bright! I have a spare one which I will mount on the other side of the house as a security deterrent.
spellchecker typo (1.1CV) above
I bought 2 of these (look identical) from Aldi…and returned them shortly thereafter, without installing them. 1 didn't work at all, the other was dim and the NiCad batteries seemed very low capacity
NiCad sucks, especially in a device like this.
Actually I figured the memory effect wasn't an issue since they would run down completely flat every night due to the low capacity. But in general I think NiCd should be banned from sale, technically inferior and worse for the environment than NiMH.
Yes, run down to effectively flat at 1.1V in my testing. LEDs drain battery down until battery can't supply power to operate & shuts down. That 1.1V discharge voltage tends to guard against memory effect.
As a very simple circuit (panel, resistor in series with the battery forms the charging circuit, plus LEDs switched by a transistor when no voltage shows on the solar panel), it's quite brilliant.
But strangely that troublesome useless switch isolates the battery from charge & discharge - which is not usually what is written in the instructions (turn off to charge battery over several days).
No use using other (more expensive) chemistry as NiCd is effective in these simple devices. Panel does not have surplus power for higher capacity batteries.
Charging circuit is as simple as possible: a series resistor. That constant current design is well suited to NiCd batteries. That's not so good for other battery chemistry🔋
Well suited to the circuits in these cheap devices. I have LiPo battery in a 100 LED light set. But that has more complex IC etc for charging against a simple series resistor in these.
I got a 2 pack of these from Aldi for $10. Not bad but on darker days cut out really early.
There's no surplus charging from the cheap panel. Batteries run down each day, so no power stored between days. So hardly charged on overcast days.
Watch out for the panel quickly becoming opaque, reducing hours on at night. Returned some to Aldi for that issue.
Only got 1 in use but will keep an eye out ;)
No good, I got a Twin pack at Aldi last year and they both died in 4 months time under the Australian Sun. Tried to change the rechargeable batteries but no luck. Couldn't find the receipt to get a refund from Aldi.
I've returned those without receipt to Aldi.
These have only been sold in their sales over last year & only available at Aldi. Its an Aldi product with an Aldi trademark "Lightway".
So they have to repair, replace, or refund even without receipt.
As I've said above, some units I tried were faulty in the store (switch faulty). I've just removed one & it's switch failed after a few months. Others from many months ago developed a clouding of the clear plastic on the panel reducing charging & length of time on at night.
Although all these models from different suppliers look the same, the quality & internals are often different.
I seem to end up with units that really aren't waterproofed. Water leaks in & kills it.
How hard is it to make a decent solar light that doesn't leak or die within a year??
I've stopped buying them as I'm sick thinking of how many millions of them are going into landfills….
:(
Good price, shame the batteries are only 600mAh.