IKEA Sunnan table lamp

The IKEA Sunnan table lamp contains a removable solar panel including 3 NiMH 1.2V 1200 mA AA batteries. The panel delivers 3.6V DC power. The charging takes 9-12 hours in direct sunlight.

The panel can be used for powering microcontroller boards such as Arduino (Arduino Pro, Arduino FIO, Seeeduino Stalker ...), STM32 Discovery, MSP430 Launchpad ... or DIY wireless sensor nodes.

This hack is very trivial. However, a 3.3V regulator could be useful for 3.3V boards. This is not the case for the Arduino FIO (with XBee module of the photos) which uses a 3.7V LiPo battery for power supply. The panel is glue into the cover of a low cost electric box (IP55).