Thinking about making a homemade hog light. I work at a local hardware store, so I can get most products for dirt cheap.

Here's the plan:

Going to have a 4x4 holding up a LED battery-powered Spot/flood light & 6 volt solar panel charger. Now the floodlight fixture is battery powered w/ 4 x (D) batteries. Im going to instead use a 6V battery so I can charge them w/ my solar panel. Im going to screw the 4x4 to a dolly & weld some anchors onto the dolly. Aswell with a box to store the battery/accessories.

The idea:
To have a portable lightweight hog light that I can move from feeder to feeder by loading it in the back of a truck. It will be motion sensor w/ either green or red lights.

Pictures:




Extras:
I will be adding a removable cover lens to the floodlight to be able to change from red/green.

No reason why it wouldn't work. And you'll save some $ in the process.

Sounds like a lot to move.... I did the same thing with two LED IR floodlights with two 12v feeder batteries and a $13 remote. Would power the lights for hours.

Mounted the lights at opposing angles on the outside of a plastic ammo case, batteries inside and would set it on top of the feeder. Very easy to transport and move.

Charlie

I have one in the works as well, 12v panel and a solar charge controller with dusk to dawn control. Hope to run a 1w LED off of 2 6v feeder batteries. ordered green and white LED components to try. Should be usable at 50-75 yards.

Just bought all the parts needed, assembling tomorrow

Got these 12v 10W led light for a couple of bucks on eBay, painted lens with green translucent paint . Gonna put it on a pole with 12v battery and solar panel.

Since your doing a home brew. If the Solar Panel does not have a built in diode and because it would not cost very much you might consider adding a diode between the solar and battery, so the solar panel at night and dark days does not drain the battery whenever it's charge gets lower than the charge of the solar panel. Some cheap solar panels are not going to have a diode built in. I built a self sustaining solar game camera years ago that used 6 tiny solar panels on the lid of the ammo box it was contained in and had to put diodes between my solar panels and batteries to keep the panels from draining my batteries during successive stormy days.

i am using a charge controller to take care of that and for low voltage protection, 50w panel and a car battery. turns on light when panel voltage drops and off when panel receives sun. I'm going to use it as a dusk to dawn light around the feeder. Budget is $125 for everything.

Those look great. I went with buying a Sniper Hog Lights Exterminator II Feeder Light system. It costs some money but it works great. Mine is mounted to a pole and strapped and locked up to the side of my blind. It comes with a remote and solar panel set up. I am using the green lights because the hogs don't get spooked by that color where I hunt. Red seems to freak them out where I hunt for some reason. They do sell the 3 pack of lights for $49.99 if you are looking for a set of lights for your hog light build. They also sell IR lights. An IR light build sounds pretty good. Let me know how your light system works. I might want to build an IR set up to shine down on my feeder as well. Thanks for sharing.

Good idea

Not sure if you are aware... but just FYI, it is usually not a good idea to put a different color lens in front of LED lights. Unlike incandescent or halogen lights, LED lights emit lights in very narrow wavelength bands. "White" LEDs are no exception. See here: http://www.lrc.rpi.edu/programs/nlpip/lightingAnswers/led/whiteLight.asp

Then again, if you are getting plenty of light output, it may not matter to you, as long as it works well for your purpose.

Correct, but it seemed to work fine in this instance. It cut out about the same amount is light as any other lens filter i have used.

I ordered a 10w green LED chip from China for a 1.15 and will try to retro fit that in another lamp.

I just received all the parts to make a similar light, but with a different approach. I bought a 20 pack of mini LED "marker" lights off ebay. They are designed to go in a 3/4" hole. Also got a 12v photo cell and a 12v motion sensor. I'm going to run all this off the feeder battery which already has a solar cell on it. The plan is to have one LED stay on all night using the photo cell, then about 4 more that come on for one minute when there is motion. In my experience, color of light doesn't matter much, and you don't want too bright of a light, just enough to see the outline of the hogs at night, but not enough to scare them away. I'll post more when I get it built.

Greetings,
One of the cool things about this forum is ideas bouncing around and getting feedback and improvements along the way.

While I am not looking for hog lights, I will freely admit I am stealing CharlieCTX's remote idea for 940nm IR application!

Little update for those who were wondering .

Got my motion light done, 10w green LED, 5watt panel and controller. Used 2 6v feeder batteries as I didn't have a 12v available. Fit controller and batteries in an old ammo can.

if you use night vision this is what I built for my 30' traps. this is a single light about 6' high, I put 5 of them in an arc around the trap all pointed away from me. a 12v feeder battery will run all of them all night easily. the remote lets you scan till you see pigs then hit the lights, very minimal red glow and I have not seen the pigs spook from it.

I keep half a dozen feeders going most of the time with lights at all of them. I just go to Harbor Freight and buy the solar porch lights. They are simple to set up, have motion detectors and run about all night long, once charged. They run about 25 bucks each and I either put up a pole to attach them to, or use a tree if one is nearby. Just 2 screws each for the charger and 2 for the light, and you're in business.