Need help with solar powered water timer.

[painlessbrad]

So this is my first post to ANY message board so please forgive any mistakes. I have a timer for my garden water system that I would like to make solar powered. It runs off of 2 AA alkaline batteries in series. The instructions say alkaline only. The way the timer works is it has 3 sections. One for every day, one for every-other day and one for every three days. Under each of these sections is a setting for 2 min, 5 min, 30 min, 1 hr etc. It works by setting it to the length of time you want it to go off for at the time of day you want it to start the cycle. So if you want it to go off every day at 11 pm for 20 min you set it the first day at 11 pm and it will be automatic from there on. I would like to make it solar powered but I am also wondering if it is worth the materials and effort. If anyone has a schematic or advice I would really appreciate it.

[Mike90250]

Materials and effort and engineering would cost well over 10 years of batteries. For $20, you could cobble something together from new garden lights, that might work for 2 years. For the same $20, that would get you 5 years of batteries at costco.

It might be a fun experiment, but I'd never trust my critical vegetable garden to it.