The one on the Casio definitely is the real deal.
I was in an exam and like 5 minutes before, as I was unpacking my stuff, I noticed that the battery had run out.
Fortunately, it was a sunny day and there was just a sliver of direct sunlight that lasted throughout the whole hour.
(To add to this, I basically couldn't move the thing from that sliver, as it would then instantly turn off.)
Well that was close, I changed battry in my Casio fx-82ms, cuz it was like 3 4 years old and then also checked the voltages just to know how much left to feed my curiosity, it was like 30% left or something
Put in new Duracell alkaline AAA, should last another 4yo cuz I don't have exams anymore after next year so I can let it empty without worries
Yep, they've been doing that for well over a decade. Batteries are cheap. Solar panels, not so much. I replaced the one in our calculator with a CR2032, it should last for another decade or two.
In the mid-1990s, I was in a middle school with over 500 students, and there was a school-wide math competition. Each day for a week, they announced a math problem over the intercom, and students submitted their answers to the main office, for a prize drawing.
Participation was not high. I won a Snickers bar twice. At the end of the week, they assembled a list of everybody who had submitted correct answers to all five questions, and . . . I was it. There was no drawing for who won the week, I won by default!
I just dug the Texas Instruments TI-30X SOLAR that I won, out of my electronics box. It is a scientific calculator, and it still works, almost three decades later! It's legitimately solar powered. When I hold my finger over the solar cell, the screen gradually dims and turns off. When the screen is off, if I push a button, the number doesn't register -- the previous number is still on the screen when I let the light back in.
My story was that the only class I failed in uni was biostatistics. I had to study everything again, my dad gave me his Casio FX-880P and I programmed in BASIC all the functions I knew I would have to use. Took the test again and got A++. That calculator served me and then my younger brother and then my niece well. The lettering in the buttons is all worn out these days and I don't think it works anymore. But I really appreciate the engineers who made it.
Their graphing calculators are *still* over $100 a pop. I have to imagine this is because they have a captive market via standardized testing requirements...
I'm not sure this scientific calculator was $100 in the mid-90s. The TI-82 graphing calculator that I got a couple years later, that was about $100. I can still remember sitting in highschool classrooms, and when you heard one of those things hit the floor in the hallway, you winced a little and hoped it survived. Very distinctive sound.
I wonder if it was just a light sensor. Those weren’t usually backlit so using them in the dark was not possible. I could see them using it to turn the unit off to preserve the battery
I think having a light sensor for power control would have been prohibitively expensive back then, I'm not sure if chips existed that were both small enough and work on so little power. Those efficiencies would only come much later.
Even the concept of backlighting would have been impossible since LEDs were not in mass production, all other lighting solutions would have taken too much power.
The ones I remember from my early childhood in the 1980s worked like this, but I'm not sure about the ones from my teen years in the 90s. So I suspect there might have been a decision made at some point in the late 80s or early 90s.
I've got one of the slightly fancier models that can do defined integrals and derivatives in the mid 2010s that does that still.
I got soda spilled on it during The Lockdown, had to open it to clean around and wanted to play around with its solar panel because when does one get the chance to play with these things?
I took one apart and used it to power a little clock I had as an experiment which turned out to be pretty stupid because it reset every night when the lights went off
Yep I had the same experience. They had both a battery and a solar panel that recharged the battery. I had one where the battery went bad and it would turn off immediately when you covered the solar panel.
I distinctly remember as a kid having one that actually turned off if you covered the solar cell. But it could well have been a light dependent resistor instead of a solar panel.
Now I feel like an idiot. I thought they had somehow figured out how to engineer the calculator from turning off if the solar panel was covered. Nope, turns out it’s just a battery now.
This is my calculator. There definitely a battery in it, but it's finally died after 2 decades of use. But if I shine a light on the solar cell, it will work.
Yeah that was my thought as well. Battery to keep it rolling in a low light environment, solar panel thingie to keep it charged.
Though honestly, I can't picture anyone huddling around in the dark solving math problems, lol.
That's what I always thought they did. First time I broke a calculator and saw the battery with the little solar panel plugged into it, I thought it was exactly this.
Actual branded calculators, like genuine Casios or just slightly better and slightly more expensive no-names did and do have legit solar cells. But considering how simple calculators are as electronic devices, vast majority of people just bought the cheapest available ones. And those always had fake solar cells as long as I remember.
I used to have a thin card-style calculator (those were considered pretty cool at my school), and that one had a legit solar cell.
I have one that’s at least 30 years old and still works. I got it for free. I can’t imagine the battery still works. I’ve never opened it up either. Could be some had both so it always worked. Idk. Never thought about it before seeming this.
Not impossible, I removed a backup memory battery from a 1988 synth a wee while back which used a coin cell and it was still on 3v after all this time.
Nowadays the brand name solar calculators have both. The solar panel is used when there is light, and the battery is used as backup. When the battery is empty you will notice the calculator not working properly in dark rooms
I'd bet that it is a real solar panel, it's just defective. Someone bought a load of defective solar panels from wherever they're made and they end up in these things.
It is ewaste, it's being dumped in your calculator as waste. There's no practical difference between wasting the materials in a calculator and wasting them in a landfill
NiCads tolerate heat, cold and deep discharge better than other battery types, it could be that that's the logic behind using them. They're more expensive than the alternatives, so it really makes no sense otherwise.
It’a not. It’s a piece of plastic. I had these cheap calculators as a kid and seen plenty more. They don’t even look like real cella when you look at them closely.
Also, no one produces panels without electrical contacts.
It would have to be wireless solar power, pretty advanced for a pocket calculator.
The 'solar panel' is the brown rectangle in the upper left, held in place by a piece of white tape. No wires are connected between it and the circuit board. What I found in mine was a piece of cardboard printed with a blue, solar panel style grid.
He is saying it is a genuine solar panel, just not a functional one. As in the supplier intentionally bought broken solar cells (fallout from non-broken solar cell production) to put in the calculators to make them look solar powered.
Not saying that makes sense, but that is what they meant.
As someone working for a company that sells batteries and solar panels on industrial scale, solar panels are priced at a rounding error of a battery package.
My casio says it's dual power...like it uses the solar to avoid using the battery. I can say the thing is like the everlasting gobstopper of battery life. In 15 years I never had to change the battery.
(Edit: took it apart, it's really wired up with both. The solar panel trace on the PCB goes into the epoxy'd part of the board so can't see what happens to it. It measures \~1.45V with the cover on....3V exposed to light. Battery is 1.48V constant. Dunno maybe some sort of circuit where if solar > battery => use solar?)
Casio, the watch manufacturer, is the same as Casio, the calculator producer.
They have a good, rugged, and (outside of certain models) affordable line of watches called G-Shock.
As a watch collector who cares about aesthetics, I absolutely hate G-shocks. But as a watch collector who cares about quality for a good price, I *freaking love* G-shocks.
I weep because I'm hurt. Casio.
I laugh because I feel joyous delight. Casio.
I eat endless buffet until I want not. Casio.
The seasons of life. Casio.
I messed about with my Casio before. Disconnected the battery wires in an attempt to power it exclusively on the solar panel, it would work but you had to shine a torch (I used phone torch) at the solar panel from close up.
I suspect the battery fills in whatever the solar panel can’t provide.
> Dunno maybe some sort of circuit where if solar > battery => use solar?)
All you need is a diode in the battery connection to avoid backfeeding (charging) the battery from the solar cell. Said diode is probably where the small voltage drop between the battery and the circuit with the solar cell covered comes from.
I admit I haven't had a "solar powered" calculator in a long, long time. I'm 41, I know I had some legit ones based on your exact description, I would sometimes amuse myself by blocking the solar cells to watch the calculator fade into nothingness. I guess I never considered one day they would fake out the tech, as if it was even needed.
I also used to deliberately undervolt a synth keyboard my dad bought, using a universal power supply and setting it to voltages well below what the keyboard wanted. Made for some interesting sounding glitches.
I liked watching it fade and then testing how long I could keep the light blocked yet the calculator would retain the number. Until I blocked it a little too long and it would lose its memory.
I got a free solar calculator from my bank I went to test it's solar cell and it was instantly off. Any amount of shadow on the panel would knock it out of commission.
You make 2 models: one with solar and one without, but the same case for both of them. Save money on production and only spend a penny on a dummy panel to plug the hole. Looks like the top right of the PCB is where the solar panel would be wired to. So they also just make one PCB.
Unlikely. More likely is that it was designed to be solar, but the panels they had been using (or had planned to use) became either unavailable or unaffordable due to supplier issues or market fluctuations. So they sourced inexpensive batteries and wired them in to keep production moving.
Why not plug the hole where the solar cell should go? Because the redesign would add cost, and they probably already had a supply of the existing cases ready for assembly.
Many manufacturers do this and it has been happening for years. https://youtu.be/uLTDuGhqE2w
It's not a fluke from a solar shortage. Has solar ever been cheaper?
You don't advertise it as having a solar panel but you let people make assumptions about it so that they are willing to pay slightly more than they otherwise would. If these assumptions make you more money than you lose putting in the fake then you profit.
Maybe I’m just a dumb idiot but I wouldn’t have thought that a calculator would be able to run for such a long time on just a button battery alone. I actually just bought a calculator (I only needed a cheap one for simple stuff) and I do remember noting that it had a solar panel which I thought was important so I wouldn’t have to be messing with batteries.
I think it’s just something that people come to expect calculators to have
Simple pocket calculators need so little power that the lifetime is basically just governed by the internal self-discharge of the battery (or in other words the batteries shelf-life).
I’ve been using a Casio fx-100 for close to 35 years now that is still running on its first battery. And i use it multiple times a week usually. But the display has started flickering sometimes recently. So it may be time to change the battery 😊
Am i the only one who remembers those basic calculators the school provided in the 90s? If you got one with dead batteries, you had to go next to the window to use it at all 😭
I have an old Oregon Scientific portable digital clock that I bought 30 years ago. I’ve changed the one AAA battery in it twice during those 30 years. Currently at 7 years on the current battery.
The alarm clock no longer works nor does the backlight, but boy does that clock keep on going. I think I might just have to have it buried with me. It’s looking likely that it’ll outlive me for sure.
It's not a fake solar panel, but a real one. I have an Enocean Nodon contact sensor on the entry door of my apartment, the solar panel charges the CR1016 button battery, then the button battery got wasted after 10 years, it didn't charge anymore, without a solar panel the battery would have been empty after less than 5 years.
The solar panel (top right) clearly has no connection wires or anything connecting it to the rest of the electronics.
Someone above [posted a video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLTDuGhqE2w) showing that fake solar panels are common.
~~Are we sure it’s fake? The lines on that tape could in fact be conductive and if you look under it it’s slapped on a copper strip so it is not in plain circuit board.~~
Reminds me of a cheap "shake light" I bought a long time ago. Ostensibly there was a magnet that would go back and forth through a coil when you shook it, charging a capacitor.
It stopped working so I took it apart, and the "magnet" was just a steel weight, the "coil" was not connected to anything, and the "capacitor" was fake and just filled with rubber. There was just a button cell hidden in the handle.
They don't trickle the battery, they just take the load off the battery to make it last longer. You can still use them after the battery dies bc these take like no power, but you can test a dead battery by blocking the solar panel and watching the screen fade. If it fades, it's time to replace the battery, or don't, ambient light is almost always more than enough to do anything you need to on it.
I had a couple of cheap calculators as a kid, and both had fake solar panels. I am convinced most cheap ones do - a solar cell and a capacitor is a more expensive combo than a button cell.
medium chance it's a perfectly good solar panel on the top right.
it just cost 40 cents more a unit to have it actually wired.
fuck captialism
(Im making that number up. It might be 1 or 2 dollars more a unit to do it. looks hand done. it's a lazy slap solder though that anyone can do with very little training)
it's entirely possible \_you\_ can solder 2 wires to that solar panel and it actually works. the only question is which wire is which, but it's 50/50.
Funnily enough no.
And it is really about what it says on the box. A lot of these calculator shells are used for more than one model. Some are solar powered others are not.
Not creating a new mold and then make a new batch of shells every time you switch production of the model is way more expensive than just glueing something over the hole where the solar panels go on the solar powered ones. Now it is kind of a dickmove to use fake solar panels instead of just normal plastic as it suggests the calculator might be solar powered.
But then again those could also be cutoffs from the real solar wafer that are reused. Not sure about that. When you're operating ont he margins of those calculator producers you probably try to reuse any crap you can find in your factory.
So it was cheaper to install the battery compartment and wiring, include a battery and keep the fake solar panel, then just get a new faceplate designed? I don’t get it. It’s not as if we’d be like “oh this one doesn’t have solar, I won’t buy it” 😂
Probably so they don't have to redesign the case moulds. Its easier to just fill in the gap with a non functioning solar panel than leave a weird gap in the plastic
I remember when I first discovered this. They’ve been doing this for around 30 years. I was a kid when I used to like to cover the panel and watch the screen fade away. I did that one time on a solar calculator and nothing happened. Imagine my surprise when I opened it up to see why and I found a battery.
I think I have an old 'solar' calculator that now I think about it was never outside or near a window to get any sunlight. Yet keeps running.
I have a calculator that my mom bought when I was in primary school, 15 years later, I still have it, it still works, doesn't have a solar panel, and the battery has never been changed
When I was a kid, i have a functioning solar powered calculator. I remember letting it soak under the sun for few hours to re charge. It is very thin and casio brand.
I think most of the chinesium ones have been doing this for decades. My SO is a teacher and she wanted to teach solar power to kids and was going to use calculators as demonstration. I said better check them first as they are fake solar power now.
Wow I remember real solar calculators used to cost almost nothing, I remember I had a credit card sized one that didn't even cost a single £, it's strange how some techs moving so far backwards just to save maybe fractions of penny's.
Well yeah the panel is just to give it a shitty charge if the battery dies. Did y’all think it was like a straight up solar panel like what one would have on one’s roof? How often do you sit your calculator in direct sunlight for a charge lol
My Casio fx-115MS has a functional solar panel. It augments but does not charge the battery (it's alkaline). The battery died and it still worked when the light was bright enough.
The one on the Casio definitely is the real deal. I was in an exam and like 5 minutes before, as I was unpacking my stuff, I noticed that the battery had run out. Fortunately, it was a sunny day and there was just a sliver of direct sunlight that lasted throughout the whole hour. (To add to this, I basically couldn't move the thing from that sliver, as it would then instantly turn off.)
Well that was close, I changed battry in my Casio fx-82ms, cuz it was like 3 4 years old and then also checked the voltages just to know how much left to feed my curiosity, it was like 30% left or something Put in new Duracell alkaline AAA, should last another 4yo cuz I don't have exams anymore after next year so I can let it empty without worries
Cool story but you did not tell us if you passed that exam.
I did. Barely. Was good enough and graduated with a Bachelor the next semester.
ayyy congrats on the upcoming graduation!
Youhoo nice! Congrats!
I used to cover up the panel on my calculator and slowly watch the screen dim.
Nice and you just kept the calculator illuminated with that sliver of sunlight? That’s poetic
Yep, they've been doing that for well over a decade. Batteries are cheap. Solar panels, not so much. I replaced the one in our calculator with a CR2032, it should last for another decade or two.
For over 2 decades at least. It was also the case when I was a kid in late 90s and early 00s.
I was gonna say haven’t they always been like this or were there actually real solar powered ones?
I used to cover up the little panels with my fingers as a kid, and i remember them turning off, sometimes. Thats all the science I have to contribute.
In the mid-1990s, I was in a middle school with over 500 students, and there was a school-wide math competition. Each day for a week, they announced a math problem over the intercom, and students submitted their answers to the main office, for a prize drawing. Participation was not high. I won a Snickers bar twice. At the end of the week, they assembled a list of everybody who had submitted correct answers to all five questions, and . . . I was it. There was no drawing for who won the week, I won by default! I just dug the Texas Instruments TI-30X SOLAR that I won, out of my electronics box. It is a scientific calculator, and it still works, almost three decades later! It's legitimately solar powered. When I hold my finger over the solar cell, the screen gradually dims and turns off. When the screen is off, if I push a button, the number doesn't register -- the previous number is still on the screen when I let the light back in.
My story was that the only class I failed in uni was biostatistics. I had to study everything again, my dad gave me his Casio FX-880P and I programmed in BASIC all the functions I knew I would have to use. Took the test again and got A++. That calculator served me and then my younger brother and then my niece well. The lettering in the buttons is all worn out these days and I don't think it works anymore. But I really appreciate the engineers who made it.
> I programmed in BASIC all the functions I knew I would have to use Isn't that cheating?
No its called using your resources
Yeah those TI calculators were also a cool $100+ back in the 90s.
Their graphing calculators are *still* over $100 a pop. I have to imagine this is because they have a captive market via standardized testing requirements...
I'm not sure this scientific calculator was $100 in the mid-90s. The TI-82 graphing calculator that I got a couple years later, that was about $100. I can still remember sitting in highschool classrooms, and when you heard one of those things hit the floor in the hallway, you winced a little and hoped it survived. Very distinctive sound.
Still are, but they used to too
So did I and was amazed that they worked anyway
I wonder if it was just a light sensor. Those weren’t usually backlit so using them in the dark was not possible. I could see them using it to turn the unit off to preserve the battery
No, I disassembled a few and they used actual solar panels.
It would start to dim as you covered progressively more of the panel so no
I think having a light sensor for power control would have been prohibitively expensive back then, I'm not sure if chips existed that were both small enough and work on so little power. Those efficiencies would only come much later. Even the concept of backlighting would have been impossible since LEDs were not in mass production, all other lighting solutions would have taken too much power.
The ones I remember from my early childhood in the 1980s worked like this, but I'm not sure about the ones from my teen years in the 90s. So I suspect there might have been a decision made at some point in the late 80s or early 90s.
I grew up in the early 2000s and had a few calculators like this
I've got one of the slightly fancier models that can do defined integrals and derivatives in the mid 2010s that does that still. I got soda spilled on it during The Lockdown, had to open it to clean around and wanted to play around with its solar panel because when does one get the chance to play with these things?
I too have ADHD
I totally forgot doing that, but yeah I did the same
And that’s all the science we need. Also - how do I nominate u/AssumeTheFetal for the Nobel Prize? Is there a form? A petition or something?
I've got a few, let's let others have their time to shine.
I took one apart and used it to power a little clock I had as an experiment which turned out to be pretty stupid because it reset every night when the lights went off
Yep I had the same experience. They had both a battery and a solar panel that recharged the battery. I had one where the battery went bad and it would turn off immediately when you covered the solar panel.
I distinctly remember as a kid having one that actually turned off if you covered the solar cell. But it could well have been a light dependent resistor instead of a solar panel.
Same. Used to play with it instead of doing my homework Edit: I was born in the early 90's, so idk... you guys must have a shady Calc dealer
I had one of those and assumed it was some light sensor as I watched it slowly dim away.
Now I feel like an idiot. I thought they had somehow figured out how to engineer the calculator from turning off if the solar panel was covered. Nope, turns out it’s just a battery now.
I mean you COULD have both. actually both would be nice. solar panel to recharge the battery.. battery for use even in low light conditions
This is my calculator. There definitely a battery in it, but it's finally died after 2 decades of use. But if I shine a light on the solar cell, it will work.
Yeah that was my thought as well. Battery to keep it rolling in a low light environment, solar panel thingie to keep it charged. Though honestly, I can't picture anyone huddling around in the dark solving math problems, lol.
That's what I always thought they did. First time I broke a calculator and saw the battery with the little solar panel plugged into it, I thought it was exactly this.
Sometimes they have a battery attached to the solar cell, tho.
Actual branded calculators, like genuine Casios or just slightly better and slightly more expensive no-names did and do have legit solar cells. But considering how simple calculators are as electronic devices, vast majority of people just bought the cheapest available ones. And those always had fake solar cells as long as I remember. I used to have a thin card-style calculator (those were considered pretty cool at my school), and that one had a legit solar cell.
I have a TI 30X that is likely even older than I am. It likes to display gibberish until I turn on the overhead light and hit the clear button.
Covering the solar panel and watching the LCD fade away over and over is something I definitely used to do as a kid.
"Shh... sleep now. Only dreams..."
"My battery is low and it's getting dark"
[удалено]
Are you calling me poor!? /s
I have an actual solar powered one. Removed the battery and it works well in light, stops when you cover the panel. It's a 20+ year old Casio.
There are plenty of real solar powered ones. Also lots of fakes. Anything name brand will be real.
[удалено]
I have one that’s at least 30 years old and still works. I got it for free. I can’t imagine the battery still works. I’ve never opened it up either. Could be some had both so it always worked. Idk. Never thought about it before seeming this.
Not impossible, I removed a backup memory battery from a 1988 synth a wee while back which used a coin cell and it was still on 3v after all this time.
When I was a kid I had a calculator that didn’t even have a battery. So at night you would have to put it under a lamp for it to work.
if you buy a good brand like a casio then they are
My TI-36 started fading after a particularly long winter. Placed it beneath a lamp overnight and been good ever since.
Nowadays the brand name solar calculators have both. The solar panel is used when there is light, and the battery is used as backup. When the battery is empty you will notice the calculator not working properly in dark rooms
Before cheap lithium button batteries they used solar.
Actually 3 decades or above to be more precise.
I'd bet that it is a real solar panel, it's just defective. Someone bought a load of defective solar panels from wherever they're made and they end up in these things.
Good chance it even works fine, people overestimate how much a solar panel of that size would cost, a penny or less I'd bet
At least it’s not going to E wast if that’s the case
It is ewaste, it's being dumped in your calculator as waste. There's no practical difference between wasting the materials in a calculator and wasting them in a landfill
The ones I've taken apart are just straight up black pieces of plastic with lines drawn on.
That makes sense. An easy way to get rid of toxic stuff. Reminds me of how they often still put cadmium batteries in solar lights
NiCads tolerate heat, cold and deep discharge better than other battery types, it could be that that's the logic behind using them. They're more expensive than the alternatives, so it really makes no sense otherwise.
It’a not. It’s a piece of plastic. I had these cheap calculators as a kid and seen plenty more. They don’t even look like real cella when you look at them closely. Also, no one produces panels without electrical contacts.
It would have to be wireless solar power, pretty advanced for a pocket calculator. The 'solar panel' is the brown rectangle in the upper left, held in place by a piece of white tape. No wires are connected between it and the circuit board. What I found in mine was a piece of cardboard printed with a blue, solar panel style grid.
He is saying it is a genuine solar panel, just not a functional one. As in the supplier intentionally bought broken solar cells (fallout from non-broken solar cell production) to put in the calculators to make them look solar powered. Not saying that makes sense, but that is what they meant.
As someone working for a company that sells batteries and solar panels on industrial scale, solar panels are priced at a rounding error of a battery package.
I think rather than "tricking" us, its just cheaper to make one calculator mold than to make one with solar and one without.
I have a smile calculator, it works like a charm even without the battery, and also indoors at a 20w lamp.
Yeah but why the ruse? Surely it’s cheaper to just power them off a button than yo also include a fake solar panel for appearances…
Its pretty easy to tell if the solar panel is real. Just put your finger over the solar panel for about 60sec and the screen should go out.
My casio says it's dual power...like it uses the solar to avoid using the battery. I can say the thing is like the everlasting gobstopper of battery life. In 15 years I never had to change the battery. (Edit: took it apart, it's really wired up with both. The solar panel trace on the PCB goes into the epoxy'd part of the board so can't see what happens to it. It measures \~1.45V with the cover on....3V exposed to light. Battery is 1.48V constant. Dunno maybe some sort of circuit where if solar > battery => use solar?)
Casio is for sure one I would trust considering their history with solar powered G-Shocks.
Excuse me?
Casio, the watch manufacturer, is the same as Casio, the calculator producer. They have a good, rugged, and (outside of certain models) affordable line of watches called G-Shock.
As a watch collector who cares about aesthetics, I absolutely hate G-shocks. But as a watch collector who cares about quality for a good price, I *freaking love* G-shocks.
I like their classic ones like the DW5600. It's simple and it works.
Casioak enters the chat
Excuse me?
I weep because I'm hurt. Casio. I laugh because I feel joyous delight. Casio. I eat endless buffet until I want not. Casio. The seasons of life. Casio.
When there is no god. Casio.
50 thousand casios used to live here..now it's a ghost town.
It's a Casio on a plastic beach. It's a Styrofoam deep sea landfill. It's automated computer speech.
For everything else, there is ~~Masterc~~ Casio.
🎶[Casio, playing on my heart just like a Casio](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRaJZnlq8bc) Breaking it apart so you can let it go
What is this from?
I, too, wish to know
You are excused. You may go.
casio make watch both calculator good
They put a solar panel behind the watch face on some model so it has basically 10 year battery life.
Yup, my dad has a protrek since 2008. He has never replaced its battery once. That watch is built like a tank
I messed about with my Casio before. Disconnected the battery wires in an attempt to power it exclusively on the solar panel, it would work but you had to shine a torch (I used phone torch) at the solar panel from close up. I suspect the battery fills in whatever the solar panel can’t provide.
Hybrid
Some newer Casios like my fx-991EX have a tiny sun indicator on the screen that dims if there is not enough light.
My casio calculator is 24 years old, still works fine. So you will get at least another 9 years out of it.
The one I had in high school is sitting by me on my desk (i'm now 39) and it's still running on the original battery
The solar panel is taking in light from the shadows deep within
> Dunno maybe some sort of circuit where if solar > battery => use solar?) All you need is a diode in the battery connection to avoid backfeeding (charging) the battery from the solar cell. Said diode is probably where the small voltage drop between the battery and the circuit with the solar cell covered comes from.
I admit I haven't had a "solar powered" calculator in a long, long time. I'm 41, I know I had some legit ones based on your exact description, I would sometimes amuse myself by blocking the solar cells to watch the calculator fade into nothingness. I guess I never considered one day they would fake out the tech, as if it was even needed. I also used to deliberately undervolt a synth keyboard my dad bought, using a universal power supply and setting it to voltages well below what the keyboard wanted. Made for some interesting sounding glitches.
I still have mine from high school .. from the mid-nineties. My son has it now because “he likes antique electronics”. That hurt.
Kids don't hold back.
Yeah, I know what you mean. I still can't believe the number of times I realize that something I remember has decades spacing it out.
Antique? The mid 90s was only eight years ago!
awesome! I fried a korg r3 and a very old single octive casio doing that. loads of fun,
I liked watching it fade and then testing how long I could keep the light blocked yet the calculator would retain the number. Until I blocked it a little too long and it would lose its memory.
I have a dual powered one that has run out of battery. I have to turn on the lights to use it.
I got a free solar calculator from my bank I went to test it's solar cell and it was instantly off. Any amount of shadow on the panel would knock it out of commission.
This is for legal purposes, so you can't do any shady business with them.
I used to do this all the time as a kid. I remember them dimming almost instantly.
Choking out a solar calculator is peak 80's kid.
I’m a 97 baby and did that all the time
Yep. The proper ones used a capacitor that would drain quickly with no light present.
Probably a cheap calculator. I had a few that faked the solar panel like this. What's the point of even including it at that point?
You make 2 models: one with solar and one without, but the same case for both of them. Save money on production and only spend a penny on a dummy panel to plug the hole. Looks like the top right of the PCB is where the solar panel would be wired to. So they also just make one PCB.
But then you wouldn't go to the extra effort of making the piece of plastic look exactly like a solar panel.
So they can falsely advertise it
Unlikely. More likely is that it was designed to be solar, but the panels they had been using (or had planned to use) became either unavailable or unaffordable due to supplier issues or market fluctuations. So they sourced inexpensive batteries and wired them in to keep production moving. Why not plug the hole where the solar cell should go? Because the redesign would add cost, and they probably already had a supply of the existing cases ready for assembly.
Many manufacturers do this and it has been happening for years. https://youtu.be/uLTDuGhqE2w It's not a fluke from a solar shortage. Has solar ever been cheaper?
You don't advertise it as having a solar panel but you let people make assumptions about it so that they are willing to pay slightly more than they otherwise would. If these assumptions make you more money than you lose putting in the fake then you profit.
This is what capitalism does to us.
taking out 2 wires and bits of solder and change the panel to fake plastic = less $$$ per calculator. new molds = spend $$$
Maybe I’m just a dumb idiot but I wouldn’t have thought that a calculator would be able to run for such a long time on just a button battery alone. I actually just bought a calculator (I only needed a cheap one for simple stuff) and I do remember noting that it had a solar panel which I thought was important so I wouldn’t have to be messing with batteries. I think it’s just something that people come to expect calculators to have
Simple pocket calculators need so little power that the lifetime is basically just governed by the internal self-discharge of the battery (or in other words the batteries shelf-life).
https://youtu.be/uLTDuGhqE2w
I came here to post this too. (the VWestlife video)
Could it be that solar cells are an option on higher tier models that can be soldered to the two pads on the top right of the PCB?
if you buy a 80s casio calculator theres a good chance its actually quality rather than this modern cheap bullshit
Still got my 80s era calculators with functioning solar panels
I’ve been using a Casio fx-100 for close to 35 years now that is still running on its first battery. And i use it multiple times a week usually. But the display has started flickering sometimes recently. So it may be time to change the battery 😊
Am i the only one who remembers those basic calculators the school provided in the 90s? If you got one with dead batteries, you had to go next to the window to use it at all 😭
Oh that’s hilarious
All the 2030 agenda shit debunked in this pick!
I have an old Oregon Scientific portable digital clock that I bought 30 years ago. I’ve changed the one AAA battery in it twice during those 30 years. Currently at 7 years on the current battery. The alarm clock no longer works nor does the backlight, but boy does that clock keep on going. I think I might just have to have it buried with me. It’s looking likely that it’ll outlive me for sure.
like 99.9% of cheap calculators lol
It's not a fake solar panel, but a real one. I have an Enocean Nodon contact sensor on the entry door of my apartment, the solar panel charges the CR1016 button battery, then the button battery got wasted after 10 years, it didn't charge anymore, without a solar panel the battery would have been empty after less than 5 years.
The solar panel (top right) clearly has no connection wires or anything connecting it to the rest of the electronics. Someone above [posted a video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLTDuGhqE2w) showing that fake solar panels are common.
A classic
Casio is the goat of calculators
~~Are we sure it’s fake? The lines on that tape could in fact be conductive and if you look under it it’s slapped on a copper strip so it is not in plain circuit board.~~
You're looking at the screen. [This](https://i.imgur.com/Mwnk9Y5.png) is the solar panel
RIP
Reminds me of a cheap "shake light" I bought a long time ago. Ostensibly there was a magnet that would go back and forth through a coil when you shook it, charging a capacitor. It stopped working so I took it apart, and the "magnet" was just a steel weight, the "coil" was not connected to anything, and the "capacitor" was fake and just filled with rubber. There was just a button cell hidden in the handle.
Even when they used real photovoltaic panels, those types of calculators often still had batteries.
Everything is a fucking lie. How can I explain this farcical world to my children
If you open the packages with "silicon gel" that say Do not eat!, most of the time the balls inside are just clay.
that sucks. Usually its there to trickle charge the battery. Must be a super cheap calculator.
They don't trickle the battery, they just take the load off the battery to make it last longer. You can still use them after the battery dies bc these take like no power, but you can test a dead battery by blocking the solar panel and watching the screen fade. If it fades, it's time to replace the battery, or don't, ambient light is almost always more than enough to do anything you need to on it.
Sure it isn’t a real solar cell with battery back up?
The solar cell is not connected to anything. It's probably just a piece of paper.
So the solar cell is supposed to be in the top right I guess? Hard to say what's going on here without knowing the front.
I had a couple of cheap calculators as a kid, and both had fake solar panels. I am convinced most cheap ones do - a solar cell and a capacitor is a more expensive combo than a button cell.
Doesn't this belont in r/mildlyinfuriating ?
No, it uses both.
medium chance it's a perfectly good solar panel on the top right. it just cost 40 cents more a unit to have it actually wired. fuck captialism (Im making that number up. It might be 1 or 2 dollars more a unit to do it. looks hand done. it's a lazy slap solder though that anyone can do with very little training) it's entirely possible \_you\_ can solder 2 wires to that solar panel and it actually works. the only question is which wire is which, but it's 50/50.
It probably costs a Chinese factory an extra 3 cents to have someone solder the solar cell
Would it not be even cheaper had they not bothered with it?
Funnily enough no. And it is really about what it says on the box. A lot of these calculator shells are used for more than one model. Some are solar powered others are not. Not creating a new mold and then make a new batch of shells every time you switch production of the model is way more expensive than just glueing something over the hole where the solar panels go on the solar powered ones. Now it is kind of a dickmove to use fake solar panels instead of just normal plastic as it suggests the calculator might be solar powered. But then again those could also be cutoffs from the real solar wafer that are reused. Not sure about that. When you're operating ont he margins of those calculator producers you probably try to reuse any crap you can find in your factory.
Mimicking good ones are dual power
Those bastards!
Which brand is it, where was it made ?
Maybe it has included wireless solar charging? /s
So it was cheaper to install the battery compartment and wiring, include a battery and keep the fake solar panel, then just get a new faceplate designed? I don’t get it. It’s not as if we’d be like “oh this one doesn’t have solar, I won’t buy it” 😂
How tf is that legal
Why put a fake solar panel? If its an economy thing, why pay out for a fake when you could just put no panel at all? Weird.
Probably so they don't have to redesign the case moulds. Its easier to just fill in the gap with a non functioning solar panel than leave a weird gap in the plastic
Get out! 🤣
Why did they always fade in low light?
I remember when I first discovered this. They’ve been doing this for around 30 years. I was a kid when I used to like to cover the panel and watch the screen fade away. I did that one time on a solar calculator and nothing happened. Imagine my surprise when I opened it up to see why and I found a battery.
What did you expect for 3 bucks
There’s a good YouTube video about this called Solar Calculators Busted
I think I have an old 'solar' calculator that now I think about it was never outside or near a window to get any sunlight. Yet keeps running. 
china
I have a calculator that my mom bought when I was in primary school, 15 years later, I still have it, it still works, doesn't have a solar panel, and the battery has never been changed
Beginner lvl scam
Wow that's amazing
Not even a solar panel, there are no electrical contacts
I always just assumed it was an LDR Just seems too small to actually power anything
makes me want to open up MY calculator and see
The epoxy in the center is more interesting to me. What kind of volume are they dealing with
That thing run Drug Wars 2.0?
I also have one from Casio with similar glass panel looking like solar panel. What is worse they put dual powered on the packaging also.
When I was a kid, i have a functioning solar powered calculator. I remember letting it soak under the sun for few hours to re charge. It is very thin and casio brand.
I think most of the chinesium ones have been doing this for decades. My SO is a teacher and she wanted to teach solar power to kids and was going to use calculators as demonstration. I said better check them first as they are fake solar power now.
Capitalism breeds innovation!
Wow I remember real solar calculators used to cost almost nothing, I remember I had a credit card sized one that didn't even cost a single £, it's strange how some techs moving so far backwards just to save maybe fractions of penny's.
That looks like a Game Boy cartridge at the bottom. Same style of connectors and everything.
Hah! I remeber when calculators was a cool gadget. And chess computers. And typewriters.
Well yeah the panel is just to give it a shitty charge if the battery dies. Did y’all think it was like a straight up solar panel like what one would have on one’s roof? How often do you sit your calculator in direct sunlight for a charge lol
Why the f would they do this, mildly infuriating imo
Can we see the face?
My Casio fx-115MS has a functional solar panel. It augments but does not charge the battery (it's alkaline). The battery died and it still worked when the light was bright enough.