Joule Thief

[nievesoliveras]

@jeanna

Greetings!

In the country people use to put an egg to the ligt and see if it is male or female with what they see inside.
In the same way you can put the circuit against a light, at some distance, and you can in this way trace any circuit.

Jesus

[Pirate88179]

@ Pirate

Bill,  thanks for the suggestion, parallel now.   They all light but not as bright as when plugged into the wall. 
Were your LEDs brighter when plugged into wall?  I still think the Fuji circuit may be better. 

Bill

an honest answer to your question is that, yes, they were actually brighter than plugged into the wall.  I first tried the 100 led string and just touched the leads and....wow!  It was superbright, so much so that I didn't want to burn them up, which I have done in the past.  So, I hooked the 2nd 100 string in parallel and it lit up bright as well, but not so bright that I thought I was hurting them.  So, thanks to you telling me these were on special, I bought another 100 leds and added them to my tree, replacing one string of tear drop lights. (incandescent)  Now, when I run my color organ, I have 1 string of 100 leds for each frequency. (bass, mid-range, and high)  It works a lot better.

So now, tonight if I get a chance, I will attempt to light all 300 from an AA battery and see what happens.  I am sure they won't be as bright as just 1, or the 2, but I think they will be bright enough to say they are illuminated.


I also bought another Fuji camera.  What concerns me, after speaking with Jeanna, is that this one also has the "continuous flash" which is good but, the labeling on the box was square like Jeanna's where it said this and not oval like my first one.  I will try to open it up later to see what I got.  I think xee2 is correct in that they have millions of these things floating around out there, and it is the luck of the draw to get one we recognize how to modify.  Maybe, we can figure out eventually how to modify any style of them, I don't know.  I am not sure I know enough yet to figure this out but, with everyone's help here (you all have been just great) I believe we can do it.

I will see what I can do later......no promises.  Thanks to all.

Bill

[Pirate88179]

Well prior to cooking dinner I opened up my new Fuji and....it is different!!  It has the same AAA battery that Jeanna's has.  Plus, the transformer is at least half the size of my other board. (My first one had an AA bat.)  I don't know if this is even the same as Jeanna's or is like the other one Freezer had?  The diode is like very far from the transformer and the entire board is laid out differently.  I can see most of the paths on the board and only some of them are covered in blue paint, not black, like Jeanna's. (I have no idea why they do this)

I will try to post pics of it later, I have to do my reports from today's activities out in the field, and I want to try the 300 led experiment.  I really hope Fuji did not discontinue our "standard" board but they very well might have.  This one is probably 5 cents cheaper to manufacture and if so, I don't blame them.

I mentioned to Jeanna that if this is discontinued then maybe, just maybe, a bunch of the good boards might show up in the surplus company's inventory.  If so, then we could just buy the boards.  She told me that either electronics goldmine or all electronics has three camera boards (surplus) for one dollar.  We might have to look into that.  Will post more later.

Bill

[timmy1729]

Well, my first Joule Thief is working beautifully! It is the simple one from MakeMagazine. But, I'm always thrilled when I get anything to work! 

I need some expert help here. I might just be hooking the Joule Thief  and my multimeter up incorrectly. I connected the positives on the meter and Earth Battery and did the same for the negatives and got 1.046vdc. I connected the positive(two combined wires from the coil) of the Joule Thief to the positive on my Earth Battery. Then I connect the positive of my multimeter to the negative of my Joule Thief. Then I connect the negative of the multimeter to the negative of the Earth Battery. I ended up with LESS voltage with the Joule Thief! So, I kept the same config except I flipped around the Joule Thief and I got the original voltage. Then I went back and just connected the meter and got my original voltage. What am I doing wrong? When I connect the Joule Thief to a AA battery, it works fine with the twisted wires from the coil going to positive and the short leg of the LED to negative. I don't get it. Also, no matter how I tested it, I always got 1.5vdc with the Joule Thief connected to the AA. I thought it was supposed to read a different voltage since the LED needs like 3vdc to light up. 

So, now that I've got the simple JT working, what would be a good step for improvement from here? I've read this thread all day and I'm only half-way through.

[xee2]

@ jeanna

I bought another camera and it also has a red LED (same as last one). I tried to take a photo of the little lines that should be shorted from one side of hole to the other, but it is not very good. I hope  it is some help.