Joule Thief

[TheNOP]

@Pirate88179
you could put your contacts lower on the bird and the plates on the support frame.
the length of the plates can change.

[Pirate88179]

@ Jesus:

Thank you and, nice drawing!  It is still cold here but, I was cooking spagetti for dinner and, the kitchen heated up and....Wilby's Bird was cycling at about every 18 seconds.  So, this will work better in the summer.  I can move the contact up but, I have to let the bird reach its full extension or he does not hit the water.  But, you are right, I only need to change the wire brushes to a smaller gauge so they come into contact sooner and therefore will be in contact longer.  This thing is in a delicate balance and I originally tried to use the contact switch from one of my Fuji camera boards (I knew they might come in handy one day) but, even that thin copper contact was too much for the bird.  Thanks for the comment and the picture and your suggestion.  I will try it in a few days, as well as a few other ideas I came up with.  I think this will work.


@ Wilby:

Hey, you now have a bird named after you.  While this might not become quite as famous as Schrodinger's Cat, it now goes down in the annals of energy research history. Ha ha.  Thanks again for the idea!

@ Jeanna:

The red wire you see is from where I had originally installed a switch which I removed for this experiment.  This is just the original basic JT on a 1" toroid from electronics Goldmine, using the N3904 transistor and a 1k ohm resistor.  The leds are 5mm ultraviolets with the plastic tube coated with black light paint.  The toroid is wound bifilar with 22 ga. wire.  The Bird is still running in my living room as I type this.

Thanks again everyone!  Hey, almost 500 pages here.  Great job everyone.

Bill

[Pirate88179]

@Pirate88179
you could put your contacts lower on the bird and the plates on the support frame.
the length of the plates can change.

Thanks.  Yes, good idea.  As I said above there are a lot of "tweaks" that can be played with here.  This was just my 2nd attempt to get it to run after UPS delivered it to me this afternoon.  I swear, these are really cool little devices.  Thank you.

Bill

[jeanna]

It is better than New Years Eve. 500 here we come.

Bill, can you tell us how you painted the inside of the tube and what you used, please?

I really love what that looks like.

Maybe there could be some hula hoops in fluoro light too!

OK so, maybe you only need to wind 20 turns of a secondary and use those wires to light the leds. Your bird and caps may catch up to each other.

jeanna

[Pirate88179]

@ Jeanna:

I used (From my local Hobby Lobby store) Createx fluorescent airbrush colors black light paint.  I used a very complicated scientific process to coat the inside of the tubes. (not really)  I simply filled the plastic tubing with the paint and turned it around a bit to make sure it was fully coated, then gently blew most of the paint out using my lips.  I then dried them using a hair dryer.  I did this 2 times to get a good even coat on the inside.  It has a tendency to bead up on the plastic as this is water based paint.

And yes, your idea of adding a secondary might just make all of the difference.  I will be trying that for sure.  I was hoping to get "extra" light from the tubes and the paint and it actually might be a little more than the regular leds of this size, but, it was not as good as I had hoped.  There are other ways to use this paint and the ultraviolets that I will be trying. I am thinking of stuff I can paint and then shine the leds on.  I am sure you will have some good ideas on this too.  Heck Jeanna, you could paint one wall with this (I can't I am renting) and bounce 30 uv leds off of it and maybe light the room, who knows?

Thank you.

Bill