Joule Thief

[electricme]

@Bill,
Thanks Bill, I see you have some probes!!!!! and your scope has arrived, ooooooh dats goodiegumdrop stuff that is he he.

Plug her in and fire-er up, cmon man, toss away da booklet, I'm eager to try er out, now wheres my travellln bag, here it is, I'm comin bill, better hide it ha ha ha.

Serious now, good for you mate, silver plug at the cro end is a BNC, the sharp prong at the other end is the point, the aligator clips on the earth, ha.

Set it to DC to make some measurements.

I'm about a day late I see, oh whell, never mind, now we are going to see some reposted readings, goodo.

Congrats again Bill. Well done.


jim

[Pirate88179]

@ Jim:

Thanks man, I am looking forward to it too.  I was reading the manual this evening and....it is not all that long.  I guess they figured if a guy buys a scope, he probably already knows how to use it.  I also got another manual on how to use a scope, and I think this will be a lot of help for me.  Take care my friend.

Bill

[jadaro2600]

@ Jadaro:

Nice work!  This is very interesting and needs to be looked into further.  This goes along with my original thinking of not liking resistors.  Thanks for posting this.

Bill

Thank you, I'm wondering though, for my particular setup, if a JFET or MOSFET may be more appropriate.

[electricme]

@Bill,
The resistor which is applied to the transistor base is there to limit the switching current to the "junction", If you were to "drive" the transistor with a 12v DC battery, it would turn into the sun for a split second, the smokle comes out and its good for the bin.

The resistor, limites or reduces the amount of current to oscillate it, especially if it was driving a small loud speaker.
If you dont have the right resistance, the output could be too low or too harsh or distorted.

Ohhhh, here I go again, Another Idea.

if you have a xtal (crystal earpiece) hook this up to the output and see if you can HEAR the Joule Thief.
You might have to put a 1k-220 ohm resistor in series with it though.

OR hook up a loudspeaker.
See if the LEDS pulse or not, will the scope display a different waveform?


jim

[Pirate88179]

@ General Jim:

Great idea here.  I will look for one of the ear pieces and give it a go.  You always come up with these great experiments.

PS  I saw an ad on ebay where your mice are looking for a human trap.  Be careful.

Bill