Joule Thief

[flathunter]

Thanks to everyone on here for making this such an interesting thread. 

Finally got round to completing my first joule thief (standard version like on evil mad scientist vid) and its lighting up at least 5 LEDs, but could probably do way more, I just aint got round to connecting more. Give me time, and i'm hoping for bigger things   Just as we all are.   I love your videos Pirate.  Great stuff that really shows what can be achieved with this little blighter.  Just one question:  I understand you lit those 40 W tubes from the standard set up for the joule thief.  I mean you didnt use any extra pick up coils on the toroid, as shown in Jesus' great diagrams with Jeannna's set up.  Is this true?  Did you just connect the tube into 2 transistor terminals?  Or am I missing something???  Wouldnt be the first time! 

Lucky experimenting!

[jeanna]

Jesus

@jesus,
Thank you again for a beautiful recap illustration.

There is a change I would like you to make, please. If I understand the drawing that you made on the different types of transistors, the side pictured with the diode symbol is the emitter. The 2N3904 being american made then is reversed from your schematic.

The emitter should be on the upper side, because it belongs on the more positive side of this circuit. The collector connects directly to the negative battery side.

(I personally have trouble with these things because I am dyslexic and have a hard time knowing if I am looking at something in mirror view or straight, so please correct me if I am wrong, but I believe it should be as I stated.)

thank you,

jeanna

ADD EDIT:

@Timmy

And, like shown on the page, I'm going to HAVE to try the setup in the picture where the setup is split in two and they are connected by Earth. Ground power transmission!

Oh yes, please do! I have a copy of that whole page on my laptop that I saved and occasionally pour over. I'd love to see and later share your results.

thank you.

@Flathunter,

welcome. Good job.

I think Bill is working days so I will give you an answer to your question.

He was using the fujiAA circuit when he lit up all those fluoros and christmas led strings. His latest video with 2 of them in parallel, are also the fujiAA circuit as modified.

I am we are also trying to get this effect with the little hand wound ones. I don't think we have done it yet. But, I may have missed something...easily done on this lightning thread!

thank you and please give the details. were you lighting your lights with a secondary too?

jeanna

[Pirate88179]

Thanks to everyone on here for making this such an interesting thread. 

Finally got round to completing my first joule thief (standard version like on evil mad scientist vid) and its lighting up at least 5 LEDs, but could probably do way more, I just aint got round to connecting more. Give me time, and i'm hoping for bigger things   Just as we all are.   I love your videos Pirate.  Great stuff that really shows what can be achieved with this little blighter.  Just one question:  I understand you lit those 40 W tubes from the standard set up for the joule thief.  I mean you didnt use any extra pick up coils on the toroid, as shown in Jesus' great diagrams with Jeannna's set up.  Is this true?  Did you just connect the tube into 2 transistor terminals?  Or am I missing something???  Wouldnt be the first time! 

Lucky experimenting!

Thank you for your compliments on my videos.  I really appreciate that.  All of my tube experiments as well as the high number of leds illuminated were all done using the modified Fuji AA circuit.  This is a circuit made by removing the guts from a Fuji disposable camera.  I first saw this done on Josepino's site.  I hooked mine up a little differently than he did which may be why I can light a lot more than he said he can on his site, I don't really know.  My latest video was made using 2 modified Fuji AA circuits running in parallel off of one AA battery lighting a 48" tube to a higher light output level than I got by using the single circuit.

On my other videos, I have used the "standard" joule thief circuit as seen on evil mad scientists site.  Mine again are a little different as are many of the others on here but, that is the basic design.  I try to show each circuit I am using in a given experiment in my videos so you should be able to tell which is which. (I hope)

Welcome to our group here. The more folks we have trying different things, the more we all will learn about these cool circuits.  We look forward to any results you wish to post from your own explorations.  There is a ton of information buried in all of the back pages but there are a lot of very knowledgeable folks working here that can steer you in the right direction if you need any help.  Good luck and again, welcome.

@ Jeanna:

Thanks for re-capping your secondary work.  This will make it much easier for me to attempt to replicate.  I really appreciate that.

@ Jesus:

Thank you for posting the schematic of Jeanna's circuits.  This will be very helpful to a lot of folks.

Bill

[innovation_station]

 


do i ever feel stupid lol !!

ist!


@jenna lol   did you just fold your 1 turn wire in half and stick it in the center or did you make 1 compleate turn round the ring ...

ok guys lol ....

now insted of leds ......  COILS ......       

[xee2]

@ jeanna

The transistor symbol is correct. There are many ways to draw the symbol. The key difference is which way the arrow is pointing since that tells if it is an NPN or PNP transistor.

EDIT: A NPN transistor turns on when the base is about 0.5 volts more positive than the emitter. A PNP transistor turns on when the base is about 0.5 volts more negative than the emitter.