Joule Thief

[Pirate88179]

@ Jeanna:

Thank you for replying to Jim in greater detail than I was able to.  I did not know about the select the text and THEN hit the quote button.  See?  I learn something new here everyday.  Thanks.

Bill

[jeanna]

Oh OK,
Here is the easiest one to do, hardest to describe.

Select the text. then 'copy' then hit the quote button. The 2 quote tags appear at your cursor, with your cursor in between.
like so, (without the space): [quote ] | [/quote ]  So then just paste, and the quote is inserted in between the quote tags and you are done.

Just remember to move your cursor to the end of the second tag so you "get out" of the quote.

jeanna

[electricme]

@ Jim:

Excellent idea my friend!  I like that we can post circuits with a built in place for future comments.  Very good thinking from down there in Aussie land. 

@ Jeanna:

And also now, my scope was shipped and will be here in about 1 week.  I am too excited for words.
Bill

Lets see if I have done this right.
First I clicked on the white quote flag
Then cleared all I didnt want to see in the quote
Then typed here what I wanted to say.

Now I will post it.

Ohhhhh yes, Bill, what happens if your parcel with the cro dosent arrive in 1 week?
This is a bit like expecting a kid to arrive, Bills going to have a cro he he he.

@ Jeanna,
No, all scopes I know have a clip, (I will go and recheck your model again just to make sure) it is joined to the earth braid internally, goes back to the BNC plug on the scope. Changing it is a bit like changing a bayonet light globe, gently push downwards, twist chrome BNC anti-clockwise and it should come away from the meter.

You should have a detachable scope lead set, this alows you to replace the present probe with Hi Voltage one or just to allow you to get a replacement cro probe lead.

Now do this test, please.

How to check your 1.5v dry cells

Set the Scope to DC.
Set the trace to a speed that is just going fast.
connect a 1.5v battery to the probe, clip to negative

Did the trace line go up above the center line? it should have

Try the same with 3v, 4.5v, 6v
At each of the higher v batts the trace line should rise higher.
When you disconnect, the trace line returns to the middle setting.

Connect a 6v AC from a transformer to the input
6v is 16.97v peak to peak (ie  6 * 2 sqrt 2) Your AC is 60Hz
so you can check the sweep rate calibration by measuring the period of signal.
60Hz has a period of 1000/60=16.67 milliseconds

Check with a frequency meter, eg 1000Hz = 1 ms

How do I know all this, I cheated, read it on line.


Hooroo all

jim

[Pirate88179]

@ Jim:

Good job with the quote thing....you have got it now.

I am paying close attention to your scope advice here as....yes, soon I will have one.  As per your original suggestion, maybe the good EE guys on here should start a topic about "Scope Use 101"  or "How to use a scope".  This was your idea and I think it is a good one.  The guys here (you included) are helping Jeanna and I think that is great.  But, Jeanna and i can not be alone.  I would bet that there are many that are new to this technology and would benefit from some tutorials on proper scope use.

So, maybe you guys that are old hands at using a scope can begin a topic for this?  If so, I will read it for sure.  I remember when I joined this forum about 2 years ago, I watched a video that Stefan made on his Dr. Stiffler replication.  I was amazed at his use and knowledge of a scope.  It was like black magic to me.  so, there are plenty of educated fellows on here (and gals) that could contribute to that topic, so I call upon you educated members to start this topic and give a leg up to folks that are just now discovering scopes. (This was Jim's idea)

Bill

[Pirate88179]

My latest JT video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTyDCigcF5U

In this video, I used 2 small (5mm) ultraviolet LEDs inserted into plastic tubing coated on the inside with green florescent paint.  My quest in making this video was to see if we can design a circuit that can "pulse" the battery over and above what the standard JT circuit already does.  I am using supercaps here and....they can light these LEDs for a while after a pulse.  what I am after is a way to do this automatically to pulse the battery maybe every 30 seconds.  This, I believe, will give us another order of magnitude of light output from an AA battery.  See what you think.

Bill