Joule Thief

[protonmom]

Bill,
Indeed that is a MINI fuji!  It is somewhat like mine, only you use a cap.  I wondered about using that.  And what are the two items hanging off the black and red wires to the right of the photo?  Are those magnets?  What do they do?
I guess we need to see who can come up with a mini mini fuji that is smaller than Bill's creation. 
Well done, Bill!
BTW, will your setup fit inside a cfl like mine does?  I might try that idea of the magnets and cap.

Edit:  magnets=battery holders, right?  I have never tried that.

[protonmom]

Where would I get those magnet battery holders?  (assuming that is what they are)........and also, can someone explain why those magnets would not ruin the battery?  I always thought magnets had an adverse effect on batteries. 

[Pirate88179]

Where would I get those magnet battery holders?  (assuming that is what they are)........and also, can someone explain why those magnets would not ruin the battery?  I always thought magnets had an adverse effect on batteries.

Yes, those are the universal battery holders I came up with.  I had no idea they were available commercially at that time.  With those, I can use a AAA, or AA or C or D battery just by placing the magnets on the ends of the battery....they will hold there very well.

I made them out of some neos (very strong) that I had sitting around.  I simply soldered the magnets to the ends of the wires.  A word of caution here, neos are sensitive to heat and you can easily get higher than their Curie temperature and render them non-magnetic.  That is why I used 2 on each wire....  the first ones I soldered and they did become weak so I magnetically stick the second neo to it and it holds well. I have not seen any problems using magnets on a battery.  My Jeanna Light replication (The one in the wooden box) has been using them for over a year.  In my Pirate Light device (the one with the 15 watt tube) I even hold the battery to the container using several of these neos.  I did find that not all batteries are attracted to the neos on their sides, I am not sure why this is.  This makes it very easy to swap out any sized 1.5 volt battery.

I have not tried to place this in the base of a cfl although, I am sure it would fit.  I didn't have anything handy but a pen to show the size...it is not much larger than a quarter but, I didn't have one to photo, ha ha.

I am not sure if that cap is helping anything so I left it on the board.  It does not hurt anything so, better safe then sorry.

I will make a video once I mount this to the jug light....using magnets again so I can easily take it off any use on another device.  This design was to be portable between other devices which is why I used the clips on the output wires and the magnets on the battery inputs.

Thank you for your compliments, I appreciate it.  You did a great job with your cfl...you results are much better than I ever achieved with them.

[Pirate88179]

Protonmom:

Well, I borrowed...no...I stole your idea of using hot glue in an artistic pattern on the outside of a container for light diffusion...and it works GREAT!!!!!!

I just used like 12 glue sticks decorating my 5 gallon jug light and it it is fantastic if I do say so myself.  It looks a lot more like I wanted it to when I decided to build it.  It helps to hide the wires inside and really does great things when the lights are on in the bottle.

I will post photos soon.

I made a lights of America LED light today that is being driven by my portable MiniFuji.  I don't know if Jeanna or anyone else did this but I did not take it apart, I am driving it by the Edison base and it is very, very bright...hopefully I will not burn anything out.  I have an exact duplicate of that bulb in a light fixture on the 120 volt grid and it is half the brightness in my subjective opinion.

I probably need to make a video of all of this.

Bill

PS  Thanks for that great idea of the hot glue.

[resonanceman]

It looks to me as though the camera companies recycle the good parts and put them on a new board each time a camera comes back in.  I have found  you can never tell exactly which  board you will get by just looking at the box or the button.  Many times I have opened two of the exact same box, and found a different board in each.

I was working on a 230 board by Fuji, and I tried out the trigger coil along with the normal setup.  My tester LED lit very brightly and stayed lit for a long time, but then there was suddenly a puff of smoke, which I assume was the tranny…..but the LED remained lit.  I found it odd that the led was still lit even though the tranny had expired.  I removed the battery, and felt the components to see if any were hot, but none were.  I then tested the transistor, and it showed a reading on both legs with the pos on the base.  So, maybe the transistor did NOT fry.  Maybe it was the transformer…but if it was the transformer, then why did the led remain lit after the puff of smoke?  Or, did the trigger coil still have enough juice in it to keep the led lit for that period of time until I removed the battery?  Or, maybe it was the battery that puffed?  But the battery still works.  So what was the puff of smoke? 

Here is a pic of my latest cfl creation….the protonM, using fuji of course!  Not bad for a cfl running off an AA battery.

protonmom

Great work on  your light

Its the best looking CFL light I have seen here .




gary