Joule Thief

[electricme]

@protonmom,

Sorry to hear about your trouble with the camera boards failing, we all have stories about buying something electrical and it doesn't perform as it's intended.

Some kind sole gifted me a toaster, electric jug and a digital clock radio to replace those that I lost in the floods.
The Toaster wont click and stay down, I need to keep holding the leaver, yesterday I filled the jug to boil some water, it wouldn't turn off, but it will turn off when it's about 1/3rd full.

Today I needed to recharge my AA nicads so I pull out my rechargeable light I keep on the back shelf of my car and try charging with the solar cell. The batts remain flat, time to pull apart the circuit, I discover the copper track on the positive input is broken, I soldered across the broken track and try again, still no go. I test the socket where the solar panel plugs in to the PCB, the negative side inside the socket is broken, so I cut off the plug, and directly solder the wires to the PCB, it's now fixed and working.

During the floods here, I had some help with tidying up soggy mud caked stuff, one of the things suffering from this was the remote control for my TV set, my son in law found it holding it proudly up, I asked him to remove the batteries and left him to it.
Saw him later on and asked him, where is the remote and where are the batteries? I put the remote here "dad" he says, the batteries I threw away in the heep outside, hmmm they were expensive rechargeable NiCads lol.

jim

[nievesoliveras]

Erghhh.....

Now another thing.  ...  Well, when I was playing around with the boards, I got the LED so red, I thought it might burn up.  Then I took a neon...a much larger neon than normal, and IT lit up.  However, at the same time, the cfl bulb would not light up.  So, why would a NEON work, and not a bulb?  (cfl)  ...

It is simple. The current flows where there is less resistance.
The space between the neon filaments is less than rhe space between the cfl filaments.
Less space means less resistance.
The current choses the neon and the circuit has not enoufg juice to light both devices.

Jesus

[nievesoliveras]

Maybe I made a mistake on posting my 1.5v to 12v circuit on page 998.

But I thought that because it was just to build a switching circuit to give  a signal to a transistor with the 11.46v output from the coil to just hit the 1.5v battery and stop inmediately the transistor was an easy task to some members that play with electronics everyday.
I was wrong, nobody paid attention.

Jesus

[electricme]

@Jesus,

Thankyou for your PM, just now .

I think that it wasn't anyone paying attention, but it's the times where we live, I am about to go to bed as it's getting towards midnight, and I still have a April copy of Silicon Chip to read up.
I just looked at the Day Night map on my desktop and I see USA is half dark and half light where all of Australia is in complete darkness.

Give it another 12 hours or so mate, and I think you will find some posts relating to your posts, they will need an hour or so to read them to catch up ha ha, between you and I and Gary in the last 8 hours or so, we have managed to put the Joule Thief thread right on 1000 pages, that's a pretty good record all round.

C U all tomorra.

jim

[nievesoliveras]

Dont worry @electricme

Here is your idea on a graphic.
I think that the 470r is not doing anything there.
http://www.overunity.com/index.php?topic=6123.msg280353#msg280353

Jesus