Joule Thief

[AbbaRue]

@jeanna
You may want to place something thicker under the board to separate it from the metal.
Like maybe a book or piece of wood, the tracers under the board will set up a capacitance with the
cookie tin lid through the card, and that may cause parts to get hot. 
The voltage on these boards is high enough for something like this to matter.
I placed a High Voltage circuit on top of my stove between the burners once and had some components fry.
Nothing was touching any metal, or arcing yet it still fried.

[sparks]

      I was able to light a 40watt flurescent bulb without using the terminals. 
I don't know if this is possible with this setup.  I ran a piece of copper wire along the length of the bulb and attached it to the signal wire of a cbradio.  The shield of the radio (copper stranded)  I dropped into a cup of water and set it next to the bulb.  The shield has to have no iron involved and just the use of a clip at the termination of the jumper killed the effect.  The bulb lights when you key the mike.  The mercury vapor seems to be able to be excited by voltage only.  Water may also act as an infrared converter so that the reflected 27mhz wave is reflected with the ir running on top of the lower freq.  Need more experimentation.

[nievesoliveras]

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I was thinking that the camera case might make a good "project box", since the battery is really held in place by that camera case. Plus the switch is right there in the right place too. You could just flip the camera charge switch and your under-counter fluro light would go on. If you needed to change the battery just reach into the bottom of the camera case and replace.

It would look kinda funny having cameras pointing out with fluro tubes nearby.
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Thanks again for everyone's help.

jeanna

I made a sketch of the possible looks of the counter in the meantime I brainstorm to do some experiments with a bifilar coil.

Jesus

[xee2]

@ sparks

I need at least one lead for an AAA battery.

[timmy1729]

@timmy

Put the meter negative on the negative side of the battery and the positive to the transistor collector to measure without the LED.
With the LED on just measure between its two legs to read the voltage it has.

Jesus

Thanks for answering the beginner's question, Jesus