Joule Thief

[Pirate88179]

altrez:

Good going there!  Those look very bright too.  I never ran into anything like you describe and my lights look just like yours.  I have no idea why this might be.  You already checked the lights on ac grid power so, I am out of thoughts here.

OK, maybe one thought....these lights, of course, are all made in China and probably from the same factory.  China's QC leaves a lot to be desired.  I have heard of folks ordering leds in lots of ten and only like 6 of them light.  Maybe you have some random very marginal leds in your strings.  Those bulbs are easy to take out and, if they are like mine, they give you some spares with each string.  you could try to swap out a spare or two, or, change the position of one that does not light with one that does and see what happens.  Other than that.....

Bill               ***EDIT***  Jeanna, we posted at the same time.  Thanks for the info on the diodes, I had no idea they were there on these cheap led strings.

[jeanna]

Bill               ***EDIT***  Jeanna, we posted at the same time.  Thanks for the info on the diodes, I had no idea they were there on these cheap led strings.

I had wondered how they had gotten around the initial problems with leds and ac.
In the beginning when one led type light in an edison base cost 60 bucks.. ugh! and they blew out so frequently they were taken off the market for a few years. Then suddenly they were back. I knew they had fixed the problem but not how.

the problem was that the led would blow out and burn - you know the smell- when there was just 2v too many in the line. Since surges much larger than that are common; these very expensive lights were blowing left right and center.

Also, btw,
The string I got this year was made so you cannot get the light or anything else out.

It looks like a regular plastic case with a seam. but the seam must be the seam of the mold. It is one continuous mass of plastic surrounding the wires and the lights. I had to cut my way into the thing with a chisel and wire cutters. The screwdriver as prier did not work.

My plan is to eliminate those 2 dioded lights and make a note not to ever plug that string into the wall.

jeanna

[WilbyInebriated]

@jeanna
mmmm, the smell of a diode transformed into a friode, nothing quite like it. 

@all
lightly modded, not tuned bug swatter circuit @ 2v input, running a ccfl.

[xee2]

@ altrez

So my question is should I unwind that new pickup coil and rewind a one with 30awg wire at 300+ turns? Or try and work on the back end first? I am sure that I can push over 1000v with a 300 turn coil.

I would try doubling the number of turns on the collector coil first since that is a lot easier to do and should increase your pickup coil voltage. Also try varying the base resistor value. But more turns on the pickup coil is the best way to get more volts out.

[jeanna]

I got my first neon to light!!! It will not light a CFL as of yet but I was holding onto the pick up wires and got a healthy ZAP!!!!#!@!

Hey great!
I missed this somehow.

I want to know how you got a zap? Do you have diodes a rectifier or a cap somewhere? I don't see it, but that doesn't mean much.

I have never gotten a zap. In fact I don't ever get any voltage in a cap off the secondary unless I have a bridge there.

One of my personal things is to stay away from making this ac back into dc, so I don't get some of the results others get. And, I have noticed that the cap can't seem to collect any voltage without the diode. (I am sure this is not news to the guys with the schooling)

jeanna

edit

mmmm, the smell of a diode transformed into a friode, nothing quite like it. 

thats pretty funny friode

more edit:
@xee

I would try doubling the number of turns on the collector coil first since that is a lot easier to do and should increase your pickup coil voltage

Maybe that will work on some of my little cores. The tor-23 is such a great little core, but there isn't enough room for more pickup turns. Maybe a few more added to the collector will help boost the voltage on the ones with very high frequency where I can afford to have that drop a bit.
Thanks for the idea.