As the month of February fades away into March, a Google Alert (see note) brought me an actual Joule Thief, sort of. It looks to me more like a switch mode power supply, with its opto coupler. That, to me, seemed puzzling since the primary and secondary share the same common ground. I haven’t done
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QS sent this link to me about Osram’s smart LED light called Lightify. I went and browsed the shelves at Fry’s Electronics. They have the dimmer sockets and remotes on the shelf that use Sky Link.
I was looking at two schematics online, one a NPN Joule Thief, the other a PNP Joule Thief. The gears started turning and I thought that I could combine them into one Joule Thief. At first I thought dual Joule Thief, but combined it, too, into Doule Thief. Why not… One may ask why do
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A new store opened up a few weeks ago in my neighborhood. It’s called Daiso and is much like a dollar store except (unless otherwise marked) everything is $1.50. It helps if you can read Japanese because many of the items are labeled in Japanese. I bought a ‘Hand Pressing Flashlight’ with 2 white LEDS,
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I ordered five of the Ravpower RP-PB08 portable chargers and after I got them and showed them to my friends, they suddenly remarked that they needed one of them. So my five have suddenly dwindled to just a few left and those may disappear, too. These are rated at 3200 mAh. That’s just a bit
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I have been getting these boiler room calls so often that I’ve begun to remember the numbers and just don’t answer them. But the robocall voice still leaves a voice mail, which wastes my time and minutes. I have my phone numbers on the Do Not Call List, so all their calls are illegal. I
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I got an email from Designing With LEDs about replacing fluorescent tube fixtures with regular light fixtures and using LED lights. I have an old fluorescent tube fixture hanging from chains in my garage and I hadn’t considered replacing it because it gets used so little. It plugs into a socket so replacing it is
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Goldmine Electronics had a sale on USD5096F 35 Volt, 35Amp Schottky diodes (they’re now sold out), so I bought a handful. These are the old style all metal stud mount package, and come without any mounting hardware. The stud is 1/4 x 28 threads, so I had to order some 1/4 x 28 TPI nuts
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I’ve been seeing a lot of systems with a small 64 GB SSD, some also have a HDD. Apparently the SSD’s much lower power allows the maker to install a smaller battery, saving money. The bigger 256 GB SSDs seem to cause the price of laptops to go up by a few hundred or more,
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