I have built several of the “Single Cell Flasher With Two Year Battery Life” flashers found at Pigeonsnest.co.uk and they flash for what seems like eternity – they’re real misers when it comes to battery current. But the flash is somewhat anemic and I had never tried this type flasher with any color LED other
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I measured the voltage of an unused Energizer Lithium AA cell, and found that it was 1.806 VDC, and another one measured 1.807V. Wow! Looked like the Energizer Bunny was running on jet fuel! These are very potent batteries. Their voltage is 20 percent higher than the normal AA cell. These lithium cells are supposed
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I left a comment to one Joule Thief experimenter (video is on Youtube) that one should never power a Joule Thief with no LED connected. If the emitter to base voltage exceeds the breakdown voltage the resulting current will permanently damage the transistor by reducing the current gain. He tried running the Joule Thief with
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I’ve thought about this a number of times in the recent past. There used to be a .ZIP file on the ‘netcalled Xanadu Zapper which consisted of plans and code to implement an IR xmit/recv interface for the PC along with code for learning and sending the IR codes. Many years ago I built the
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This experimenter’s circuit uses ten BF245 JFETs in parallel to get the 30 to 40 millivolts up to LED voltage. Here’s the Youtube video. IT looks like I will have to reduce my primary winding from two turns to one turn.
Dilemma Changing Incandescents To CFL or LED Both CFLs and LED lights can be damaged by excessive heat, which often happens and makes people wary of buying them because they often think they have purchased “Duds”. The problem is that since incandescents lived on heat, the fixtures either ignored the heat or tried to keep
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Quantsuff sent me a link to some Kickstart entrepreneurs who are developing a high efficiency, high output LED light bulb. The lights are equivalent to 75 and 100 watt incandescent lights. They have already surpassed their $20,000 goal, so they really don’t need more contributions. One big reason why I would not consider contributing is
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This remote control jammer circuit is basically the same circuit as a LED flasher, except that the timing capacitor is much smaller – .001 uF – so it flashes at a much higher frequency, around 38,000 times a second. The 9V battery is expensive; instead save money. Change the two IR LEDs from series to
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Not me, the beasty I made is the LED abuser. Well, maybe me, too. See the photo. I had this high voltage transformer I got a few years ago, and I hooked up a power transistor (2SC2334) to the center tapped winding just like a Joule Thief. The resistor is 180 ohms wire wound. It
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I my previous blog I determined that the Joule Thief flasher was not suitable as a flasher, but it was working well as a modified Joule Thief, with better efficiency than a conventional JT. I gave the schematic of the circuit, but I have made many modifications, so I decided to build a second one
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