Paul emailed and said he has built his 12th Joule Thief. Man, this guy is Helen Wheels – an even dozen in a matter of a fortnight (or week or two, I forget which). I’ve been puttering with the TE Flashers. I made most of them on small pieces of “Woodsie” wood that I got
(Read More…)
I found this LED website in Germany, I like it because it’s LEDs, LEDs, and more LEDs, and not an electronics parts distributor. The LEDs are broken down into various types, standard, high power, etc., etc., etc. I’m looking for a similar website of a store in the U.S. I figure it would be best
(Read More…)
I found this 1.5V switched capacitor flasher circuit on talkingelectronics.com (I can’t get a direct link to it). It flashes a red LED; I haven’t tried any other color but the similar Bowden circuit will brightly flash a yellow LED. This is essentially the same circuit I blogged earlier, except this TE circuit uses only
(Read More…)
I needed a bright light over my workbench to see my work better, and this project was born out of necessity. The Electronics I bought a Bivar high power white LED Mouser P/N 749-L2PGN1-F, which uses a Cree XP-G mounted on a star board along with a reflector. The cost was $10.10 US. I have
(Read More…)
I was watching Sohei’s “wireless” light on Youtube and I decided to build a similar one. It’s not much different from the Tesla pancake coils I was experimenting with recently. This “wireless” Joule Thief is not really wireless, because it doesn’t really radiate radio frequency energy. It’s just a transformer with the secondary winding separate
(Read More…)
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
(Read More…)
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
(Read More…)
I was reading the LED light bulb project that Belza built. Most of this was written in Czech, so you may want to run it through google translate. He builds a 240 lumen LED light using a regular screw in plug from the end of a light. At the end he confirmed what I have
(Read More…)
I had a few really old C cell batteries, the old zinc-carbon or LeClanche type. I tore off the metal jacket and then what was left of the zinc and dirty black powder, leaving the carbon rod, which is used as the positive electrode. I took two of them and held them with a pliers
(Read More…)
I was discussing using an incandescent lamp for a heater, where the amount of light is not important. I looked up some info on miniature lamps in the General Electric Miniature Lamp Catalog. Miniature lamps used to be inside of appliances, and cars, such as in the instrument panel, speedometer, glove box, etc. Now they
(Read More…)
