I came across this in a “99 cent” discount store, for a dollar. The UPC code is 39277 75124. They also had the standard garden lights for $2, with the plastic stake to poke into the ground. I bought one of those and opened it up, and found that they had gone cheap, and used
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QS sent me a link to a design that supposedly uses four Peltier tiles to generate enough light to be used as a flashlight. Apparently there are no further details. There are some points to ponder in what the link said: It used the word ‘objective’, which means it’s something that they hope to achieve,
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The adverts from google popped up a nastily flickering image of someone pointing to a hokey looking device that “power companies hate” because it supposedly saves you a lot of money. I didn’t click on it because I don’t want to be bombarded with more of those ads, even though I’ve tried with little success
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I took this photo Oct 2003 and posted it to my watsonseblog. The ‘cup holder’ is the sliding drawer that comes out of the CD drive. Other motors inside can generate enough power to light up the LED.
This Joule Thief uses three SS8050 high current transistors, each having a 333 ohm bias resistor (actually three 1k resistors in parallel). At less than a half volt, it gobbles battery current, 49 mA at 0.42 volts. That is a lot more than the typical JT, which drops to a very low current as the
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Paul suggested this Wikipedia article. I quote: I remembered these, having seen one in action, and always wanted one. I think you might be interested. Perhaps that is why I am interested in JTs. There is more than a simple parallel. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydraulic_ram When I was a kid, one of my dad’s customers died and his
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My first ULVJT which used four JFETs in parallel was a success in that it put out light at supply voltages as low as 34 millivolts. But it put out only a minuscule amount of light, and needed to be increased. The next one I built had six 2SK170 JFETs in parallel. It used a
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I’ve been interested in very low voltage converters for quite a while. I blogged this document several years ago in my late great watsonseblog. Almost a month ago I was commenting on a circuit, often called a Joule Thief, that was powered at 27 millivolts by a Peltier junction and the heat from a guy’s
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I had to spin the shaft really fast to get the LED to light up, and now that I converted the generator (was a CD-ROM drive motor) by adding the Joule Thief to the back, all I have to do is spin the shaft gently and the LED lights up brightly. It’s a big difference;
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Ya know, 10 kilowatts isn’t bad for a couple of floats bobbing up and down in the ocean (Youtube video). But like anything else, it will probably meet strong opposition from those that think it’s an eyesore or disturbs the environment. Actually I have a strong suspicion that a lot of the anti-whatevers use environmental
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