I took a picture of this old application note from Texzs Instruments dated 1960. The circuit uses a germanium transistor, and adds a third winding to the coil to get high voltage (800 volts). If this third winding is removed and a LED is placed across the Q1 collector and emitter, and the supply voltage
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I came across this single coil, two transistor circuit on Youtube and found it interesting because it uses a touch pad. This circuit is the same as many other two transistor V booster circuits, often mistakenly called Joule Thiefs (see the schematic in the video). But with one exception: it uses a 0.2uF capacitor that
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I once had this blogged in my watsonseblog, but I haven’t blogged it here. I’m trying to charge this Maxwell ‘Boost Cap’ or ultracapacitor with a solar cell, but the problem is that this cap is so ginormous that it takes a very long time to charge when the solar cell is putting out 100
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This is the photo from my watsonseblog dated about Sep 18, 2011. I don’t have the text. I may have it saved somewhere, if I can find it. The toroid core was an ICH-ZJ43615TC from Surplus Sales. They most likely have sold out, but you can find the datasheet here. Viewing the photo, one can
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I wanted to get some 100 microhenry chokes to experiment with, so I ordered a bunch from BG Micro. Also, I found they had some Steward 2B0686-100 EMI Suppression Filter, which once I cut through all the gobbledygook, came down to toroid cores. So I ordered a dozen or so of those. Then I found
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Lasersaber developed a DC to DC converter that drives a regular incandescent, CFL, LED and halogen bulb and runs off 12V. He calls it Joule Ringer V. 3.0. In his video he tries out CFL, LED, halogen and incandescent light bulbs all with reasonably bright light. He powers it with a small 12V battery pack,
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Well, I saw this way of emulating a coil in the Wikipedia entry for Joule Thief. I said to myself, this is really Mickey Mouse, and it would never withstand the scrutiny of an engineer or designer if they saw it. It’s just not the way a circuit should be designed. But I did it
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This was originally on my now extinct watsonseblog. I got the idea from a Youtube video, I believe it was called the Slayer Exciter. The circuit is very simple; it’s somewhat similar to the Joule Thief. Coil See the attached photo. The coil consists of a pill bottle that is 3-1/4 inches long and about
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I made this JT with a transformer I pulled out of an old switch mode power supply from a PC (see the first photo). The upper coil had a single turn as it came from the PS, so I removed that and wound 15 turns of 26 AWG enameled wire on the bobbin. Its inductance
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A picture of my Supercharged Joule Thiefs and some coils I wound. I noticed that the LED in the center has a big bubble in the lens. I got some LEDs with bubbles in them from a seller on eBay, and I had to send them back to get a refund. I think this must
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