Or should it be Joule Thiefs?
I would love to find others here working on the Joule Thief circuit!
There are some sites on the Internet with some pretty extravagant claims about various magic; but I’d suspect the S/N ratio is better here.
What I’d really hope for most is the sort of discussion BLF is famous for. This works, it’s not magic, it can be modeled, and there is a horde of information that is not being touched about WHY it works and how. Contrary to popular belief, they do respond to tuning, even as rudimentary as what I can bring to bear.
I have made a few, not all successful; and can testify to the efficacy of the circuit. I have driven a single, MODERN (IDK which, maybe a “P-something”?) LED from a 3*AAA “MDXL” torch from eBay (now able to run on 1 “dead” AAA).
I still have this “belief” that I can push 1A through an XM-L LED with one. It’s a hobby, what can I say? But I want a tiny, “ball-of-light” tasklight, much smaller than anything I can find, even if it means sculpting the body out of Thermal Epoxy. I’ll show you all why when I make one.
Yes, I’ve been playing with a Circuit Simulator, but I try to double-check by dragging out a decades-old Circuit Analysis textbook. Plus when I Sim the actual circuits I made, the results seem to correspond (within the limits of the Sim). I don’t have the ability (skills, yes/tools, no) to measure the inductors, nor the spiky HF LED drive current. My Fluke 77 doesn’t seem to be able to measure the frequency — or it’s not nearly what I expected, which leads me to suspect the rest of its ‘suggestions’. This makes it very difficult to estimate, plan & test results. It’s not like I can afford to just blow LEDs if I make a mistake. Sorry, ‘WHEN’…
Is there anyone here currently working on a Joule Thief? I’d be happy to wind Toroids & pay postage, in exchange for inductance measurements. (Within reason, of course) That’s cheaper than an O-scope, and I can take it from there. The subject of Toroids and Inductance don’t get much discussion, but I think it might be possible to use a Joule Thief as an inductance meter… Still working on that one…
Meanwhile, I may be singing in the rain here, so I’ll come back after awhile and delete this if no one wants to talk about it (“ignore it & it’ll go away”). Or jump (if pointed) to another thread here (not offsite — I already found those) which I am having trouble finding.
Thanks for reading this far!
Dim