RSSJoule Thief flashlight
Posted by Gareth Branwyn |
Jan 2, 2008 02:00 PM
Electronics, MAKE Podcast, Weekend Projects |
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If one were to power a Joule Thief with a brand new AA battery, would there be any potential harm to the life of the LED? I'm not much of an electronics geek.
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Well, normally, LEDs take 3 to 3.5 volts of potential to function at full capacity. I guess it would depend how powerful the joule thief is. Just take your multimeter out :P
To optimize it, one could put several smaller joule thieves and determine how many joule thieves the current goes through before going to the LED, that wouldn't need the resistor (or the resistor could have a switch to have more possibilities) and allow a larger flexibility in power source and probably have an even better power efficiency, just a thought.
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Kozz, I think the answer is yes, and you'd be wasting energy as well.
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Sweet! I was wondering when someone would make one of these.
Now to throw it into an altoids can or little RS box
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Didn't RTFA, but here are some comments that occur to me after reading about them in other places: A suppression ferrite has a large value of the imaginary term of Kappa(m). This does not make it a good choice for a magnetic material for a switcher. In the photograph, regular wire is being used on a seemingly overlarge ferrite core. This would create an undesired amount of parasitic capacitance, resulting in losses. Use magnet wire, square magnet wire is best. There are possibly other issues, but these are the most glaring. If this is a one-one X-former, the wires should probably be twisted together before being wrapped on the core, to increase capacitive coupling between the windings.
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It seems that you are not so causious about quality but Podcast can make it so why not Podcast Hosting on CyberEars.com
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