Ok so I have no money, I'm broke, penniless, etc. you get the point.... But I have to give my two brothers something for christmas so I decide homemade cookies and something else. I was in my shop and thought there has to be something I can put together with all my spare parts I have collected over the years.
I decided to try my hand at making a Joule Thief circuit. I had read about this interesting little circuit before but hadn't tried building one yet.
http://www.emanator.demon.co.uk/bigclive/joule.htm
So I took a bunch of inductors off of some of the many old boards I have collected, went and bought some magnet wire, and tried my hand at winding the thing....
Amazingly the circuit worked! Here is a picture of it..
Then I thought maybe I could put this circuit in a little flashlight of some sort. Here is what I came up with... A Joule Thief flashlight that uses all those dead AA and AAA batteries everyone has laying around...
Here is the main body of the flashlight..
I have three of the above from the larger version of this POS flash/work light, they came in a 3 pack small, medium, large from costco. They are pieces of crap that dont work worth a darn, but I kept the metal legs just in case I might be able to use them someday...
I went ahead and cut a pref board to fit in the tube and put the circuit on it..
I cut the tube down to size and drilled a hole out for the switch..
Here it is put together..
And finally the OFF and ON pictures..
So there you go two Joule Thief flashlights. The only thing I bought was the magnet wire, everything else I already had. I imagine my brothers will probably look at them on christmas day and go gee um thanks. LOL
Oh well at least they will like the cookies...:thumbsup:
I decided to try my hand at making a Joule Thief circuit. I had read about this interesting little circuit before but hadn't tried building one yet.
http://www.emanator.demon.co.uk/bigclive/joule.htm
So I took a bunch of inductors off of some of the many old boards I have collected, went and bought some magnet wire, and tried my hand at winding the thing....
Amazingly the circuit worked! Here is a picture of it..
Then I thought maybe I could put this circuit in a little flashlight of some sort. Here is what I came up with... A Joule Thief flashlight that uses all those dead AA and AAA batteries everyone has laying around...
Here is the main body of the flashlight..
I have three of the above from the larger version of this POS flash/work light, they came in a 3 pack small, medium, large from costco. They are pieces of crap that dont work worth a darn, but I kept the metal legs just in case I might be able to use them someday...
I went ahead and cut a pref board to fit in the tube and put the circuit on it..
I cut the tube down to size and drilled a hole out for the switch..
Here it is put together..
And finally the OFF and ON pictures..
So there you go two Joule Thief flashlights. The only thing I bought was the magnet wire, everything else I already had. I imagine my brothers will probably look at them on christmas day and go gee um thanks. LOL
Oh well at least they will like the cookies...:thumbsup:
