Category: Joule Thief

Joule Thief Measurements: Base Resistor

After selling out of both of the Multi-LED Joule Thief and the Joule Thief Candle on Tindie it became necessary to not only make more but to update both models. Before updating I wanted to make a few measurements of the circuit to better understand how I could increase its performance by changing the resistance of R1 connected to the base of the NPN transistor.

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Single LED Joule Thief Candle

…the thief said “Let there be light. Behold a single candle lit by the joules of a dead cell.”

There is something about LEDs and the joule thief circuit that keeps me coming back. This time around I went for something festive for the December holiday season along with a SMD transformer, no longer will I have to hand wind toroidal transformers.

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Multi-LED Joule Thief

I believe it is inevitable that most newcomers to electronics will at one point or another build a Joule Thief circuit. To me it is the hello world of circuits and was one of the first circuits I prototyped on a breadboard when I first started experimenting with electronics. This multi-LED PCB is a callback to those days, something I wanted to do the first time I laid out a hand wound transformer, transistor, and LED on a breadboard.

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