Colin's Joule Thief kicks major butt!

[Sceadwian]

My friend, if it's your web site, and you actually want people to come there and read stuff, then it's up to you to provide adequate navigation tools to let them find that stuff. Don't expect anyone to go out of their way to unearth whatever gems of knowledge may be buried in that sequential list of archives. I certainly won't.

Lol, carbonzit, you're funny.

Up until a month or two ago the search function here was so crippled it was useless, been complained about on more than one occasion, it had been commonplace for close to the last year to recommend that people use Google to search ElectroTech online limiting it to ET's domain name in order to search for specifics because the native search would not find even blatantly obvious direct results.

EM has recently turned on features on ET which make search more useful, this however causes resource utilization to the site, meaning it costs money to give you good search results, many websites don't do this relying simply on Google to work things out, and by many web sites, I'm referring to fortune 500 companies even technology based ones.

Please feel free to put your foot further into your mouth as you try to swallow your ego, and get your buzzer fixed, it's making you look like an ass in public.

 

[acmefixer]

@cabonzit

The last time I heard BZZT! .. was in a Usenet newsgroup, where the lack of moderation meant anyone with a question could find an answer in ten thousand off-topic followups. That's why I left it and started a blog, where everything is on topic -- my topic of course.

I also read this one in the newsgroups: "If you don't like it, you got exactly what you paid!" The same applies here.

 

[acmefixer]

Lol, carbonzit, you're funny.

Up until a month or two ago the search function here was so crippled it was useless, been complained about on more than one occasion, it had been commonplace for close to the last year to recommend that people use Google to search ElectroTech online limiting it to ET's domain name in order to search for specifics because the native search would not find even blatantly obvious direct results.

EM has recently turned on features on ET which make search more useful, this however causes resource utilization to the site, meaning it costs money to give you good search results, many websites don't do this relying simply on Google to work things out, and by many web sites, I'm referring to fortune 500 companies even technology based ones.

Please feel free to put your foot further into your mouth as you try to swallow your ego, and get your buzzer fixed, it's making you look like an ass in public.

I'll certainly agree with that!!

 

[carbonzit]

Please feel free to put your foot further into your mouth as you try to swallow your ego, and get your buzzer fixed, it's making you look like an ass in public.

Well, since you picked this particular fight with me, I feel perfectly justified in responding to your attacks here (plus what you've been delivering to me via PM).

So tell me, O sage, just how have I put my foot in my mouth here?

Just how do you figure that the best way for someone with a blog to increase interest (and traffic) in their site is to totally abandon the user so far as navigation goes, providing nothing but a chronological set of links to "archives", and ASS-U-ME that they'll be happy to use an external search engine (Google, although one could just as easily use Bing or some other search engine) to search their site? If you believe this, then perhaps you should be selling yourself as an SEO "expert", along with the thousands of other scam artists out there.

Your comments about how search capabilities impose a severe resource load on a web site are just a red herring. Sure, if a blog owner wanted to implement a full-featured search capability, it might well overly tax the limited resources available to them. But I'm not talking about such a full-blown system. For chrissakes: all they need to do is create an index page, a box with links in it, a list of articles. Not rocket science, costs practically nothing, and wouldn't tax their server at all.

Sheesh.

To the person I was responding to (acmefixer), hey, don't let me tell you what to do. What do I know? Think you're right? Then just keep on going like you've been. Don't be surprised, though, if people don't flock to your site in droves.

Turns out people actually appreciate such amenities as actually being able to easily locate articles on a web site. As I'm sure the owners of this here site know very well.

 

[acmefixer]

@carbonzit

**broken link removed**
Here's a screen cap of the statistics page for my blog. You can make what you want of it. I don't have any advertising in my blog, like some other greedy people have, which seems to obscure much of what the viewer is looking for. I'm not trying to draw people to my site, it's not a site, it's a blog. And it's a limited blog (you can sign up for it and try it, and see for yourself why I don't have it indexed or whatever). But it's free, and it lets me put my stuff out there for anyone who is searching for the topic.

As for BZZT! ..., you can see in the statistics that Google is the one that gives me the most hits. It also gives online info from other sites about the same topic, so the searcher gets a fair representation of what's out there. As for being the wrong answer, there are hundreds of millions of satisfied searchers making billions of searches every day and finding what they were looking for using Google, and if you think that's the wrong answer, you had better reassess your opinion.

 

[ericgibbs]

hi Guys,

Please keep the thread on the OP's topic.

If you want to discuss a different topic, open a new Thread, in the appropriate Forum

Moderator.

 

[colin55]

The writings in this article: **broken link removed** do not mention or include the capacitor I have included in my design: "LED torch circuit C" from this page on "Talking Electronics" site. The cap improves the efficiency 300%.

 

[carbonzit]

The writings in this article: **broken link removed** do not mention or include the capacitor I have included in my design: "LED torch circuit C" from this page on "Talking Electronics" site. The cap improves the efficiency 300%.

Yes, Colin; if you go back and re-read it, you'll see I mentioned that in the very first post in this thread.

 

[Sceadwian]

Colin, are you able to substantiate the 300% claim with measurements from reliable test equipment, what is the 300 percent relative to? I believe that topic has been brought up before.

 

[gary350]

I read all the information it looks like a fancy way to turn on an LED or did I miss something. How about a battery, current limiting resistor and LED all in series.

 

[ghostman11]

or did i miss something.

yeah.

 

[carbonzit]

I read all the information it looks like a fancy way to turn on an LED or did I miss something. How about a battery, current limiting resistor and LED all in series.

Battery + resistor + LED? Hmmm; try doing that with a 1.5 volt battery (cell, really) and a LED with a Vf of more than 3 volts.

Now do you see what a Joule Thief does?

 

[ghostman11]

Battery + resistor + LED? Hmmm; try doing that with a 1.5 volt battery (cell, really) and a LED with a Vf of more than 3 volts.

Now do you see what a Joule Thief does?

now you saved him the effort of re reading

 

[gary350]

I have 129 white LEDs in parallel running on 4 AAA batteries in series and a .56 ohm current limiting resistor. You can't get any simpler than that.

 

[colin55]

Colin, are you able to substantiate the 300% claim with measurements from reliable test equipment, what is the 300 percent relative to? I believe that topic has been brought up before.

I suggest you build the circuit and perform the comparisons yourself instead of wasting my time with an argument.

 

[colin55]

I have 129 white LEDs in parallel running on 4 AAA batteries in series and a .56 ohm current limiting resistor. You can't get any simpler than that.

What an engineeringly terrible design. I'm glad you don't work for me.

 

[carbonzit]

I have 129 white LEDs in parallel running on 4 AAA batteries in series and a .56 ohm current limiting resistor. You can't get any simpler than that.

What an engineeringly terrible design. I'm glad you don't work for me.

Perhaps. I'm curious, though: how long can you run those LEDs? If they're the typical "high brightness" diodes (20mA), then you're drawing more than two and a half amps from those little bitty AAA cells.

 

[gary350]

What an engineeringly terrible design. I'm glad you don't work for me.

If this flashlight is a terrible design it is making some manufacture a lot of money.

If the Joule Thief is such a good design then why isn't someone putting them in flashlights?

No dought the Joule Thief is a fun project to build and a great learning experience. 45 years ago when I was learning electronics I would have built one too just to prove I could. I have worked in manufacturing for 40 years now I realize things must be made to sell it is all about $$$ for the company. How long will a 1.5 volt battery and a Joule Thief run a flashlight with 129 LEDs compaired to 4 batteries, a resistor and 129 LEDs? 4 watts of power compaired to 16 watts I think the customer will be happy with the 16 watt unit battery life will be 4 times longer also more sales for the company. Years ago companies were more concerned with happy customers but now days companies only care about quick profit.

**broken link removed**

 

[carbonzit]

If the Joule Thief is such a good design then why isn't someone putting them in flashlights?

Someone already has. When I showed a friend my (homemade) Joule thief 1.5V-cell flashlight, he showed me his (smaller, takes an AAA cell). Basically the same thing, except that his uses a piece of silicon (an ASIC) instead of my primitive 1-transistor blocking oscillator. Probably as efficient or more so.

By the way, I notice you neatly sidestepped my questions about your mega-flashlight. How long can that thing run? Does it actually use AAAs (looks more like AAs)? (I guess they are AAAs, since you said you're using 4 of them.)

 

[BrownOut]

If the Joule Thief is such a good design then why isn't someone putting them in flashlights?

How do you know they don't?

I think the customer will be happy with the 16 watt unit battery life will be 4 times longer also more sales for the company.

I'm happy with my single 1.5V AA operated 4 LED camping light that I've used for 4 years on the same battery.

BTW, the Joule Thief is nothing more, and nothing less, than a simplified version of a boost converter that has been used for decades in all kinds of products.