Kubikop's 555 timer pulsed Joule Thief light

This is a replication of Kubikop's 555 timer pulsed Joule Thief circuit. I paired it with the Slayer's 2" toroid flourescent bulb circuit. The reasoning is that the light bulb only needs to be on part of the time (around 60 times a second) for your eyes to see it as steady light. The off time of the circuit is a power savings which means that the lighting circuit should run longer for a given amount of energy.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• Joule Thief
• Flourescent
• Lighting
• 555 timer circuit
• Energy
• CFL

[Pirate88179]

Excellent work again! Keep it up, I am learning a lot from your videos.

Bill

[Lidmotor]

Bill---Thanks, This is fun way to learn something. I get a big kick out of a project when I connect the power to a mess of wires and parts the thing comes to life.

[kavouromana]

Very Good job my friend.

Is it possible to give the scematics and the component list ????

I am a little bit newbie :p and i dont know what to use for the timer and the joule thief circuits

[dieselwarriordotcom]

Very nice! I suggest you also investigate the Picaxe chips, there a bunch of fun, are inexpensive and have a wide range of PWM options too!

[KyleCarrington]

You ever play around with constant current limitation Lid?

[powermaks]

@thelightguy1 this won't save power, (to my knowing and logic, its using MORE power because of all the extra regulators, transistors IC's etc etc etc.) and all this does is run the bulb (or any other load) at half power read up on how PWM (pulse width modulation) works.

[ElectricJunta]

60 cycles per second is the worst possible choice

because it effects your health some how. Not just neon tube light but the 60 cycles in your wall wires, reek havoc on your health, probably done on purpose. I mean look what they're lining your canned food cans with.

[coolelectronicdude]

dosnt a 60 htz light buld actually go on and off 120 times a second? since one sign wave is a complete cycle and light bulbs dont have polarity? when u say 125 cycles does that mean the light turns on and off 250 times? im just curious if what im thinking is right... not downing you just want to understand

[Texmurphy51]

Why not just use smaller wattage bulbs? You only saving energy because the lamp is putting out less light. You do realize that that little circuit at the bottom of a CFL is an oscilator that runs the lamp on 28Khz or so.

[gushhnet]

Is that a linear voltage regulator? you're wasting power as heat and there is no need to regulate batteries... stop using BJTs and get into mosfets if you want efficiency.

by the way "joule thief" is just an inverter circuit...

why call it joule thief when it's got a real name?, would you call transistors "thingies" if someone else did?

dc-dc converters (buck, boost, etc)...

[faackoof]

does this shorten the life of the bulb?

[thelightguy1]

Very wonderful concept! This could lead to future development. I have to attempt this, I want to try with a 12v power supply as you did, then slowly increase the limit. Great job.