This is the traditional style of Joule Thief with the coil you have to wind.
This is a new one I just made, it uses a different type of inductor.
Fewer parts.
Easier to make.
It can be made much smaller.
I will show you the experimental steps I took to make this.
Let's get started.
Let's go over the parts list.
First is the LED.
I've checked this already to ensure which side is negative and I marked it.
Then there's the transistor.
Which is a 2n2222 or equivalent This is the negative lead.
This is the positive lead.
The flat side is up.
The center lead is the base.
These 2 things are the substitute for the coil
These are surface mount inductors.
I got these out of a old router.
I can show you where I got them.
These will substitute for our coil.
Let's go look at that router and see where these came out.
Here's where I took one out.
You can see it's labeled FB402 and I've got it sitting back on here.
I just desoldered it.
That's what it looked like.
Sometimes they are labeled with an "I" for inductor but on this board some were labeled
"FB".
There's a bunch of other stuff on here.
Capacitors, resistors, etc.
You have to be careful, they look very similar.
Again what you want is something labeled "FB" or "I".
The first step is to solder the LED to the transistor.
Making sure you get the negative lead over here attached to this negative lead.
And the positive lead to this positive lead.
I will go do that.
I will not show all the soldering.
I assume most of you know how to do that and you don't want another lesson in soldering.
Again make sure your parts are aligned negative to negative and positive to positive.
I will go do that and be right back.
Here's what it looks like right before soldering.
Check to make sure my mark is where it should be.
I've wrapped the pieces together so that they don't come apart when I do more soldering
down here.
Here it is with the wrappings soldered.
What I am going to do, it's easier to show you.
I'm going to go solder these on here then I will show you.
I'm going to put 2 of these inductors on here.
And if the smaller ones don't work, I will try some bigger ones.
First I will start out with the smaller ones because I think they are going to work.
I've soldered the inductors on the backside.
I wanted to show you the front side first.
This is the flat side.
This is the collector the positive lead here.
The center one.
We will be dealing with these 2 and when I flip it over it will be opposite of course.
Here's the positive lead.
Here's the center lead.
As you can see, I soldered 1 inductor on to the center lead right there.
Soldered it across here.
Down here where it connects to the positive lead (collector).
It makes a tent or an unsidedown "V" if you will
They are not connected at the bottom, only at the top.
What we are going to do is to solder our positive lead here.
And our negative lead here.
If all goes well, this will light up when we do that.
Here we are with our leads attached.
I put some shrink wrap on this one because I was worried it might touch the center lead.
Our inductors are in place.
Let's do it!
Give it a test.
Got the black wire hooked up.
And the red wire...
And there we are.
So.
Yes it works.
Using surface mount inductors instead of a coil.
A transistor and and LED.
That's all it takes.
I hope you found it interesting and useful in your Joule Thief experimenting.