BP

Parts for "SMRT1 Joule Thief Light Kit"

A joule thief is a minimalist self-oscillating voltage booster that is small, low-cost, and easy to build, typically used for driving small loads.
It can use nearly all of the energy in a single-cell electric battery, even far below the voltage where other circuits consider the battery fully discharged (or "dead"); hence the name, which suggests the notion that the circuit is stealing energy or "joules" from the source.
It can blink an LED for weeks, using a single AA type cell.

Alternate Parts Layouts?? Which should we be using??

SMRT1-Joule-Thief-Kit-with-capacitor:

OR

Recent photo of actual unit (LED/Transistor spaced out to sides of breadboard):

Which one will be "standardize" on??

ORIGINAL KIT DESIGN: (NOTE: Emitter-Collector are reversed in the labeling here)

EXAMPLE CIRCUIT (SOLDERED VERSION)

external image Conventional_Joule_Thief_with_red_LED.jpg

PARTS LIST:

1x Mini breadboard 5x5 (25 point)

external image Tiny+Breadboard_03.jpg

3x 5mm RGB LED

(must be to TWO leg, not 4 - this will cycle through color patterns, not allow you to choose single colors)
external image s-l500.jpg
LED THIS LINK EXAMPLE:
SHENZHEN Company Data Sheet:

http://arduino-info.wikispaces.com http://arduinoinfo.mywikis.net/wikifile/view/changingLED.pdf/627782665/changingLED.pdf changingLED.pdf]

1x Single AA Battery Holder with Breadboard Pins

( 1xAA battery type with BREADBOARD PINS is most important)
  EXAMPLE: THIS LINK

1x Ferrite Toroid Core 10mm outside/6mm inside or close in size to fit inside lightbulb
  "Ferrite Toroid: T10x6x5"
  Maybe THIS LINK?
 external image 41C6b7CFEcL.jpg

2x 20cm jumper wire (2 colors with ends)

(Use 2 or 3 wires from YourDuino Version:LINK)

1x 2N2222A transistor (Generic from Sindh etc)

external image images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSYAR9_Bke0hhxX60X8LT2PhI9h1cW3f6XP1rCt6T4M4_EsAY9Icg

1x 1k ohm resistor (1/4W 5% 4-band color code)

Circuit Design:

QUESTIONS:

What tradeoffs of price/performance are acceptable? Will users be really testing this? Will they be comparing the battery life?
Does the customer 'build' the circuit completely, from supplied information?
Does the customer wind the toroid transformer?
Are the 20 cm jumper wires used for the toroid windings? How many turns are expected/needed?
What does the reference to "fit in light bulb" relate to?
Do the mini-breadboards need to be "Lego" size / block?
Self-Cycling RGB LED?? "RGB LED: see attached PDF" BUT there was not an attachment. Does the LED have it's own timing?
Why quantity 3 on the LED?

xx

BP

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