Julian's Electronics Postbag:

[@Tangobaldy]

What is a Joule Thief? A Joule Thief is a simple electronic circuit, that takes in a small input voltage (

[@bren106]

*PINK!!!!* You need to send those lights to BigClive.

[@benbaselet2026]

Seconded

[@brucewoods9377]

Vote carried

[@ELECTROHAXZ]

Bump

[@JulianIlett]

BigPinkClive :)

[@maicod]

+Julian Ilett he's Da man :)

[@chartle1]

Love post bag. Going to check the mail to see if any of my Banggood packages are in.

[@lolbroek98]

Do you have te name off the board 6:38 i want to use it to charge my small lead asid battery of do you have a better option

[@inuyasha9940]

I have a few of these led strings, although i chopped off the box and replaced it with a bridge rectifier, so they stay on solid. the connection rightmost would be I believe positive to the string while the other four are negatives.

[@djlorenz11]

those lights... killing machine!

[@devicemodder]

I have rewired a string of the cheap lights to run off 120VAC (canada's mains) without the control pcb. just bypass the 2 thyristors

[@danya023]

Regarding the LED lights: A, they're _the_ bog-standard Christmas lights in Russia and the default price is ₽500 (can't be bothered to convert); B, they're a total deathtrap and can spontaneously combust because the resistors are underrated in these things (speaking from experience, and by the way, plastic Christmas trees are pretty combustible too); and C, the TO-220 devices (I think that's the name of that outline) are actually thyristors, or SCRs, which is why it won't work on DC. I had an idea to drive these off a low-voltage supply switched by a MOSFET-or-other to make a cheapo controllable-color room lights, but that idea went out the window as soon as I discovered that they're wired in series. (At which point I left them on at the static setting, and that went over as well as you'd guess it would.)

[@UGGeckos]

Very interested in seeing more super capacitor joule thief stuff. Possibly power an led for the entirety of a day?

[@JulianIlett]

Thanks, I'll have to concentrate my efforts on efficiency for this to work :)

[@RWBHere]

Much cheaper to use a discarded AA cell. They can run an LED on a Jouke thief for ages. A new cell, if you want to hang the expense, will work for weeks, maybe months.

[@stefanessig6459]

Did all of them light up eventually or was it just that PWM thing that lit all of them up at once?

[@anlumo1]

What is the pin distance of these larger mini breadboards (medium breadboard?). What I'm interested in is whether you can use them for DIP packages, because you can't with the smaller ones, which makes them of kinda limited use.

[@90msg90]

The christmas lights driver is indeed horrible, but the worst thing there is I think no strain relief. One of those did go 'bang' in my grandma's house because of that.

[@Zadster]

The two transistors on the LED driver board will probably be thyristors, which rely on the rectified voltage reaching 0v to turn off. The controller will be powered by a bleed resistor and smoothing cap, it will be synchronised to the AC too, so without a zero-crossing synch it won't activate the thyristors. Standard terrifying Chinese design there!

[@simontay4851]

Yes. I was shouting at the video. No Julian, it won't work on low voltage DC. It needs 230VAC. The LEDs are probably wired in series/parallel.

[@charliedobbie8916]

I know you glossed quickly over the calculation, but I am not entirely clear about calculations of charge held by capacitors and I'm sure many others have been as well. Maybe there's a video in that?

[@jhonbus]

Hit the button on the fairy lights twice more for constant mode, it's the same series of modes as 1 billion other sets out there!

[@simontay4851]

There are 8 different modes.

[@Tangobaldy]

sorry but there are not 1 billion sets. i destroyed a set last weeks. down to 999,999,999,999

[@1914grant]

Hi Julian, Been watching your videos for long time now, Theirs not a night go`s by when i don`t watch your videos, Excellent keep up all the good work.

[@pleasecho2]

Am I seeing things? Are those Lego bases underneath?

[@thewhitefalcon8539]

You should use fibre optics to connect all the LEDs and LDRs.

[@JulianIlett]

That may be necessary to link sections of the computer - otherwise the topology will be tortuous :)

[@micnolmadtube]

Julian, you REALLY need to up the audio rate or what ever it is called. Like at least go 192 kbit. It is super compressed and the crackling is backs sound awfully metallic. PLEASE :)

[@JulianIlett]

I don't think movie maker has any settings for audio bitrate :(

[@TrasteIAm]

I second Michael's recommendation, its really harsh on the ears using earphones, especially when you are handling the plastic.

[@terrysansom3862]

i'd like to see you actually put high voltage through that light net but atleast with 230v you got to use low voltage like you wanted...

[@wisher21uk]

" not sure pressing that button uninsulated I will use my pencil " erm made of lead which is conductive lolol

[@dashcamandy2242]

Not meaning to troll, but it's technically graphite... It does conduct, but has a substantial resistance. When I was in school (late-80s-early-90s) a popular science fair project was to turn a pencil into a variable resistor.

[@wisher21uk]

+DashCamAndy True.....oh well it was just the way he said it a bit like big Clive's what's the worst that can happen lol

[@AkashKumar-px7rw]

Hey Julian, I have a set of those string lights and as I saw, mine and yours have the same patterns. So if you go through the pattern list, there IS infact a pattern where they all stay lit all the time

[@simontay4851]

There are 8 different ones.

[@AkashKumar-px7rw]

Simon Tay yes and they seem to be a world standard string lights pattern

[@FurrySergal]

A few years ago a channel called 'lasersaber' made a few interesting videos on joule thief projects. Not sure if they still make videos but I'd definitely check them out for somewhat unrelated ideas.

[@ELECTROHAXZ]

1. The base is clearly orange, not yellow 2. Why would you ever need so many tiny breadboards? 3. Send anything pink and explosive to bigclive and send anything dangerous to DiodeGoneWild

[@pileofstuff]

One can never have enough breadboards. never.

[@ELECTROHAXZ]

Haha yeah I suppose so. You never know when you need one

[@foxfyre3600]

Those controllers. When you want the all-on all-time and you think you got it and then it goes dim just press the pattern-button two more times and then you have it. I've done lights.

[@BertGrink]

Shame on you, Julian, for not recognising the EU mains plug!

[@JulianIlett]

I know :)

[@carstenklein4531]

7:46 lol "quite a crack"? 2 Volts :D

[@ollieb9875]

Depending on the resistance of the wires it will be many Amps discharging there. Roughly speaking if the wires only had 0.01 Ohm resistance it could be 250Amps or more. It doesn't matter the voltage. Amps is amps.

[@williamsquires3070]

Now, replace each LED on the string... with a joule thief! Then point the LED of one joule thief at the LDR of the next one in the chain. Will it work? Will it fail spectacularly? Or will it just melt down like Chernobyl?

[@Skylineview713]

Julian, I'm very excited to see what you have come up with for the Joule Thief. I built my Joule Thief a few months ago, and I just keep swapping out "dead" batteries, however, your experiments have me pulling it back out and rebuilding. This should be great fun!

[@FireballXL55]

Why do you think that you would have a problem pressing the switch when your power pack has no reference to earth.

[@ElmerFuddGun]

Likely just a good habit that he didn't really think more about. Using an insulator and just one hand greatly reduces the hazard.

[@birnodin]

The Julian Thief is back! And: Alice!

[@JulianIlett]

Hmm, the Jules Thief - I like it :)

[@jinjocat]

Chinese supplier called Flying Balloons is a bit ominous right now..

[@KennethTanFotografie]

As stated by someone else here, I also have a feeling your video's have gone down a level (even the postbags). Go back to the times of the arduino and power led circuit and level up from there Julian.

[@slap_my_hand]

He has been working on his 8 bit computer thingy for months and he doesn't even know how his architecture is going to work yet. I made a small computer in logisim based on his concept and it only took me an afternoon. I have no idea what's taking him so long. It seems like he's procrastinating on his main projects by trying out every random circuit he can find online.

[@KennethTanFotografie]

I believe that this is an unfair remark. Julians explorations are always very good researched and narrated. I like his style of explaining, where I have the feeling we're finding out this stuff together. My only grief is that it seems that at some point Julian has taken a different fork in the road, opposite where I've liked him to go. I only hope that we'll meet again on our travels. Thank you Julian for your videos

[@maicod]

-still watching but why would you assume its meant for the US market (110Volt) while it has a EU plug ?- ah you found out :D

[@reeseyme9613]

thats a *FULL BRIDGE RECTIFIER*

[@FuzzyTekShow]

Gotta love a good postbag!

[@gswartley]

at 11:20 I think the seller is "i c hoes i love". Not the nicest name, but that's what I see.

[@RedwoodRhiadra]

Your reading requires flipping the 's' and 'e' in 'chose'.

[@doughy67]

My wife bought those lights from china. I wouldn't let her use them for Christmas decorations

[@JulianIlett]

Very wise, they look horribly unsafe to me :)

[@KARLLARK100]

sup guys the plug say 220v,.//.,

[@beware_the_moose]

I don't know why you keep buying those breadboards... I think we need an intervention!

[@DavidKirwanirl]

Like watching some of these, get ideas for chinesium to buy :D

[@peetiegonzalez1845]

The Big Rock Candy Mountain provides all. For a modest fee, and free shipping (14-28 days)

[@josephnealeUKscratchcards]

Awesome video

[@kyoudaiken]

Do NOT use the LED wedding lights! These are dangerous and can even start a fire at home.

[@JulianIlett]

They do look very unsafe :)

[@Eve123-f1q]

Aww, that’s lovely

[@TheKetsa]

That LED net has a Swiss plug. Strange the Chinese send stuff with Swiss plugs labelled as "EU plug"

[@xddbotnet1370]

No, it's an Europlug which is compatible with French/German/Italian/Swiss sockets since it has no central grounding pin.

[@anlumo1]

Also, all the other countries that use the German plug, like Austria, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Belgium and Greece (and a lot more I don't know off the top of my head). I think the only sockets these don't fit in in Europe are the UK ones, which are also used in Malta.

[@RWBHere]

They do fit into U.K. plugs, if you defeat the safety shutter. Unofficially, it's been done for years. No fuse in those plugs makes things a bit more dangerous.

[@schwartzenheimer1]

When will you begin to comprehend the very significant difference between a supercapacitor and a lithium battery? Capacitors are *energy* dense, while batteries are *power* dense...simply put, caps can deliver much higher current instantaneously than can batteries, which are limited to discharges of small multiples of rated charge current. Batteries do, however, hold much more total energy per unit volume. The two have very little intersection of purpose, if efficiency is important. Your super cap videos appear to ignore this, and the comments reflect that your audience is being led astray. Or am I missing the point? Note: I did, in fact, state it backward. Capacitors are *power* dense, I.e., they can deliver many joules instantaneously, whereas batteries can hold much more total energy per unit volume, but can only deliver it at a relatively slow rate of a few times the max charge rate without damage. Thanks Fabian N. for correcting my error!

[@ollieb9875]

I believe the point is that capacitors can be charged quicker and an order of magnitude more times than batteries so running things like for example Julian's blutooth speakers he was building / experimenting with a while ago is of some interest. I mean, if you can get a few hours of life from supercaps when powering those sorts of devices.

[@xZise]

Shouldn't it be the other way around? A cap can deliver huge amounts of power, but can store much energy compared to batteries.

[@RWBHere]

schwartzenheimer1 is correct.

[@michaelstevens630]

Its LEGO under another name.....

[@ZipDDragon]

As close to a LEG0 as possible.

[@isoguy.]

Julian, Advert at start of video, advert 5 minutes in, adverts is the principal reason i stopped watching tv. Too many averts = unsubscribe please. Really like watching your channel but dont want to waste half my life watching adverts. Please find some other way unless you want to lose your audiance.

[@simontay4851]

Use Adblock if watching on a computer. If watching on an android device, use the browser application, not the KZbin application. I never get in video ads on YT.

[@JulianIlett]

That's odd - I only enable the ads at the beginning and end - not sure how you got one part way through. Regarding ads on YT videos generally, man's gotta eat :)

[@maicod]

8 would be a byte of joule thiefs

[@JulianIlett]

That's a lot of inductor winding!

[@maicod]

LOL I feel with you

[@RadixElektra]

1st comment