October 2021

David : Made a variable power supply 0 to 30 volts @ 3 Amps using the LM2576 regulator.

David. Primary School Project. Introduction to electronics with Joule thief LED.

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. This circuit is also known by other names such as blocking oscillator, joule ringer, vampire torch. 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 – the term is a pun on "jewel thief".

Alex

-Tooltips: 3-pin voltage regulators

-Project: Driving Raspberry Pi 3.5 inch TFT display with TFT_eSPI library

Steve : Classic Lego train set from 1968 gets ESP32 Web cam upgrade.

The Lego 119 battery operated train set still works after 53 years! During lockdown I got it out of the attic and decided to

put a camera on the front and use a web page to control it. An ESP32-CAM was run from a LiPo battery with a DCDC boost module set to 5V.