This Modified "I Can Solder" Badge Uses a Joule Thief to Illuminate a Neon Bulb
Suedbunker decided to add a high-voltage joule thief and a steampunkish neon lamp to the popular pin badge.
Soldering, whether you see it as a fun expression of your talents or as a necessary evil, is fundamental to many types of hacking. To start this journey, you could make a sample part like the “I Can Solder Badge” from Robert Fitzsimons. These particular badges as so popular, in fact, that they were the top seller on indie electronics site Tindie as of August 2017.
Those who are more advanced in their electronics pursuits, however, might wonder if this humble badge has much to offer. It was a fun little project for hacker ‘suedbunker’ at Chaos Communcation Camp in the summer of 2019, but after making the RGB LED flicker, he eventually put it away somewhere. This wasn't the end, though, as it was rediscovered for a “rework” in 2020.
Instead of using an LED in the new iteration, suedbunker subbed in a tiny NE1 neon lamp to be powered by only a 1.5V LR44 cell. The trick is the inclusion of a high-voltage joule thief, which uses a toroid, transistor, resistor, and capacitor to ramp the output well over 80V. Suedbunker does note that on battery power the lamp starts to blink after a few minutes per high current demands. It can also run at 1.5V, pulling 320mA on a benchtop power supply, though this will obviously inhibit its use as a portable badge!