More with less

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

Arthur C. Clarke

Lately we've received some "grow lights" from our good friends in 中国 which are 3 watt full spectrum lamps that we thought might be a candidate for an efficient joule thief circuit, recovering the last vestiges of energy from "spent" batteries. Pretty much all beginner electronics nerds try out a joule thief circuit at some stage as the lure of pulling energy out of a practically dead battery seems just like magic.

Of great novelty value, we've experimented with and made quite a few variants of the joule thief which has provided some torches and other night lights, but could this electronic oddity be utilised together with spent batteries to grow stuff? Inspired by a recent video from Julian Ilett we set about to make the ultimate grow chamber palace.

Enter the local dollar store and a small terrarium/fishtank with a few modifications and result is one freaky looking lunchbox.

Grow chamber or Nerd lunchbox?

Litres of hot glue and solder resulted in an unwieldy top chockers with the now familiar components of a joule thief circuit.

Symmetry is the key to eye-catching design

There is some circuitry "underneath" the board, including resistors and the actual lamps themselves.

They look like delicious little fried eggs, no?

Finally the hour cometh and with suitable musical accompaniment (35'19'') the little blighter actually worked, with the grow lamps faithfully illuminating as the sunlight was removed.

In the meantime outside the goats keep eating and the sunflowers keep drinking up the atomic energy provided FOC by the big yellow in the sky. Good one, and way better than burning stuff to stay moving. Alternative energy anyone?

Keeping the goats away from the tasty flowers