If you’re going camping this summer, or just want a inexpensive emergency lantern powered by a pair of AA batteries, you most likely can’t do much much better than [rimstar]’s Joule thief compact florescent lantern.

The circuit for [rimstar]’s battery powered CFL bulb is a Joule thief. While these circuits are normally utilized as a presentation to get every last bit of energy out of a battery with a LED, [rimstar] upgraded whatever with a much better transformer as well as a power transistor to light up a CFL bulb.

What’s truly fascinating about this develop is it supplies a utilize for blown compact fluorescent bulbs. The typical failure mode of these light bulbs is normally the electronics going bad, not the tube. By replacing the electronics with a homemade circuit, it’s an simple method to reuse these damaged bulbs.

Video below.