It does look sound, and quite possibly work. If the timing was correct. Which you will have to experiment with. I have been told that spiking the source battery in most cases is a no-no tho, but you might be the one to show us all how its done, so dont let that stop you from trying. Never give up. And if you get great results by all means please sure this is your guys circuit now. Im hoping the expansion goes like crazy. And who knows maybe it will be the way all of us get some ultra efficent lighting for emergencys or possibly for living.


ps: ill be saving the circuit, im working on many different fe projects, and will be releasing many more. all expansions or improvements that ppl do on my circuits ill will love replicating myself.
The fan, the light, the soon to be released oscillator and the future power factor correction, telsa earth batteries, newman motors, evgray motors, ect ect. They are all being worked on as quickly as i can and i will be holding nothing back. All of you guys helping with expansions is excellent.

And dont forget to thank Peter Lindemann none of this would have been possibly without his help in testing and inspiration. he is the master.

Lidmotor,

Great replication! I loved your "dimmer" modification. Can you show us where you put the reostat to get the dimmer effect? Your whole schematic would be great.... and the recipe for Mrs. Field's Chocolate Chip Cookies, too!

Thanks again.

OK, everybody else, nobody has ever shown lighting a light and charging a battery at the same time. Like I said before, Imhotep IS the next "future legend"! I tried a lot of variations on this circuit and NOTHING worked better than Imhotep's circuit with the relay. Imhotep has come up with something awesome, and Lidmotor shows how simple it is to replicate if you follow the directions exactly.

Are we having fun, yet?

Peter

Peter, Thank you for the nice comment . You are the master of this realm. I have studied your work and decided to build Imhotep's oscillator right away after I found out that you had been involved in it's development. This thing is amazing! A big thank you goes out to you and everyone else who helped out here. The dimmer rheostat was added to try and control the amp draw and it was an accident that it actually dimmed the light. It goes in the + lead of the drive battery. It gets hot so maybe it is not such a great idea. The rest of the circuit is pure Imhotep. I really agree with you about people following the design exactly. You can play with it after you get it working. I learned that from my SSG project. Lidmotor

I made the basic version a while back before the release and it worked as claimed and when following Imhotep's instructions exactly, it is hard to not get it to work.

I used some cheap Radio Shack relay and with my testing, I badly abuse my parts...sometimes I had to flick the side of the relay to get it going again but again...I'm not delicate with my testing.

The concept of this circuit can do a lot!

I finally built the unit but the result was less than impressive.
I used a 100uF 450V capacitor instead of a condensor which I did not have, and my coil's primary is 3.1ohms and secondary around 10000 ohms pretty near the values Imhotep's coils has. I used a 12V relay, because I did not have a 9 volt one and the resistance of its coils was about 420 ohms pretty near Imhotep's. I used a 40W tube for the output coil.

The current draw from the 12V battery was around 1.3 amps and the current into the charging battery was about 10mA. The brightness of the tube was less than the experiment I did before with a mosfet. When I tuned my circuit it could light the tube with out wires or even one wire only, but this circuit does not behave like this, I wonder if I have not done something right?

The schematic is exactly the same as Imhoteps except the condensor and the 12V relay.

I wonder how to reduce the current draw?

Edit: I attached a photo of the running light + the relay

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	DSC00218.JPG (30.1 KB, 66 views)

i liked your fet idea nice low current draw .
i was not able to get specs on condensers for point systems and i searched all over the net ,so people could sub a cap .maybe someone can find the specs and post a sub .
i actually had the best low current draw from obsolete relays from radio shack as well as a few from nap tvs from the 70's but peters choice was a good sub but drew a little more current. as the bulb warmed up the current draw dropped be low 1 amp and charge current went up and had good spikes on scope . have fun with modifications ,i have many more releases coming soon !!!

Elias, I am having the same situation with too high an amp draw. That was why I installed the rheostat in the + side of the drive circuit. It helped but gets hot. Peter and Imhotep---- SOS. . My replication does, however, charge really well. I used a 50 volt 1amp diode because I had one and it seems to work fine. This back spike charging is hard to measure as I found out with the SSG project. An ammeter does not tell you the whole story. The impedance matching between the relay coil and the car ignition coil is someting that I don't quite understand either. I may try triggering the ignition coil using a reed switch next to my SSG wheel to try and reduce the amp draw. This thing reminds me of a Model T Ford spark coil that I used to play with as a kid. It buzzed like this and made lots of big sparks.

get used to relays the next release draws 30 ma and spikes a charge battery (remember you want the spikes for conditioning batts) only 3 parts and costs 8 $ easiest build ever

So current draw of 1.2 - 1.3 amps is ordinary for this circuit? The other problem was the flickering of the tube, is this normal too?

Yes the current draw drops after warming up a bit. And i used 16W bulb and the light was good! It is drawing about 1amp at 12V.

Thanks for the circuit, the experiment was interesting although it needs some work for making it something useful for lighting the house.

Looking forward for more circuits!

Yes I almost forgot the spikes are charging the battery!!
Thanks for reminding.

elias, i understand your concern about the amp drw, but this is how you need to look at it:

Your using a 16 watts bulb, without power factor correcting what you are paying for it actually 32 watts, (which 32 watts divided by 120 volts is 3.75 amps, thats what your paying the power company to normally run these bulbs)

Now you have dropped it down to only 1 amp. So thats a 50 to 70 percent savings PLUS your charging a battery. If you properly impedance match through experimentation you might even get it lower than that.

The flickering did not occur with my bulb because after it warmed up it leveled off, also i have removed the 1500 volt capacitor and put it in between one of the leads on each side of the tube and only used one wire on each side of the tube to go to the 110 volt socket, i did not disclose that fact so the circuit would be less complicated and easier to replicate, but on the movie of altering the cfl i told everyone to save the circuit because the final end of that circuit has some hv caps and chokes that you can utilize to smooth out the flicker, the warm up time, and the lasting ability of the bulb.


Later on today i will take some pictures of my original relay that i used that had the VERY low current draw, maybe somebody somewhere can find them and match them. Unfort i only have 4 total and after they are gone i cant find them anywhere. But the circuit does work good and if you factor in the charging and the power savings if my math is correct its a worthwhile circuit to build and future projects as EV gray did will utilize this concept. Stay tuned. It does get better

Good luck

Lidmotor,

Just by chance, I have a Ford Model T Buzz Coil at my shop. It draws .8 amps when run on a 6 volt battery, just 4.8 watts. It will easily throw continuous FIRE over 10mm! I thought, for sure, this thing will light the light. BLAH. It lights a "26 watt" bulb to about half brightness, but only makes the "42 watt" bulb glow a pathetic orange.

The T Coil's secondary coil has an impedance of about 3,800 ohms, whereas the Camaro ignition coil has a secondary impedance of about 10,000 ohms. The system needs to have the right characteristics to develop a high voltage "shock wave" across the tube. For the fluorescent tube to light, the Mercury vapor must produce it's characteristic hard UV emission, otherwise the phosphors won't "light up". The standard way is to ionize the gas and pass a bunch of current across it. Tesla's way was to send a high voltage "shock wave" through the gas, and limit the current to the absolute minimum.

When everything is balanced just right, Imhotep's circuit is remarkably effective at lighting the light AND recovering the "unused" energy of the inductive collapse. Even Tesla wasn't recovering the unused energy from his lights!

Keep up the great work!

Peter

I couldnt have said it better, thats why i am so appreciative of your help in this project. you are the master

Dear Imhotep,
thank you for releasing this. I am eager to replicate this circuit. I have another condenser-related question. I think I could easily find a capacitor suitable for the job if I knew the use of those condensers intended by the manufacturer. Sorry for the stupid question, but I dont live in an English-speaking country, but could you give a short explanation about what this condenser originally served for. If I knew what exactly the "tune-up kit" you mentioned is supposed to tune-up,I could certainly figure out a capacitor that meets the reqirements. Thank you very much.

The condenser is used in older points and condenser and coil or magneto circuits. It was originally designed to suppress the spark on the points and I am utilizing it to suppress the arc on the relay, so that it will last longer. As I stated earlier I could not find the exact uf and power handling capabilities but any lawn mower kit that comes with points and condenser can be used. Good luck

it is not very possible to pbtain the coil from this year as you mention outside of usa or canada

is it possible to use or modify any modern ignition coil?

Thank you, Imhotep.
Based on your info I did some search about old-fashioned car ignition systems that use mechanical interrupter contacts to switch the coil. Based on what I have learned so far about this I would say a suitable capacitor to do the job should have a voltage rating of some hundred volts, should be robust enough to take sharp voltage pulses without heating or damage and, according to my sources, should have a capacitance around 0.22 microfarads. I plan to play with different values (say between 0.5 muF and 0.1 muF). Playing with these values a little bit may be an opportunity for some tuning.

The circuit is simply relay works in wide range, only need get enought energy to conmutation and go well, I tested one 6VDC, but contacts are some weaks, I changed it by one 12VDC good quality, and work great, my snubber is 4.7uf x 220 ohms ( I have no 100 ), coil car is a HITACHI CR6-800 external resistor.

Brightness depend much by bulb quality, so I need to find in the market, my Phillips are some big parpading so much.

Peter and Imhotep, Thanks for the quick response to our questions. Peter I'm glad that you answered my question about the Model T coil and why it is different. I played around with my oscillator today and saw what you meant about having to have things balanced to get the most out of the design. Imhotep I am just amazed that you came up with this. Sometimes simple things are the best. I did try a reed switch in place of the relay and saw a reduction in the amp draw. I ran my SSG, tapped into the drive battery to drive the oscillator, and triggered it by placing the reed switch near the SSG rotor. My rheostat controled the situation so that the reed didn't burn out. Down side was that when you dial down the drive voltage, you not only dim the light, but the charging goes down also. The best thing though, was that the swarm of bees left the room. That relay really makes a buzz. Lots of work could be done on this project to get everything just right for a particular need.

Imhotep

I think that it might be something related to the capacitance I used, I used 330uF, 100uF, 10uF and the smaller the capacitor got the brighter the light was, the problem is with the capacitor, I suppose. I have got some 1600V 0.02uF Caps, I'll try those. I'll also change my relay to a 9V or even a 6V one to see if it makes any difference. I didn't know that those bulbs consume double the rated energy. In this case your circuit ROCKS! I'll make a measurement with my amp-meter!

Thanks for your useful insights, I am very optimistic on this.

@Peter and Others
If we want to design a custom coil for this purpose for lighting around 10 tubes, what's your suggestions?

Elias

I would imagine if you match the primary dc resistance and secondary dc resistance you might be able to use the newer coil packs which most of them are 4 or 6 cylinder versions and im not sure, but i believe they dual fire and actually you would have 2 or 3 coils, if you can get a good service manual with schematics of the ignition it will show you how the packs are wired and you should be able to possibly use it to fire 2 or 3 bulbs. Thats something i will be trying in the future. I also wanted to dual fire either with 2 coils or with a coil pack so if you dont do it, i will be in the future and ill let you know. Dont worry if your results are as efficient as mine or exact its all a journey. And remember your getting energy recovery so as your draining one your charging another. good luck

Excellent suggestion thank you for the research and thank you for contributing that is what this is about. Please let us know your results.

The 1500volt capacitor i used inside the bulb there is 2 wires coming off each side of the tube and one wire i hooked to the center of the screw socket and the other wire to one side of the 1500 volt cap that i pulled off the cfl circuit. I ran the other side of the cap to one of the filament wires on the second filament and then the other wire coming out of that filament i ran to the ground screw base of the bulb. You will easily be able to tell which one it is, it will have 1500 or 1800 and it will be close to the wire wrap area where you took off the wires for the tube, there is usually 2 or 3 of them on the circuit boards. There is also a transformer (or it at least looks like a transformer) Its actually a choke. What they do with the cfl they feed one wire with the pulse through the filament through that cap to the other side through one wire through the second filament and then back out the other side and through the choke back to the FETS inside the little circuits. I have completely back engineered the circuits and understand them completely. You can take one of the caps and it will help smooth the light output. The reason it was not included because I wanted to have everyone get the rough circuit completed, before complicating it and changing it. Some of the more advanced ppl in the forums im sure will have many modifications you being one of them. Please report any improvements or changes. As far as the snubber, I used a 1 uf 160 volt and i also used a 4.7uf i didnt use any larger ones, the smaller ones helped suppress the arc and i used resistance from 100 to 1000 ohms. The relays made a big difference the older ones worked much better than the newer ones. but that particular blue one from radio shack that peter picked out works really well with that coil. Ive not been able to inspect the contacts cause it is a sealed relay, which is probaly better and to quiet it down they dont get to hot, so i wrapped them with a little bit of clothe to muffle them.

Everybody,

OK, let's talk about efficiency. In order to do this, you have to understand a few things about AC power. The first thing is, there are THREE kinds of power present in commercially available AC electricity. The first kind is called REAL POWER, measured in WATTS. The second kind is REACTIVE POWER, measured in Volt-Amperes-Reactive. The third kind is called APPARENT POWER, measured in Volt-Amperes. Contrary to popular belief, the kind of power the public utility sells you is NOT real power measured in watts, but apparent power measured in Volt-Amperes. The difference between Apparent Power and Real Power is the Power Factor, which also represents the amount of Reactive Power present.

If you have a Kill-A-Watt meter, you can follow along and prove all of this to yourself. A resistive load, like a filament light bulb draws only Real Power and no Reactive Power. Therefore, the Real Power and the Apparent Power are EQUAL. However, an inductive load draws Real power AND Reactive Power, so the total amount of Apparent power needed to run an inductive load (like the power supply in the CFL) is more than the total Watts showing on the meter.

The simple test is to take an ordinary filament type of light bulb and a compact fluorescent light bulb (CFL) and run this test with your Kill-A-Watt meter. First, plug the filament bulb into the meter and read the WATTS. Then read the Volt-Ampere reading, and finally, the Power Factor. In this test, if your light bulb is rated at 75 watts, the meter will read 75 watts, 75 Volt-Amperes, and a Power Factor of 1.

Next, plug in the CFL bulb. Let's say the CFL is rated for 18 watts, and is designed (and sold to you) to replace a 75 watt filament bulb. Everybody repeats the LIE that these CFL's run on just 25% as much power as the bulbs they replace. But what do they really do, and what are you really charged to run them? The Kill-A-Watt meter tells the truth! The meter says that the CFL rated for 18 watts draws..... 18 watts! So far, so good. Unfortunately, the CFL, due to it's inductive power supply, is operating at a power factor of about .55, so it draws about 33 Volt-Amperes of Apparent Power. Since Apparent Power is what the utility company is SELLING you, the CFL actually costs almost twice as much to run as you have been lead to believe.

In the coming weeks, Imhotep will be providing a "fix' for this also, so even the CFL's you run in the normal way will cost less to run.

In the meantime, Imhotep's circuit really is running these CFL's for a small fraction of the normal cost, AND recovering about half of that, as well.

If you have modified the GE 42 watt CFL for this circuit, like Lidmotor shows, and can light it to high brightness on 12 volts @ 1.2 amps AND recover about half of this power to charge a battery, then the real cost of lighting the light is about 7.2 watts. Since this is DC from a battery, that is the Real Power consumed. This same CFL, running from the AC line, will draw more than 76 Volt-Amperes of Apparent Power (42 watts @ .55 PF). That means that Imhotep's circuit SAVES you over 90% of the real cost of running the light!

Now, that's what I call IMPRESSIVE!!!

Peter

Thank you for the additional research and the great lesson is reading the TRUE energy usage. I will being doing a video as you say in a very short time that will be showing everybody how to correct the situation and save everyone money! Again you are the master, you are very busy and so very generous with all of your time, I cant begin to thank you for all the help you have given me. Both me and Shiva are very appreciative.

Thanks Peter this was really informative.

I recall that it is used to compensate for the power factor by matching capacitors if the load is inductive, and inductors if the load is capacitive.

This simple technique is used in factories for power factor correction by using large capacitors in the front end, because of the large amount of inductive loads they use. (i. e. Electric Motors)

I wonder if this can be applied to the CFLs? And are CFLS capacitive or inductive? the tube seems to be more like a capacitor.

I think that this can be found out by using an oscilloscope and measuring the phase difference between V and I.

Elias

I just checked 4 of my spare CFL bulbs I have on store for replacement of defective bulbs.

All had the CE mark used in the EU countries. One was produced in China, the other had no mark of county of origin.

All had a power factor of 1.00 and a consumption of 9, 11, 20 and 23 Watts as specified.

When I did some rotoverter experiments, I also checked my freezer. adding a capacitor to achieve 0.98 power factor saved 15%.

Thank you Peter for your clarifications on the rotoverter some time ago.

Talking rotoverter, Hector mentioned that when resonance is achieved, the magnet field extends quite strongly outside the motor.

With my home made "ignition coil" I took a neo magnet and I was surprised to find that I could feel the magnet vibrate at 20cm distance from the core welding rods.Closer the vibrations were strong, My circuit oscillates around 300 Hz.

After a few minutes of running the circuit. the welding rods heat up. so I guess this is one reason my circuit consumes 3 amps at 8 volts supply from a Li-Ion pack. My bulb is rated 23 Watts. It is brighter now, but less than half the brightness of a similar normal powered bulb. It is hard to see the true brightness of the CFL on a video. Is your brightness the same as the ordinary similar bulb ?

I must visit a scrap yard to get an ignition coil. To my knowledge, no modern cars around me uses these ignition coils anymore. For emission control all is now computer controlled. My own car has no distributor or high tension wire. but individual ignition coils directly upon each spark plug, so the high tension area is sealed inside the top, protected from moisture and salt.

Another option is to make a better coil myself, but I will wait until I get time to make a winding machine able to handle very thin wires. In all not so easy to do.

Eric

hello
i am posting this again as my previous post was overlooked.

I live in the United Kingdom

The coil of your type is not avaliable here so i would like to address the problem of the coil type.

is it possible to modify modern coil or use any other type of modern coil that is avaliable off the shelf?

thank you

i hope i will be answered.

Most of our auto parts stores here in the us stock the older parts for older vehicles. If you cannot locate one....

Your best best is to try to use one of the coil packs, they are more expensive, you can order coils online also. It does not necassarly have to be a 67 camero, but you wont get the exact same results. You might even get better results. What you want to look for is very simply, a ignition coil, every car has one that has a spark plug. I would even check around to the local junk yards. The coil packs as i said would probably work as well, but your results will be different.

This is all a journey, a learning process for everyone. Do not worry if you cannot get the SAME exact parts, but dont expect the same exact results. Like i said it could even work better. Let us know how your search goes in the meantime I will have Shiva look into whats available in the Uk. she does have contacts there, but it takes a few days to get information back and forth. good luck