Big Joule Theif

[jeanna]

@ Jeanna
I worked with the little light most of the day and guess what---it is still running on that one AA (dimmed down & set at 50mA). Amazing. I played with the 10T secondary trying different inductors like you suggested and even ran a second JT off that winding. One of the best things about this setup is that the toroid (at low settings) does not make much noise. There is not much heat generated either-- unless you UP things then you get noise and heat. I may box this up and use it on my boat. It makes a nice table light.


Lidmotor

Cool.
It is interesting that low resistor settings it doesn't make much noise. I have not had lees sound unless it went above my hearing which is higher resistance=higher frequency.. Very cool.
I never got any heat either. I am so grateful to you for making a replication(s).
Yes, I hope you do make it for your boat... then I can make a replication from your ideas!!

What is your 30 light circuit like?

I just got this schematic off the ac from jt thread I started at ou.
This thread documents everything I did.
It is not too long, but I understand wanting to cut to the chase.
So, here is the schematic.

As you saw today, adding inductors (coils) in series is a very easy and effective way to boost the power you are getting from a set of pulses. (not to forget that it allows all the secondaries to work at the same time.)
I would like to know the numbers details of the inductors and caps, and the frequency of the additions you made.
Very little has been done on this since it got buried, and I would like to start seeing/writing some principles for others to be able to draw from.

So, here is the schematic.
I am open to answering questions. (if I can guess the answers, that is.)

I wonder if a new thread just for this would be a good idea? But for now, it is here.

thank you,
jeanna

It is also the subject of the part6 video
jtc video part 6

[morpher44]

light shaman

It was my experimental 30 light circuit that lit up my living room during the power outage.
I was very pleased to find that when there were no other lights anywhere, the light from the 30leds in those 5 circuits was enough to light up the room to the point that I could see everything.
It was way more light than just enough to keep me from bumping the furniture, and way way more light than a candle.

You people are "light shaman".

I think this work is really really important.
There will always be storms ... lights will always go out.
What a comfort when one of you "light workers" can bring
in your goofy technology with eyeballs (yes you Lidmotor)
and make all the kids calm down and feel comforted
because the room is lit.

Electronic light, when all the power fails, is like a chain-of-custody
back to the technological world -- which seems to have
darkened and failed with that nagging "single-point-of-failure-grid-mentality"
which we know is a recipe for disaster .. but never seem to do
anything about.

The "light shaman" & "light workers" will save the day since
they have practiced on this forum and perfected their magic.

I encourage those spectators out there to crack open
some basic electronic books, learn how to read a simple
schematic ... and try to make this stuff.
You will be a highly prized "light shaman" during rough times!!!

Good work gang!!!

[Lidmotor]

All day fun with the new light

@ Jeanna
I worked with the little light most of the day and guess what---it is still running on that one AA (dimmed down & set at 50mA). Amazing. I played with the 10T secondary trying different inductors like you suggested and even ran a second JT off that winding. One of the best things about this setup is that the toroid (at low settings) does not make much noise. There is not much heat generated either-- unless you UP things then you get noise and heat. I may box this up and use it on my boat. It makes a nice table light.
What is your 30 light circuit like? Hum a few bars and I'll try to play it.

Lidmotor

[jeanna]

@ Jeanna & All
She called for a 100pf cap between the base and the negative rail and I just eliminated it. There should be no connection there to the neg. rail.
...
Lidmotor

Did I ?
Oh dear.
I have made that mistake since the first joule thief I ever made.
I did not mean to perpetuate it here!

It is the emitter that connects to the neg rail and that is all.

The 100pF cap is actually in parallel with the 90 ohm base resistor.
And that is, of course on its way to one end of the jt bifilar.
On other jt circuits,I do not usually add a cap in this spot, but it often seems to reduce the amps draw, and so it helps a lot when lighting a fluoro light.

[jeanna]

Hi lidmotor,

As it happened...
I was unable to watch your excellent replication video because the lights went out last night!!

So, Thank you for making it so clear and simple for everyone.
I love the way you nested the light inside the toroid. It makes it a very nice package. (Maybe better than a basket! )

I am collecting a small supply of those cfl's.
I used to have the kind that didn't ever burn out, but now more and more they overheat and I collect them.

BTW, I have never had any heat from my circuit at all.
I am wondering if you used the rheostat as a precaution, or if you actually got heat on that transistor?

Thank you again.

AND...
It was my experimental 30 light circuit that lit up my living room during the power outage.
I was very pleased to find that when there were no other lights anywhere, the light from the 30leds in those 5 circuits was enough to light up the room to the point that I could see everything.
It was way more light than just enough to keep me from bumping the furniture, and way way more light than a candle.

[Lidmotor]

Jeanna's Light

@ Jeanna & All
Here is the video of Jeanna's big JT toroid coil in action. I changed things around a little and ran a small 10W gutted CFL on it with one AA. It is a pretty neat little light folks. The circuit diagram that I show in the video has an error on it. She called for a 100pf cap between the base and the negative rail and I just eliminated it. There should be no connection there to the neg. rail. As of this posting the "little light that could" has been running for 14 hours. I turned the brighness way down to a current draw of about 50mA to do it.
This would make an excellent emergency light. One of these in each room of the house and a few AAs would really help. The pleasant light would cheer things up. Kids would get a kick out of it.

YouTube - Jeanna's Light

Lidmotor

[morpher44]

negative-R -- still confused...

A neon will first conduct in the glow discharge region when there is no visible light and offers a great deal of resistance. Next the excitation of the neon gas produces a rise in conduction due to ionization, this ionization reduces the resistance to conduction of an electric current.
...
Basically the confusion over negative resistance started because of ohms law---"Ohm's law states that the current through a conductor between two points is directly proportional to the potential difference or voltage across the two points". This simplistic rule does not take into account the attributes of what constitutes a "conductor", in a neon bulb the voltage can rise to the threshold voltage at which point voltage drops and current rises as it rapidly conducts, this is not negative resistance it is non-linear conduction. "Negative" refers to a negative condition, the opposite condition to resistance is acceleration, can you have an accelerating resistance? It is like saying left is less right or the ball was falling upward, it is non-sensical. I will apologise in advance for the criticism but this wacky term has been driving me crazy every time I see it, I am not sure why engineers have to make up so many non-sensical terms to explain things which are really quite simple.
Regards
AC

@Allcanadian

Thanks for the explanation ... but I'm still a bit confused by
this phenomenon... You seem to just accept it as if its no big deal.
My understanding is that negative resistance is suppose to be impossible.
It was a highly debated topic among physicists ... or so I understood.
Perhaps it is just a debate about semantics.

HP has announced a break through with memristors --
claiming they will be able to make very small memories now -- or
so they hope.

This seemed like a huge deal ... and yet I find that
NEON ... and other gases have had this property all along ..
and it has been known about for more than 100 years.

So yes its seems that OHMS should be a measurement that
is ONLY positive ... so that we can keep our sanity.
If you measure a circuit ... and end up with a calculation producing
negative resistance ... there is some unaccounted for effect.

Take Mutual Induction & Non-Conservative fields.
If you were unaware that mutual inductive fields were affecting
your circuit in some way, when you measured things ...
and calculated the value of some resistance, you might find
it is negative ... not because you did your math wrong ... but
rather because you failed to account for the energy entering
your system from the outside due to mutual induction.

So lets take a close look at NEON here. It is established
that the curve is non-linear ... and there are parts of that
curve that exhibit a negative resistance like behavior.
But WHY? Is energy entering from the outside when ionization
occurs? Yes we know this occurs due to ionization ... but
do we know WHAT occurs?

That is my question.

[Allcanadian]

@morpher44

These Neon bulbs, however, are very interesting in that they can
glow with a very minor current -- once started. I found on Wikipedia that neon exhibits negative resistance -- which actually may be a "pull energy from the environment" -- in that part of the voltage-current curve of the neon. I'm finding it fascinating that they can be stimulated to light with such little power.

It may help to clarify what negative resistance is I think, negative resistance by definition refers to a lack of resistance or non-linear resistance. A neon will first conduct in the glow discharge region when there is no visible light and offers a great deal of resistance. Next the excitation of the neon gas produces a rise in conduction due to ionization, this ionization reduces the resistance to conduction of an electric current. If the ionization increases due to extreme voltage a VAD, volt arc discharge will conduct large currents across the neon plates and produce a purple spark many have been talking about.
Basically the confusion over negative resistance started because of ohms law---"Ohm's law states that the current through a conductor between two points is directly proportional to the potential difference or voltage across the two points". This simplistic rule does not take into account the attributes of what constitutes a "conductor", in a neon bulb the voltage can rise to the threshold voltage at which point voltage drops and current rises as it rapidly conducts, this is not negative resistance it is non-linear conduction. "Negative" refers to a negative condition, the opposite condition to resistance is acceleration, can you have an accelerating resistance? It is like saying left is less right or the ball was falling upward, it is non-sensical. I will apologise in advance for the criticism but this wacky term has been driving me crazy every time I see it, I am not sure why engineers have to make up so many non-sensical terms to explain things which are really quite simple.
Regards
AC

[morpher44]

crazy neon continued...

I think you are seeing this deal where you cannot have 2 secondaries coming from the same primary. In your case it is 2 lights coming from the one wire off the secondary, but I think the same thing applies. It is an ac system at this level and behaves very differently from the dc circuit. One light can steal all the juice, but not if you support that light with an inductor of its own.

Try adding an inductor in line in series with the neon on one side and see if you cannot get both to go on.
If you can figure the frequency of the circuit there it will help you find a good inductance for this coil you add.
j

@jeanna

Yeah hooking up this ignition coil to the 2ndary (in parallel) has the effect of
reducing the inductance of the secondary ... changing the impedance seen on the primary side a bit. Oscillations are maintained, however, and I can peal out a high voltage on the 2ndary of the ignition coil.

I always imagined with AC that the single-wire Tesla experiment really had
a return to the coil via the immediate surfaces ... table tops ... across the floor, etc. Being a guy who has played with digital electronics most of his life, we were always schooled to have static mats for insulation ... and little wrist connected ground wires, etc.

These Neon bulbs, however, are very interesting in that they can
glow with a very minor current -- once started. I found on Wikipedia that neon exhibits negative resistance -- which actually may be a "pull energy from the environment" -- in that part of the voltage-current curve of the neon. I'm finding it fascinating that they can be stimulated to light with such little power.

The path-of-least-resistance, in the way I had it connected, produces
a toggling effect -- similar to a flip-flop in digital electronics.
Imagine if Tesla designed computers and computer memories. He
probably would have done it using AC currents through out.
We might have lived in a different world if he wasn't blacklisted by JPM
or hadn't sabotaged the Philadelphia Experiment.

Yes I agree with you that more inductors can be hooked up ...
creating a chain ... with power at each node.
This is the so-called analog computer that Eric Dollard talks about.
-morpher44

[jeanna]

@ Jeanna, I've had some success adding an alligator clip to the system, outstretched, and connect to an aluminium pie plate.

This seems to act like an RF aerial or virtual ground, or modifies the frequency of the system, etc......

And can replace the 'hand'

With a cfl, I would clip the lead to a piece of aluminium foil wrapped around the cfl. But I haven't tried that yet.

Love and light

Hi Inquorate,



I will try the pie plate.
I have been wanting to try this and I keep forgetting.
Does it actually modify the frequency?

Are you adding the clip to the other pin on the fluorotube?
And, tesla did this in place of connecting to the other side of the secondary.
Are you doing that too?
Now that I mention it, I think I have not tried this. Maybe since the light starts when my hand touches but goes out when I let go is an indication that I should move to the ground??

cool... thanks for the idea.

I have not been able to start any of my cfl's. Just the tubes.

I/my hand is not needed to keep the light on, just to start it.
Same goes for the magnet.
Once the light starts I can remove the magnet and put the light down.

[I was timing one of these last summer and I had to go somewhere, so I loaded it into a basket that I could carry and put down without disturbing it, but so I could see it the moment it went out and this worked fine and was very portable.]

More indoor fun for a very rainy day!

thank you,
jeanna

added


@morpher44,

good video.
I think you are seeing this deal where you cannot have 2 secondaries coming from the same primary. In your case it is 2 lights coming from the one wire off the secondary, but I think the same thing applies. It is an ac system at this level and behaves very differently from the dc circuit. One light can steal all the juice, but not if you support that light with an inductor of its own.

Try adding an inductor in line in series with the neon on one side and see if you cannot get both to go on.
If you can figure the frequency of the circuit there it will help you find a good inductance for this coil you add.

j

[morpher44]

crazy neon experiment

YouTube - Crazy Neon

[Inquorate]

Retreating the hand

I believe I used 26 or 24 gauge... 26 is what I believe it is.
The magic occurred when I got this one tuned.
It is only 5 khz which is low enough to be audible, but it went down as the volts went up, which is a pattern I have seen repeatedly and I believe is a rule of some kind.

I had 190 volts when I finished all the turns, and I could make no magic until I started to lower the resistance which lowers the frequency.
It suddenly started to show higher volts and then near 90 ohm it went up to 411v which is what this is or ought to be.


Oh now I understand... you are trying to blow something up!
Just don't blow up your scope.!

btw xee2 used this toroid and wound only 80 turns on his secondary and got a 4 inch fluoro tube to light. I never replicated that, but it is a good thing to know a lower limit.

I almost got a 48 inch to light tonight. I got one 4 inch area on it to light but it needed my hand to stay there and nothing I did would get it to stay lit without that. It means I was really close. I would love to light that 48 inch tube with this or one like this toroid.

I think a series inductor added to this after the turns around the toroid are finished may do it... I will try that. I will if I can remember to add it to my long list, that is!

thank you,

jeanna

morpher44

I like your joules verne thief story !

@ Jeanna, I've had some success adding an alligator clip to the system, outstretched, and connect to an aluminium pie plate.

This seems to act like an RF aerial or virtual ground, or modifies the frequency of the system, etc......

And can replace the 'hand'

With a cfl, I would clip the lead to a piece of aluminium foil wrapped around the cfl. But I haven't tried that yet.

Love and light

[jeanna]

@Jeanna & All
I got the big 3 1/4" toroid core in the mail and immediately built the light circuit. It works!! I built the toroid coil a little different: 3T base 24ga. 13T collector 24ga. 300T secondary 30ga. and I added a fouth coil 10T 24ga. just to play with (not attached to anything).

Thanks Jeanna.

Lidmotor

Yeay!!
I am so glad this worked for you.

That big toroid is also really easy to wind, because you can just toss the whole spool of wire through it.

Part of my inspiration in doing that multiple secondaries experiments that are on many of my videos was because there is so much room in this toroid, you ought to be able to light up the lights all over the room and maybe run the toaster too all with one transistor and a 1.2v battery. ( ), but, for that to work, I had to see how to make them stand alone (...which, now, I think I can do).

thank you for doing this,

jeanna
=======
add:

@Tec

Thanks Tec.
I will try this in the coming week... maybe even today.

Have you considered removing the thief light and setting up the secondary to run a dozen leds in series?
The secondary does not run the lights as bright as the thief does so this (even though you are relying on 2 transistors ) looks great to me...
J

[Lidmotor]

Jeanna's Light

@Jeanna & All
I got the big 3 1/4" toroid core in the mail and immediately built the light circuit. It works!! I built the toroid coil a little different: 3T base 24ga. 13T collector 24ga. 300T secondary 30ga. and I added a fouth coil 10T 24ga. just to play with (not attached to anything).
I used the circuit that you described and tried different caps, FL tubes, and voltages. All I can say is that ---it's all good! That big toroid lets you do lots of things. Its like having a great big church bell that rings well.
Jonny Davro is using this toroid idea in a SEC circuit (see Jonny's latest video) so I had to try that also and THAT worked. I replaced the L1 coil in the SEC circuit with the 3T coil on the BIG BOY toroid and it drove the SEC great. All those other windings on the toroid you could do with as you pleased. You can light up a bunches of leds on AV plugs easily.
Thanks Jeanna.

Lidmotor

[jeanna]

Yes, that is good.

Really good.
Please post a pic/drawing of it.

thank you,

jeanna