Big Joule Theif

[Lidmotor]

The "Joules Verne Thief"

@ Jeanna
Great name for a robotic JT!

@Morpher44 your story is not really all that far fetched. If we end up with gangs of wandering robots in our buildings, then they will be hunting energy as a group as well as doing their work. They will hunt it down and steal it wherever they can find it laying around and easy to grab. When I was a kid I made a few light seeking robots that would come towards a flashlight beam. The "JVT's" would follow the smell of the energy and they wouldn't care where it was coming from. Their real burning desire, like ours, would be to stay alive.

Lidmotor

[jeanna]

.. i was wondering what size wire is your secondary
cuz i got some of those big tor-60's
i was needing more voltage for my circuit i made
the current one draws to many ma's (101) at 231 volts

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 !

[morpher44]

joule thief applications

i'm trying to see how much damage i can do with a aa battery
i won't stop till i blow sumthing kool up
out

I think one application for Joule Thief technology is in robotics.
Hear me out.
What is wanted are little personal household or work-place
robots that run around doing stuff ... on the lowest possible power.
These suckers will literally need to be thieves with respect
to Joule's of energy in the environment.
As such, they need oscillators that are very
"tunable" to whatever frequencies are receivable
for inductive coupling.

I could imagine a little robot thing hungry for Joules, entering
a "Cruz for Joules" mode where with a wide-band receiver
it seeks out a steady source of inductive vibration.
Finding the frequency ... and vectoring perhaps closer to the
source ... or entering a location with better line-of-sight..
it could recharge.

There are dongles, and transformers and noisy CFLs ...
and big TV sets, and computer monitors, etc. all around
the building. Leaching power from these when needed
seems like a good strategy for a Robot.
There is no need to "plug in" physically ... just walk up
and inductively couple.

Robots will likely have local intelligence with
distributed, peer-to-peer communications.
In a similar way, powering "recharging" a Robot should be wireless,
and exploit existing power infrastructure to keep costs
down -- making it possible to introduce robotics w/o
the need for Robot gas stations.

I think the true Joule thieves will eventually be Robots.

...and yes Kooler ... some will be able to blow stuff up...

[kooler]

hmmm

@jeanna
haven't i seen you before??????
hahahaha
joking.. i was wondering what size wire is your secondary
cuz i got some of those big tor-60's
i was needing more voltage for my circuit i made
the current one draws to many ma's (101) at 231 volts

i'm trying to see how much damage i can do with a aa battery
i won't stop till i blow sumthing kool up

out

[jeanna]

Thank you sucayho.
Thank you Lidmotor.

I need to correct the numbers.

13T on the base, 3T on the collector and 240T on the secondary.

I took 2 pics tonight to show it here.

1- I rubber stamped the second toroid and its transistor from the scene, so that is why all the blotchiness is on the left side of the circuit.

2- this is supposed to show the light.
It is not a lot but you can see how you could read this patent.

Please note that there is plenty of room for more turns and you might want to try for more. This is a MK1 design and it needed to be that number.
I discovered the other day that this is not true, I could add many more turns.

The essential part is that you want to have over 450v.

To start this I need to add a magnet to one side while touching the opposite side and then slide my hand toward the magnet.
Once the bulb is lit, I am free to remove the magnet.

Also, do not bother with a little transistor.
2N3055 is the pick here.have

---
I was never sure what the inverter part meant here. I think a joule thief really is an inverter anyway. It changes a battery steady voltage to pulsed dc over time which is more like ac. -- just my way to think about it.
I love this circuit.

----

thank you,

jeanna

[Lidmotor]

The new JT circuit

Thanks Jeanna,
That should get me started on this. I like your winding ratios and the use of caps. It really sounds more like an inverter setup than a pure Joule Thief and that is not a bad thing. When we were working on the Big Joule Thief original project we ended up with a thing called the "Pulsed Inverted Joule Thief". It was the same idea only we pulsed the whole circuit with a 555 timer to drop the amp draw.
I'll let you know how this goes. I first have to order that toroid core and that takes time. I have a smaller core and I may setup the circuit with that while I wait for the mail. Maybe I can get it to run on that and light a small tube.

Lidmotor

[sucahyo]

So, anyway, my 3 1/4 inch toroid wound with 240 turns secondary lit the 18 inch grow light with a single NiMH AA battery.
It took 5 1/4 hours to run too low for the light to stay on. (1.1v)

Great achievement .

[jeanna]

My thing that ended up in a box (the "Halo Light") runs on 12 volts ...

.... Where did you get the 3 1/2 inch? Is it ferrite? I would REALLY like to replicate your setup. A 5 1/2 hour run time lighting up an 18" FL (even at low light) on one AA is fantastic!
Please give me a few hints on how to build this.
Thanks Jeanna.

Lidmotor

Hi lidmotor,
It is a joule thief with secondary... my usual.

The ferrite toroid came from allelectronics and I believe is made by micrometals.
Allelectronics calls it a tor-60, I believe and it is 85 mm OD. $3.50
And it is really heavy!
I used a 2N3055
3T,11T,240T or something like that and I need to re check the order. It should be what I said but at the time I thought the order was reversed and now, I will re check that detail.
I also needed to have 2 50uF caps in parallel at the battery rail and one 100pF cap at the base resistor or it would not go.
The pot was set to around 90ohm, but that is an individual tuning thing.

It makes an appearance on my second video called radiant joule thief 3.
YouTube - Radiant Joule Thief -3

I need to take advantage of the little bit of sun right now. That ought to get you started.

jeanna

[Lidmotor]

Round bulb lighting on a AA

[QUOTE=jeanna;74151]Does a 18 inch 15 watt qualify?
(I never tried the circline because I didn't want to buy one.)

So, anyway, my 3 1/4 inch toroid wound with 240 turns secondary lit the 18 inch grow light with a single NiMH AA battery.
It took 5 1/4 hours to run too low for the light to stay on. (1.1v)

The quality of the light IS NOT the same as with the wall. It is like when the tube is getting old.
But still bright enough to read by.

I thought you did do this, lidmotor??
My mistake, I guess you were using a 12 volt?

jeanna[/QUOT

My thing that ended up in a box (the "Halo Light") runs on 12 volts with a variable voltage regulator that is adjusted to???? Probably 12 volts now because I run the light at full brightness all the time when I am using it. I may have gotten the bulb to start lighting at 1.5v but I can't remember. My toroid is 2". Where did you get the 3 1/2 inch? Is it ferrite? I would REALLY like to replicate your setup. A 5 1/2 hour run time lighting up an 18" FL (even at low light) on one AA is fantastic!
Please give me a few hints on how to build this.
Thanks Jeanna.

Lidmotor

[jeanna]

Ok, lidmotor .. My wish-list: light the circular florescent bulb with a 1.5v circuit !!!!!
(or has that already been done?)

Does a 18 inch 15 watt qualify?
(I never tried the circline because I didn't want to buy one.)

So, anyway, my 3 1/4 inch toroid wound with 240 turns secondary lit the 18 inch grow light with a single NiMH AA battery.
It took 5 1/4 hours to run too low for the light to stay on. (1.1v)

The quality of the light IS NOT the same as with the wall. It is like when the tube is getting old.
But still bright enough to read by.

I thought you did do this, lidmotor??
My mistake, I guess you were using a 12 volt?

jeanna

[kooler]

crazyiness from scope

it's interesting to make a big toroid with a 1:1 winding and run this circuit thur it...
it shows low voltage to 12 volts but lots of sparks hooking a load to it
my problem is that i can not get my held held scope near it
my scope of getting 2 feet close to it .. it shows a half sine wave of pos
and a feq of 5.31 and 80 volts ...
its like it gives off some crazy radio that messes with eletronics
but i have it in the high hz.. now but can't check it
could just be my cheap scope i bought
but if you run it thur a toroid rather than the car coil it sounds really kool
kind of like hv transformer in a sub station...hahaha

my toroid showed 5 volts thru a bridge and it blew 6 100ma 10mm leds
the 265000 mcd ones from goldmine
i had them linked together and boom there went 15.00 $
i wish i could use my scope on it

any suggestions
i am using a 0.1 mfd cap now with still nice sparks

[Lidmotor]

HALO light on a AA ????

Ok, lidmotor .. My wish-list: light the circular florescent bulb with a 1.5v circuit !!!!!
(or has that already been done?)

No. I have not done that yet but I think that Slayer may have already --- with his big 2" toroid JT with a gazillion windings on the secondary.
I did get this circuit to "blink" a small FL but I could not get the brightness that I wanted and the rate was off. What I would like to see is a 60 hz rate and a full bright 8" round bulb. This circuit might be wrong for doing that.

Lidmotor

[Vortex]

@Kooler &All
I replicated this circuit with what I had on hand and found it very interesting. It was not an exact replication but I did get some pretty big sparks flying out of the ignition coil. There were two things that I found note worthy:
1) You can use a center tap transformer in the Joule Thief circuit ( I used a 12v-0-12v / 117v) and get the secondary winding to produce the
HV.

2) You can use a neon triggered SCR to oscillate the HV through a cap into an ignition coil to make BIG HV!!!

This is a fun circuit.

Thanks Kooler.

Lidmotor

Ok, lidmotor .. My wish-list: light the circular florescent bulb with a 1.5v circuit !!!!!
(or has that already been done?)

[Lidmotor]

Replication

i've only played with electronics for a year now so i bet you guys can make this better

@Kooler &All
I replicated this circuit with what I had on hand and found it very interesting. It was not an exact replication but I did get some pretty big sparks flying out of the ignition coil. There were two things that I found note worthy:
1) You can use a center tap transformer in the Joule Thief circuit ( I used a 12v-0-12v / 117v) and get the secondary winding to produce the
HV.

2) You can use a neon triggered SCR to oscillate the HV through a cap into an ignition coil to make BIG HV!!!

This is a fun circuit.

Thanks Kooler.

Lidmotor

[Watson]

Schematic

Vtech thanks a lot man , do you have a better quality version? if so ill upload it into the document with your credits my friend thanks for doing this, please send to [email protected]

Would someone add a 0.1 uF bypass capacitor across the power and ground pins of the 555 chip? It really needs it.

Also, take a look at the Fahnestock clips that I have used in this blog. They hold wires together and can reduce the clutter of long clip leads.