Big Joule Theif

[jeanna]

Thanks Rave154,

I have looked a little.
I can come back into the art of coils soon, but In my latest work I have been just using one coil to create pulses and then studying what to do with the pulses. The focus has been on what to do to make the pulses useful.

The joule thief is such an easy way to make a pulse generator... and for such little cost! 1.2v battery that lasts for days. Turn the resistor at the base of the transistor and the pulse changes. Add more turns around the toroid and the secondary has higher volts.
---

I saw something I like a lot on youtube (I hope I saved the link somewhere) where the presenter had made a rodin coil in a trifilar way. So, Instead of having 18 wires in a discreet grouping where each grouping is next to another grouping on either side, each wire was next to one from another wire on each side.

I saw where morpher44 made a rodin coil from a tuna can. I am glad to see I wouldn't have to buy a fisherprice donut to wind a toroid!.
MK1 who has made an amazing study of ways to wind great coils, made one on a ferrite toroid. That is the one I will look at before the others, because I know exactly what I would do with it!

At the moment I am taking a break from fruitless magnet spinning trying to make my bedini get started.

thank you . Rodin coil is a good suggestion,

jeanna

[rave154]

Jeana,

since you mentioned "toroid coil" i feel almost compelled to mention "Marko Rodin" , you may ( or not ) want to have a look at the Marko Rodin thread...might take youi in a direction you had never thought of.

David. D

[jeanna]

Ok guys and girls.

I have a quest for you.


Use one of your joule thiefs designed to run at 1-3v, the lower the better. It should work through transformer action, the secondaries voltage needs to be high. I believe the little transformers in flash cameras are 1.5v in 300 out?

If the secondary is 300v the one could use that to light up alot of LED's in series.... or another load like a neon perhaps, and you would have to be careful hooking up too little amount of LED's on the first run.

You should be able to get a decent amount back, these things put out a fair amount of light. Some pics below to illustrate.

Hi ren,
Hi everybody,

I know a few of you great people have seen my work at overunity and youtube.

I would like to reply to this, especially since I have been working on a bedini circuit for the last bunch o days.

It is easy to light one or even 2 fluoro tubes from a camera circuit.
Without gadgetmall's mods, this seems to run down my battery in 2 hours.

I find it more satisfying to make my own toroids, and, so, after I lit a pair of tubes (26 watts total) with a camera circuit in january, I worked at making the right kind of toroid etc. by hand.

I NEVER use the primary joule thief and everything I do ALWAYS comes from the secondary.

I forget the date but I think in june, I managed to light a straight 18 inch 15 watt grow light fluoro tube.
The trick was that I needed to get over 400v in this case 450volts .
The pulses went down as the volts went up (I find this is a normal thing) and they went to 5.6kHz. definitely audible.

This was with a very large toroid (3.25") and 240 turns on the secondary. There was plenty of room for more turns, but I had planned this number . Anyway, it worked. I only need to connect it up and snap a neo onto one lead for the light to go on. I can then remove the neo.
This light stays on for 5 1/4 hours. It goes out when the battery is at 1.1v.

Later, I lit a 4 watt fluoro tube with another hand wound toroid. This had 411v and about the same frequency, but the toroid was much smaller. I do not know why I couldn't get the bigger lights to start. They almost did, but only the 4 watt would start. I have put this circuit aside but it might only be that I was using a AAA instead of a AA. In any case the length of light was umm 2 hours or less and that is, of course, because the light was a AAA with 750mAH rating.

I have not tried to charge a solar panel with the light but I can't imagine it would be far off, but I am not into that aspect, so if you are... go for it.
I will get my other computer up so I can let you see the 2 toroids with fluoro tubes. [OK I did it].

Here is my youtube channel for anyone interested.

hmm that took it straight off my clipboard. just in case, I will simply paste it:

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=jeannacav&search_type=&aq=f

jeanna

[morpher44]

Joule-Theif-like circuits

I found this today...
shades of Joule-Thief:

TALKING ELECTRONICS LED Torch

[ren]

Ok guys and girls.

I have a quest for you.

I have pondered this for some time and now I see people starting to do it. Lidmotor just used his SEC 18-1 in a video and showed the LED's shining back onto a small solar panel.

My thoughts are this.

Use one of your joule thiefs designed to run at 1-3v, the lower the better. It should work through transformer action, the secondaries voltage needs to be high. I believe the little transformers in flash cameras are 1.5v in 300 out? Something along the lines of Freezers circuit, simple with low losses.

If the secondary is 300v the one could use that to light up alot of LED's in series. around 80 or more. It may need to be regulated somewhat, capacitance, resistance or another load like a neon perhaps, and you would have to be careful hooking up too little amount of LED's on the first run.

If someone is going to do this then look on ebay for the LED's. Id suggest some ones I got, large 10mm ones 140,000 mcd super bright, 50 for $20. Dr Stifflers unit ran 48 of them very bright for a pittance.

So the goal would be:

Low voltage oscillator, high voltage secondary.

As many large super bright LED's in a series or parallel configuration as possible. Preferably on one solid board, breadboard perhaps to start with, closely spaced.

And finally see how much you can recover with a solar module. You could get a 1.5 or 3v 500ma module pretty cheap, or you could use a 12v module and add some form of regulation for the low voltage oscillator. Perhaps throw in a cap or super cap on the output of the solar panel and see if one can do the switch or recharge the primary. You should probably throw a bridge rectifier in off the solar as well, maybe not if it has internal diodes etc.

So, who is up for the challenge? I know some of you already have most of this stuff laying around, Ive been meaning to get to it for some time myself, but you know how it goes. All work and no play...

You should be able to get a decent amount back, these things put out a fair amount of light. Some pics below to illustrate.

Regards

[eternalightwithin]

Is this the best version and have the guys tested out the greyed part of the circuit used for extra battery charging?

Edit: I'll take it that people haven't been able to replicate the resonance/radiant systems explained in freenergy.uk 's Chapter 10 PDF?
Why else have Stanley Meyer Explained and S.M. the True threads?

[Watson]

Guys still going strong here and providing fan power and light and conditioning batteries .

i dont think you need 2 toroids but here they are as we are using them ATM. This is just the Schemo out of the video.
Imageshack - panaceajoulethiefschema

Ash

In the schematic, there is an extra wire that should not be between the input and output of the 7812 regulator. It's jumpering the input and output, so the unregulated 12V is connected to the regulated 12V output of the 7812.

I'm not sure which of the wires should be removed. I'm thinking that the power to the toroids' A1 windings should come directly from the unregulated 12V, because it's high current, and doesn't need to be regulated. The others I'm not sure. Should the wire with the two 1k resistors in parallel be connected to the unregulated 12V or regulated?

[Watson]

Guys still going strong here and providing fan power and light and conditioning batteries .

i dont think you need 2 toroids but here they are as we are using them ATM. This is just the Schemo out of the video.
Imageshack - panaceajoulethiefschema

Ash

I also noticed that there is no bypass capacitor across the 555. A bypass capacitor is really important here. See the 555 datasheet for details.

I saw that the power input was 12V unregulated. This is then fed into a 7812 12 volt regulator chip. It's important that the input to the regulator must be at least 2 to 3 volts greater than the output. If it drops below that, then the regulator will no longer regulate.

[Watson]

No I don't think the wire is longer with honeycomb.
I was able to get a 250uH coil with only about 20 turns or so.
It was quick, easy, and they look nice.
The resistance was less than 2 ohms.

The resistance is the problem, too much I squared R losses. Two ohms begins to drop an excessive amount of voltage at currents more than a few hundred mA. A toroid with 6 to 10 turns of 24 AWG wire might have an inductance of 100 to 300 uH and a DC resistance of much less than a hundred milliohms.

Also, the amount of stored energy is equal to one half of the inductance L times the current I squared (skip down to stored energy here). So it's better to reduce the inductance and increase the current, since it goes up as the square of the current. (Also see the Q factor section at the above link.) Stored energy is what you want, because every time it oscillates, the JT transfers the inductor's stored energy from a lower voltage to a higher voltage.

[morpher44]

honeycomb

I've never experimented with honeycomb coils. But they are still air core, and it looks to me as if the wire is longer than it would be for a straight air core coil. So I would think that the resistance would be greater. One thing is certain: there is no problem with core losses.

No I don't think the wire is longer with honeycomb.
I was able to get a 250uH coil with only about 20 turns or so.
It was quick, easy, and they look nice.
The resistance was less than 2 ohms.

[Watson]

For Joule Thief, it think it is worth experimenting with "air coils" such
as honeycomb and spider web, and also just plain Tesla-style bifilar flat spiral coils.

The spiderweb and honeycomb have that wire-crossing
caduceus coil thing going on, which might have unknown
anomalies -- scalar waves???

Ferro material & Iron suffers from hysteresis, which can eat power unless you have a very nice material with a good B-H curve.
Air responds quicker -- and is "free" (for now anyway).
Wire is abundant from old junky equipment.

The Joule Thief is ALMOST self running and the battery can
possibly be removed and replaced by power pulled from
the VLF and AM radio spectrum ... and air coils are the
way to go for that ... with high Q.

I think it would be most impressive to make a Joule Thief that
runs on NO batteries.

Best of success on the no batteries. I've built several JTs with no batteries. Problem is that it requires a bit of elbow grease from the user to make it light.

I've built more than a dozen JTs with air core coils, lately the one I used to 'wirelessly' power the LED.

I see some differences between a toroid and an air core JT:

* The permeability of the air core is one (unity).

* For a given amount of inductance, the number of turns of the air core has to be greater.

* The greater number of turns means the wire is longer.

* The longer wire means the coil has greater resistance, and hence greater "I squared R" losses.

* If I try to lower the losses, I have to use heavier wire.

* Heavier wire means the coil is much bigger. And even with heavier wire, the Q of the coil is still lower because of the higher resistance compared to a toroid.

I've never experimented with honeycomb coils. But they are still air core, and it looks to me as if the wire is longer than it would be for a straight air core coil. So I would think that the resistance would be greater. One thing is certain: there is no problem with core losses.

[Watson]

Guys still going strong here and providing fan power and light and conditioning batteries .

i dont think you need 2 toroids but here they are as we are using them ATM. This is just the Schemo out of the video.
Imageshack - panaceajoulethiefschema

Ash

I noticed that below the 555, the 4.7uF capacitor, pins 2 and 6 and resistor are mistakenly connected to ground. I'll keep my eye out for further errors.

BTW, my browser is having to block popups from that obnoxious Imageshack. Popups are nothing but a nuisance. Try FOTKI - it's free.

[dllabarre]

Hi Lidmotor, thanks for reply. I tested the inverted JF circuit with the 555 timer varying the on time of the joule thief and it improved things a bit with some less heating in transistor. However, so far the best setup I have tested is using a 555 timer to pulse a regular small transformer that I think came from a drill charger. So I'm pulsing the low voltage side to make it a step-up transformer and it works very well. At 300 milliamps there is no heat discernible in the transistor and much more light at same amp input compared to the joule thief. I would imagine it may be possible to put a cap on the primary pulsed winding to get it to resonate and gain efficiency. For what its worth.
peace love light
Tyson

Can you post a schematic with component values, toroid wire sizes and number of turns so I can reproduce?

Thanks,

[ashtweth]

Guys still going strong here and providing fan power and light and conditioning batteries .

i dont think you need 2 toroids but here they are as we are using them ATM. This is just the Schemo out of the video.
Imageshack - panaceajoulethiefschema

Ash

[morpher44]

honeycomb experiments.

What improvement is this going to have over a conventional air core coil?

With a small compact coil, especially with a ferrite core, the length of wire needed for a certain inductance is less, and the resistance is lower. It takes dozens of feet of wire to make a 100uH coil on an air core, even more for a honeycomb coil, and the resistance might be more than a dozen ohms. I can wind a 100 uH coil with a foot of wire on a ferrite core, with a DC resistance of less than a tenth of an ohm.

The special coils such as honeycomb coils are great for high impedance circuits such as receivers, but for low impedance, the ferrite core coil has the lowest resistance.

Oh, BTW, instead of honeycomb, it would be easier to wind a spider web coil, where the coil form is a flat piece of wood or fiberboard with notches cut around the outside edge.

For Joule Thief, it think it is worth experimenting with "air coils" such
as honeycomb and spider web, and also just plain Tesla-style bifilar flat spiral coils.

The spiderweb and honeycomb have that wire-crossing
caduceus coil thing going on, which might have unknown
anomalies -- scalar waves???

Ferro material & Iron suffers from hysteresis, which can eat power unless you have a very nice material with a good B-H curve.
Air responds quicker -- and is "free" (for now anyway).
Wire is abundant from old junky equipment.

The Joule Thief is ALMOST self running and the battery can
possibly be removed and replaced by power pulled from
the VLF and AM radio spectrum ... and air coils are the
way to go for that ... with high Q.

I think it would be most impressive to make a Joule Thief that
runs on NO batteries.