Big Joule Theif

[Lidmotor]

555CN timer

@Lidmotor:
I noticed that the CFLs start to fire when the voltage on the charging cap reaches around 37 Volts. After it has fired, the voltage on the cap would fall to something like 29 Volts and the CFL would stay on.
Interesting that you have found a CFL that fires right away.
I was trying to explain that with insufficient voltage for the CFLs to fire, maybe since the cap and the CFL are in a quasi-(one-wire) parallel connection sharing the positive of the supply battery,
but you proove with that, that this cant be the only explanation.
Good to see that you were managing to decrease the amp-draw significantly with the lower duty cycle.
Are you using the low power 555 (Texas Instruments TLC555) in that set-up?

@Xenomorph-----I am using a plain old Radio Shack 555CN part # 276-1723. Works great!! I really like the way this circiuit came together thanks to your improvement. The right bulb for this circuit is somehow important. I am not quit sure why. I may put another 100 turns on the toroid secondary and see if that makes a difference. It works the way it is but to get the charging to happen and the light to go on the way I want it, I have to use the 13 watt horseshoe bulb..

Lidmotor

[Xenomorph]

@Lidmotor:
I noticed that the CFLs start to fire when the voltage on the charging cap reaches around 37 Volts. After it has fired, the voltage on the cap would fall to something like 29 Volts and the CFL would stay on.
Interesting that you have found a CFL that fires right away.
I was trying to explain that with insufficient voltage for the CFLs to fire, maybe since the cap and the CFL are in a quasi-(one-wire) parallel connection sharing the positive of the supply battery,
but you proove with that, that this cant be the only explanation.
Good to see that you were managing to decrease the amp-draw significantly with the lower duty cycle.
Are you using the low power 555 (Texas Instruments TLC555) in that set-up?

[Lidmotor]

Xenomorph 555 timer---short duty cycle

@Lidmotor: If you are interested in possibly advancing the efficiency of the circuit even more, i can recommend you a 555 timer modification that allows for low duty cycles (<50%).
I have successfully replicated your circuit using a 15% duty cycle at 100 Hz without noticable flickering, just enough to energize the coil.
That should run on a third of the energy needed to run the 50% duty cycle at at specific frequency.
Comparisons in brightness need still to be made between 50% and 15% duty cycle, as i have directly started with the low duty cycle.
Hopefully there is not much of a brightness loss, it really comes down to trying it out.



The values i used:



You can read about how to achieve the low duty cycle here:
Design low-duty-cycle timer circuits - 8/22/2002 - EDN

and there is a handy excel calculator for the resistor values:

http://a330.g.akamai.net/7/330/2540/20080720173840/www.edn.com/contents/images/di2972.zip

a little vid of my replication: YouTube - PulsedInverterLowDuty

I hope this is of any use for you.

Regards,
Xenomorph

@Xenomorph-----I worked all day with the 555 circuit and made a few small changes but basically replicated what you did. I set it up initially exactly like you described and then worked backwards until I got the charging and light output balanced with the amp draw. I had to lower the R1&R2 resistance values. I decided to put a 75K pot with a 100 ohm resistor at R2 so I had some adjustment. R1 went to a 10K resistor. The rest of the circuit stayed the same.
This modification that you made to the "Pulsed Inverted Joule Thief" was a great help in reducing the power consumption. . Here is the video of it:

YouTube - Pulsed Inverted Joule Thief Xenomorph modifications



Lidmotor

[Xenomorph]

@ABCStore,
the information is in the article Design low-duty-cycle timer circuits - 8/22/2002 - EDN

The diode is connected in parallel to R2, it is needed to bypass R2 during the charging cycle to achieve the lower duty cycle.
R3 is not specified, i did not use a resistor to connect pin 4 to Vcc. as it is not part of the equation.

[ABCStore]

Xenomorph,

could you please decipher what value R3 is, what does "Use Diode" mean and where this D1 diode is connected to?

Thanks,
ABC

[Xenomorph]

555 Low duty cycle

@Lidmotor: If you are interested in possibly advancing the efficiency of the circuit even more, i can recommend you a 555 timer modification that allows for low duty cycles (<50%).
I have successfully replicated your circuit using a 15% duty cycle at 100 Hz without noticable flickering, just enough to energize the coil.
That should run on a third of the energy needed to run the 50% duty cycle at at specific frequency.
Comparisons in brightness need still to be made between 50% and 15% duty cycle, as i have directly started with the low duty cycle.
Hopefully there is not much of a brightness loss, it really comes down to trying it out.



The values i used:



You can read about how to achieve the low duty cycle here:
Design low-duty-cycle timer circuits - 8/22/2002 - EDN

and there is a handy excel calculator for the resistor values:

http://a330.g.akamai.net/7/330/2540/20080720173840/www.edn.com/contents/images/di2972.zip

a little vid of my replication: YouTube - PulsedInverterLowDuty

I hope this is of any use for you.

Regards,
Xenomorph

[Lidmotor]

Foil killing the &quot;Thief&quot;

WOW..Very Nice Lidmotor.

Very bright light I like that.
Did you notice when the foil tutches togeather it will about kill the JT or at least slow it down to nothing.

I thought that was strange.A small gap wouldnt affect it but as soon as both ends tutch it slows it down to nothing.

Yes I did notice that. In fact I thought that maybe I could "tune" the coil by moving the loop around or changing the shape but I it didn't work. It just changed the frequency or decreased the output. You are right-- if the loop came together it killed it completely on my circuit.

Lidmotor

[slayer007]

WOW..Very Nice Lidmotor.

Very bright light I like that.
Did you notice when the foil tutches togeather it will about kill the JT or at least slow it down to nothing.

I thought that was strange.A small gap wouldnt affect it but as soon as both ends tutch it slows it down to nothing.

[Lidmotor]

Slayer's aluminum foil on the toroid

Here's a short video of the joule thief running off a 1.5V battery.
It has a piece of aluminum foil around it one turn.
It will light up a 90v neon tutching the foil and holding one side for a ground.
With a rectifier attached to the foil and the other end going to an earth ground it will put out allmost 6v rectified.

YouTube - Joule Thief With One turn of aluminum foil

@Slayer-----I tried your idea of using a loop of aluminum foil around the toroid coil to pick up energy and it worked. I don't have as many windings on my secondary as you do so it put out less and the bridge rectifier/earth ground was only a couple volts so I didn't show it in the video. In the video I switched the circuit to a 13 watt (60 watt equivilent) CFL instead of the 24" x 20 watt flourescent tube. This produced very bright light and worked better with the charging part of the system.

YouTube - Pulsed Inverted Joule Thief Small bulb Big light

Lidmotor

[Xenomorph]

@stephenafreter : Thanks for sharing the link.

jonnydavro is certainly going into the right direction.
I hope he will one day get something running directly from the generator to see if that way higher power/work can be obtained from the JT circuit.
As of now he is only storing it in caps, but that is of course only his first experiments to proove his concept, really interested to see where he is getting with this. For sure Joule thiefs with their efficiency make an excellent DC generator driver.

[Jules Tresor]

Joule thief powered dc generator

Thanks Lidmotor and Slayer for your OPEN SOURCE sharing work
I'm sure you will tell us everything the day you find a way to get 1kw of free power for 10 days ... it's what we are all looking for so far.

It can change this world, and improve life of millions people, so it should be FREE knowledge.

Anyway after watching your great videos, I found this one where the Joule Thief is used to produce mechanical power = very interesting !
YouTube - Joule thief powered dc generator

Thanks again for your generosity and selfless attitude, that the way to win a good place in the afterlife !
Good luck,
MDG

[slayer007]

Thanks for posting your circuit Lidmotor.
That definitely looks like a must build.

Heres a little video I thought was neat.
Lighting a neon and LED wireless off the JT.

Just setting a neon by the JT it will light then I can light LED's off the neon.

YouTube - Joule Thief Lighting Neon & LED WireLess

[Lidmotor]

Nice video Lidmotor.

The amp draw looded very good for the light you was getting.

Yes. It puts out really good light depending on how much power you feed it. The voltage regulator helps alot in the adjustments to find out what it likes best. Here is a picture of the circuit.

P.S.-----CHANGE ON THE CIRCUIT---The .047pf caps should read .0047uf.

[slayer007]

Nice video Lidmotor.

The amp draw looded very good for the light you was getting.

[Lidmotor]

Pulsed Inverted Joule Thief---circuit diagram

@ Slayer --What you are getting off the toroid is kinda what I am getting with the Peltier module I think---Induction energy between the Earth and the coil. This is good stuff.

@lookingin---Here is the circuit diagram of the "Pulsed Inverted Joule Thief" that I put together with some of the things we have learned so far. Here also is a video that I made last night of the charging part of the circuit that I have been working on.

YouTube - Pulsed Inverted Joule Thief Part 2

Lidmotor