Joule Lamp

[NickZ]

  Is that like the towel phenomenon.  Might be related?

   I also fried my share of transistors, as they will only take so much. To the trash pile the Tip31, the 2n3055, and over 20 of the 2n2222. I can't even replace them through the Shack here as they are out of stock.  This was being careful, but... my last 2n2222 when up in smoke last night. I'm having to use PNP3906 for now, backwards polarized, they work, but not as well.
  So, the transistor is of course the critical part of the Exciter circuit, which to my way of thinking are related like brother and sister,  to your LS type circuit, as they are all solid state Tesla stuff.
  Both Slider and myself and on this like a cat following a mouse.

  Hope that you guys reach a conclusion, as to what can be done. I've seen that 10 volts is much easier on the transistors, but, their base voltage may not be all there is to this. And each battery that I've used works differently, some produce more heat, and some transistors also heat up more than others. Balancing transistor heat, to maximum output is tricky, to say the least.

   I can't measure the pulsed output voltage correctly, but I'm getting a neon to light up brightly off the towers, (both sides of the neon, might be AC?) and my circuit will light all the leds and CFL bulbs that I place on it. But, the CFLs are sometimes hard to light, and are not 100% totally lit up.  Gutted CFLs are easier to light by "kick starting", using a 4700mf capacitor, which is what I'm working on now. 
  I'll buy some of the Led bulbs sometime soon like you all are using, but since I have several gutted CFLs I'm making use of them, for now. I've never really liked the light given off by the regular CFLs, but this is different somehow, and each bulb has a different quality to it, also.  Rather ghostly at times...  plus they will never burn out.

   Great work guys...

          Thanks again.
                                   NickZ
 

[Lynxsteam]

Here is an excerpt from wiki in regards to Tesla coils and the more recent "flyback" transformer. 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_coil

_{^{The Tesla coil is an early predecessor (along with the induction coil) of a more modern device called a flyback transformer, which provides the voltage needed to power the cathode ray tube used in some televisions and computer monitors. The disruptive discharge coil remains in common use as the ignition coil[48][49] or spark coil in the ignition system of an internal combustion engine. These two devices do not use resonance to accumulate energy, however, which is the distinguishing feature of a Tesla coil. They do use inductive "kick", the forced, abrupt decay of the magnetic field, such that a voltage is provided by the coil at its primary terminals that is much greater than the voltage that was applied to establish the magnetic field, and it is this higher voltage that is then multiplied by the transformer turns ratio. Thus, they do store energy, and a Tesla resonator stores energy.}}

We are kind of playing with a hybrid of the flyback circuit and some features of Tesla's work.  Resonance is not necessary because these are closely coupled coils. 

[NickZ]

  Resonance is necessary, for the optimum results to be achieved. We can still plug along without the use of resonance, but can 100 or even 1000 leds or more be lit on 12v, and hardly no amps. That's what we are trying  to find out. There may be more to this than just voltage and amps, and frequency.  WATTLESS Current, is what I'm looking for.
The devices like the Av plug can read this type of current, it may be just Radio Frequencies, but it may not be.
  Dr. Stiffler may have the answer by now, as I don't think that he stopped at just lighting a few leds with no battery, or any other power source. 

  All Tesla coils up to now had to be fed from a separate source, but that may soon change.
  Resonance is what makes up for all the draw that most components put on a system.
  It's also why I love your one transistor circuit. 
  Can it also be done without the transistor, and without a battery?  Yes???

[JouleSeeker]

Lynx noted:

since this is a blocking oscillator you will get high voltage spikes.  These spikes can be further accentuated by voltage amplification in the secondary.

This seems correct to me and is the reason why I think we have to be more sophisticated than simply measuring Vrms and Irms and multiplying these together in an attempt to get the OUTPUT power measurement.  These high-voltage spikes are not likely to be correctly handled in a multimeter trying to estimate Vrms, for example, AND I expect some of the time that the output voltage and current will be OUT OF PHASE further complicating the calculation.

There are two solutions to this that I can think of, which should allow for an accurate measurement of the OUTPUT power.  (PS -- input power is relatively easy to measure, since it is basically DC.)

1. Continue to use LED bulbs as currently designed.  Use a fast DSO scope to measure V(t) across the output in channel 1 and I(t) across a known carbon resistor in channel 2 -- and multiply these together in real time to get P(t) = V(t) x I(t).  Then integrate P(t) to get the total output energy over a time interval T.  (You can then divide E/T to get the average output power.)

2.  Use calorimetric methods as I've discussed previously; although this is more difficult with LED bulbs as currently used.  It may be POSSIBLE to run the entire circuit including LED bulbs in a large calorimeter and then over time, as the heat comes out of the LED bases, transistor, etc., one can get the integrated total output energy. 

Meanwhile, we have lots of light per watt!  and that in itself is an important goal.

[JouleSeeker]

  Hmmm... over at the EF thread on Don Smith devices, I saw this today -- sure looks like a good thing to try with the LLL circuit (see attached).

  The idea is to use the current circuit to STEP V UP, then use a step down transformer on the output.  And see what happens!