Joule Lamp

[NickZ]

    @ LynxSteam:
    I just watched your earlier videos on building and lighting the Joule Lamp with the gutted CFL on 12v 100- 200 mA, instead of using the 120v led bulbs, as in your later videos. As I had not seen them before, it was very informative, especially showing how the 2n3055 will take the 12v direct even without using a diode or resistor. That is just what I needed to see.
  My Joule Lamp is a bit different, in that it is a wireless Slayer type Exciter circuit,  that uses no direct connection to the Cfl bulb. The idea was to see how many CFLs it would light. But, I found that with each added bulb the Exciters output was shared between them, and so the light intensity was not really increased, as I was hoping.

  When watching your video today, I saw that you were lighting two CFLs, at around 200 mA, so considering that you are lighting two bulbs that total about 23 watts (at normal input), I was fairly impressed with only needing about 200 mA or so from a 12v source to get that intensity of useable light. Even though my circuit uses much less input than that. Your comments today which you just made, give me even more hope that an even lower consumption rate can be achieved without even needing the transistor.

  Radio Shack here does not have the 2n3055 in stock, so I'm limited to using what I can scrounge up. But, I'll see what I can find to replace the smaller type transistors, so I can use the 12v battery, or Ac to Dc wall adaptors, instead of being limited to 4 to 10 volt batteries, and their correspondingly lower light intensity from the CFL type bulbs. Which is probably only 1/4 of the CFLs normal brightness.
I was trying to use the smaller transistors, to try to obtain a smaller mA draw, but I see that it is not possible with my circuit, at least not yet.
A cell phone charger with 6.4v, and 350 output is what is working best for me so far with my current setting, and which produces no heat. It is running my lamp all night long, but only as a nightlight. Still very nice to have even at that lower but still useful brightness.

[Lynxsteam]

Nick,

You can parallel your transistors to spread the load between them.  Each transistor will be wired like twins.  Then run a 1 ohm resistor from base to base to make sure each transistor gets an equal voltage/amperage signal.

I am doing this with my large aircore and it works very well.  The transistors run cold.

By the way.... what qualifies as overunity when it comes to power in and light energy out with these devices?  This large aircore pulls very little power and yet the LED bulbs are like the sun - you can't look at them when on.  On the low setting the amp draw is .654 for two bulbs and they are intensely bright.  That's 4.25 watts each.  (These bulbs would run on 8 watts off mains power.)  Makes me think that scaling this concept up could do some startling things.

I also ran an experiment lighting the 120 vac bulbs with 2.7 vdc (2 AA batteries).  Lights brightly.  Proof that the high voltage spikes at high frequency are there as long as the transistor fires.

[NickZ]

    LynxSteam:
   That all sounds great. The scaling of your coil's output over several additional bulbs may really pay off. 
The180mA you were consuming when lighting a single CFL when using 12v, and only 20 to 28mA higher when using two CFl  bulbs, would indicate that each additional bulb is using very little additional current. Worth looking into further. Dollar store sells CFLs at $2 each, or 5 for $10, instead on only ONE equivalent Lumens output Led bulb for the same price.

  Funny thing on my set up, when trying to read the voltage at the transistor the most it shows is about 20v output, when using 5 volt input, yet the neon bulb is lighting all over the place. So, I know there's some higher voltage spikes happening, even though I can't read them on my volt meter.  It's Ac, as both sides of the neon are lighting fairly bright.
 
Where or how do you connect your meter to read the current been used by the device?

[Lynxsteam]

Nick,

I use an amp meter between the battery and positive lead to the circuit.  You can also put a volt meter across the battery terminals.  These two readings multiplied give watts input.  It is very difficult to accurately measure output from a blocking oscillator.  That's why experimenters measure light output or the work done on output and then guess at volts x amps.  This guessing is what gives rise to theories about over unity, radiant energy, aether......

If you measure at the transistor you will see all sorts of readings.  The meter is trying to get a reading on a moving target.  It may average what is happening.  The one consistent reading I see is the DC bias voltage between base and emitter.  Its usually about 2.5-3.9 vdc for LED bulbs.  That makes sense because that is the voltage drop for LEDs.

You are doing what everyone else does.  If the Neon lights you know rms is at least 50-60 volts.

My experience with exciters was that the circuit would use the most power when it wasn't doing any apparent work.  Then adding florescent tubes, power would stabilize , then drop slightly, drop more and then the tubes would get dimmer as more were added.  There is an optimal power draw off an exciter.

I don't like the exciter circuit except for novelty and fun.  To practically light a room its too finnicky, bulbs are dim, positioning is sensitive, and transistors run hot because of really high frequency.  I also worry about that much rf.  I have been burned by the output off one wire and don't know what prolonged exposure might do.  The radar range (microwave oven) was discovered by radar operators who heated their lunches on the transmitter control circuits.

[NickZ]

  LynxSteam:
  Thanks for the info.  The difference is that an Exciter circuit is an open circuit device, beside what you've mentioned, is the possibility of getting it to work on very little current. Dr. Stiffler has gotten them to draw practically nothing, but they are not as practical to operate as closed systems, for the reasons you've already mentioned. Once their spacial coherance resonant point is reached, they can out do most any other types of oscillators/coil device. But that is not an easy thing to achieve without thousands of dollar in test equipment. If done properly adding more bulbs means higher output, not lower shared output. But, there is a couple of  tricks involved in SERIES connected Leds.
There is not much magic involved in connecting a regular transformer backwards, or winding an E-core,  to connect a battery or power supply to light bulbs, as efficient as they might be. As a closed system is limited, unless using solar, but still the solar system's batteries are the limiting factor. Once China catches on, we'll probably be buying them for a few bucks, or even cheaper than we can build them ourselves. Such as their Solar 100 Led Christmas lights strings for $10, plus shipping.
I do like the idea of not depending on transistors, as they are the bottle-neck due to the heat issue, in trying to obtain greater output, and adding more components only causes  more resistance. Tesla did not use them, to obtain his results.
  All in all your system is the most practical to use for now.

  NickZ