Joule Ringer V4 and practical applications

[sohei]

Greetings @all.

I am a newbie in here and also into the electronics world. I am just a very very curious man with my mind full of ideas.
Fausto convinced me to write and share my mistakes and my learning process, so here I am.

Yes, indeed on the video I am using an L7812 to regulate at 12v the Vin coming from a L317. I was using an very old potentiometer that was hard to keep the voltage, it was floating a lot. But with this build, 2 transistors, I was able to drive an empty 9w CFL with no circuit inside from 13v down to 5v, and the CFL was still bright enough to have enough light.

http://youtu.be/f7bZbdOErFY

This is the video with the details of the boxed SJR. I am still learning, I may have made few mistakes on this one. I am leaning by myself and by all of you that share your knowledge too.

Thank you Fausto.
Best regards to all.
Max

[TinselKoala]

Hey guys,


thanks for shime-ing in.


Sorry, in this video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvLYr9f9Mfc&list=UUxMsLEjmV_Ft0s4RoYJstUg&index=3&feature=plcp) he does uses 2 transistor which is very unique configuration (at least for me). I will show an schematic as soon as he allows me (I am not sure if it is his design completely or a variation that is already on the forum).


The uniques of the design is very shown on this video where you can see that he is controlling 2 pots to get the flow of energy distributed and at the same time reducing the amount of input power.


140+ LEDs with 12v and 80ma is very unique to me. Specially when the LEDS are fully bright. Don't you think?


Fausto.

Well, that's not the version that was in the first video you linked. This one does show 2 x 2n3055 transistors. I've looked at the image at 0:18 of the circuit in the box, traced it out as best I could (the connection to the transformer's "red" wires is unclear")  and it looks to me like the transistors are in strict parallel, with separate base potentiometer-fixed R for each one, and also an LED indicator running off the base pot for each transistor. There's a power "on" LED and a power switch.
I'd like to probe around in that circuit with a scope. Unfortunately all my 2n3055s are busy at the moment...  I've got one lighting a 90 volt neon NE-2 brightly on 0.84 volts input from a dead AAA battery in front of me right now ....

12 V 80 mA is nearly a whole Watt of input power. Divide that up by 140 LEDs and that gives almost 7 mW per LED average. A white LED can get pretty bright on 7 mW straight DC, but what's actually happening is that the LEDs are being pulsed with higher voltage at short on-times and high frequency. They can appear even brighter that way, than when driven by straight DC at the same average power.

It's a neat circuit and there is a lot of light there. I am curious enough about the effect of the two parallel (if they are parallel) transistors to want to build and explore this myself.

Maybe set it up in that simple Farnell circuit sim.

[plengo]

Note that I added pictures to the first post with more details about his design variation.

Fausto.

[TinselKoala]

Note that I added pictures to the first post with more details about his design variation.

Fausto.

Yep, that first one called "circuit_small" is just what I drew out from the video image at 0:18 of the boxed version under construction. Much neater than my drawing of course. The third pot varying the brightness of the 7s4p LED bank wasn't visible to me though so it got left out from my drawing.
So the power transistors are in parallel collector arrangement, both driving the same coil. That is interesting and like I said I'd like to look at the resulting waveforms, especially if the two transistors can be made to oscillate at different phases/frequencies.
Thanks for posting that schematic.
The further ones look like bridge rectifiers working off of line current to provide a DC source for a bunch of LEDs.
Lighting the CFL brightly  is the best result, I think. I have trouble with that, unless I disconnect one of the wires to the CFL and just use one wire. Then my CFLs light OK, on very low voltage inputs. But I'd like to get that kind of brightness on under 3 volts, and so far, no can do.
Got to get me some more power transistors!

[hartiberlin]

Hi All,
the latest video of Sohei is pretty interesting !

have a look  here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhHhV4qutyA


He seems to have a power  amplification effect  with the coils being
counter-parallel winded !

Regards, Stefan.