Lords of the Ring

[Rosphere]

Either you have performed Otto's little test of 7 months ago or you haven't.

Its is that simple really.



Lindsay

I am back from camping, my taxes are done, and I would like to get back into the swing of things by attempting otto's little test now.  (I was not a part of this forum seven months ago.)

I have his graphic that shows, "50 turns with the bulb, signal, +12V, and minus."  I also wrote down otto's additional information of 0.5mm diameter [20 AWG] stranded copper wire and IRF840 MOSFET.

It's just... just that I... well, it is embarrassing to point out but I am not sure how to connect the MOSFET into otto's schematic.  Can someone who has had success with this please expand upon otto's schematic to show me how to do this?

Is the signal ground connected to the minus of the bulb or not?

Another thing that I am unsure of is the capacity of the 12V.  Should I use a car battery with that kind of power, string together eight AAA batteries in series, or something in between?  Will one or more 9V batteries connected in parallel work?

[innovation_station]

@everyone this has been the best game i have ever played

it is turley amazing

i will be happy when my  sun is shinging bright 

the best ever

back to my work as i have much to do

the best of luck to all !!

[nong]

[Moab]

I'm having fun as well !

Build it test it show it when its done.

[Rosphere]

While I am waiting for the little coil test circuit and parts details, I decided to try some things myself.  I recycled one of the three core rings from my failed TPU_01.  It has about 300~400 winds of a thin mag-wire around a thick zinc coated iron ring.

Since I am not familiar with the MOSFET, I used my variable 555 timer circuit with a 9V battery.

When I followed Otto's circuit as best as I could, (with an extra normally-open switch between the coil and the +9V,) I found the following: on-switch caused the high frequency +square waves on my scope to go to a high flat line.  Then off-switch caused the waves on my scope to return... but not right away.  I found that the longer I kept the switch on, the longer it took to return to the higher frequency.  I counted seconds: two second of switch-on takes about four seconds to see the one cycle on my scope.  Four seconds of switch-on took eight seconds to return and so on.

In this same configuration above I removed my scope-probe from the timer and connected it to a solar-cell under my bulb, then under a cup to block outside light.  Switch on, the scope line drops about, oh 10%~15% or so.  Then switch-off, the scope line jumps to slightly above it's original position, by about 2%~5%, then comes to rest at the original position.

In another configuration I routed the signal through the coil only and then from the other end of the coil to the core and then from the other end of the core to the bulb and then to common timer ground.

With this second configuration the bulb was dim until I reached a narrow band of frequency/pulse width.  Within this narrow band the bulb blinked from dim to bright at a much much lower frequency than the pulses.

Interesting effects with both configurations.  Is one of these effects the Otto effect, or will I see his effect only after a rigorous 1:1 replication of his setup?