Single AA battery to light WHITE LED for long-long time

[amigo]

@Feynman,

Hmm, as far as I can tell that circuit worked, but it is an older version and I might have made a mistake when I was converting from the proto-board setup to a circuit schematics. I apologize if this caused you inconvenience and trouble getting it working.
You are right that the driver leads need to be reversed in order for the setup to work. Button is used to kick the circuit in because it would not self-oscillate on its own upon power for me, but then again the setup was not reversed to begin with...

The circuit works, I will put a photo into the next post...

@Marco,

Thanks for the details, so basically we can use the motors as spark gap for our present setup since our voltages for LEDs are no-where near HV?

[turbo]

Hi Amigo

Well i guess so....
The mechanical spark between the two rotating needles of the motors produces a diffrent effect then the micro HV spark gap.
The resistance between the two rotating needles is constantly changing in a noisy fashion.
It's like a bad connection that never comes to a good pathway.
It has a certain smell when it is going and so does the micro spark gap but this is more likely ionization and ozone production.

Basicly i use 3 methodes to get to intresting results.
These are:

1. mechanical - moving parts in the circuit.
2. spark gap   - involves voltage to pass the threshold.
3. bemf          - pulse a coil with a low voltage signal and collect a high voltage bemf spike.

Methode one is grosly inefficient as you need power to drive the motors and it's mechanical so the parameters are changing all the time, it's not stable.
Methode two is hard to tune and some of the energy is lost in the form of heat, it also reacts to the environment like humidity and dust.
Methode three is best because there are no moving parts but it is sensitive for leaking, if there is some capacitive coupling the energy will be gone in a nanosec and even holding a wire destroys the effect.
In all three methodes the goal is to create a point of charge diffrence between a point in the the setup and a point in the environment.
This is like creating a sink so the energy starts to flow in.
Much like punching a hole into a baloon so the air comes out.
This charge diffrence is needed because we and everything around us is charged to the same potential.
We are sitting on only one plate of the gigantic capacitor.
So we can:

1. Take a wire up to the end of the ionosphere and connect it to the other plate (not pratical and quite dangerous)
2. Establish resonance (also not practical as we look into the sizes of the wavelengths)
3. Create a pressure diffrence.

Now pressure diffrences are evreywhere, and when they get too big it just flashes over between the plates in the form of lightning.
The pressure zone is electric (ambient potential), but as soon as it discharges by lightning, the energy is radiated away in magnetic form.(Schumann-Resonance).

M.

[amigo]

Ok here are the photos, I've just put the circuit together quickly and it works.





The circuit will work either with reversed or not-reversed driver leads, but in my configuration (straight connection) it appears to use ~600uA less (through battery) than with the reversed connection. It depends what frequency it clocks in I guess so it probably means nothing and we can ignore it...

The LED is extremely bright and it's daytime here - you simply cannot look at the LED directly above or you'll get burn image in your eyes after a few seconds.

[sanmankl]

Hi,

I build the circuit following Groundloop's schematic (trifilar) and after testing it with various npn transistors, this is what I found out.

This circuit is driving 9 5mm white LEDs. No matter how many LEDs I put in (I only have 9), the amp remains the same. I would have thought that the more LEDs I hook it up, the dimmer it will be. It doesn't. Is this normal?

- 2N3904, lowest current comsumption at 30mA. LEDs. Dimmest but still bright enough to see "white" and not green tint when it's not enough power.
- 2222A, higher comsumption at 65mA (tried another 2222A, it goes up to 75mA)
- BC548, 2nd lowest at around 60mA
- BC337, highest at 80mA

Frequency as suspected, changes with various transistors.lower frequency, lower current consumption.

Right now, I'm putting the circuit (2N3904) to on test-run for time until battery runs flat (it's a NmH 1V2 batt). So far, it's running for 4 hours. Too early to tell anything.

Cheers, cp

[amigo]

Marco,

Thank you for the break-out of the methods, I just wonder why some people still prefer spark gap over pulsing the coil...there's lots of talk about hydrogen spark gaps, etc...

Also, if we were to encase the micro-gap into a glass ampule and (partially) evacuate the air wouldn't that prevent atmospherics from interfering with it?