BREAKING : **~Imhotep~**'s Free Energy Radiant Oscillator Lite

[HEYDUDE]

The scope shots were posted. These are n:vision 14 Watt (60 equivalent) lamps made in China, sold by Home Depot, soft white 10,000 hr. life. I am in the US. I always double check the Kill-O-Watt meter with scope readings of phase lead or lag. Kill-O-Watt does read absolute value. I also have A General Radio phasemeter.

I also test the light output with a PHOTODYNE 33XLC CHOPPED LIGHT MULTIMETER. These are spot on at 700 Lumens @ 1 Meter.

I am currently playing with more advanced circuitry for PF correction. I will post any new findings ASAP.

Ah, just saw your traces, very nice btw Wink  Where on the circuit are you getting the current signal from? Just out of curiosiy what is the scope probe , x10 or x1 (interested in the impedance, 1M or 10M and if it has any effect).

Scope traces using X10 10 Meg probes. Current read across 0.10 Ohm precision noninductive resistor in series with lamp. I also read with current probes.
Regards...HD

[jibbguy]

Great thx for the answers. One more Q: Do you know if  your CFL is the kind that is "dimmable"? These appear to have totally different ballast circuits than the simple non-dimmables and would more match the shape of the current waveforms from what i have seen published, the others i have seen with non-dimmables are considerable more sinusoidal.

[HEYDUDE]

I have not explored the dimming question therefore can confess to lack of knowledge in this area. Nothing on the package indicates they are or are not. They are not too happy when put on a variac, so I would guess they need special circuitry.

I do have some large dimmable ballasts made by LUTRON for 48"tubes which I intend to play with sometime., and am good friends with an engineer that once worked in their design lab. I'll pass it by him.

[orbs]

Maybe some will find it interesting how controllers are used to get good PFC. Atmel has some docs about theirs on http://www.atmel.com/dyn/Products/tools_card.asp?tool_id=3925 (I guess this is a slightly different price class than low-budget CFLs from China).

[HEYDUDE]

ORB
Thanks for jogging my memory with that app note. Looks like you can only get so close with passive components and the trick is to use a boost regulator to charge the main V+ cap and modulate the pulse distribution. Now I remember reading some app notes on PF correction, but it was over 15 years ago.

I like a good challenge so I am going back to the bench to see how well I can approach PF =1.0 with strictly passive parts.

Regards..HD