Joule Thief

[Artic_Knight]

@Bill and All,

Thanks Bill, you are very welcome, glad I could help you.
After we hung up, I went back through the steps I had taken you through, took some photos of the wave forms and I will post them here to give you a better idea of what was hapenning at my end.

BTW, in the middle of this exercise, a bird decided to take a dive down my stainless steel chimney flue so I let it out at intermission, Bill could hear it flapping around in side the tubeing ha ha.

OK all, the following photos are mainly for Bills benifit, but they relate to the Joule Thief (basic model) so here is what I was seeing and describing to Bill, walking him through his/my CRO settings
These will not be identical to those that Bill saw, as we have different JT configurations, but will give an "indication" on what one should see displayed on their CROs.

In all waveforms, the earth lead is connected to the Battery Negative / earth reference point.
The CRO point, being set at X10.

The first 3 jpgs are the waveforms when the probe is connected to the Transistor Collector.
earth.

0787.jpg CRO probe connected on transistors emittor leg
0783.jpg = Volts/Div = 20mV         Time/Div = 1 uS
0784.jpg = Volts/Div = 50mV         Time/Div = .5uS
0785.jpg = Volts/Div = 10mV         Time/Div = .5uS

0786.jpg About the best I could do showing the layout of my CROs switch settings

0788.jpg CROs probe on transistors base lead
0789.jpg = Volts/Div = 50mV          Time/Div = 1uS
0792.jpg = Volts/Div =   5mV          Time/Div =.5uS

Bill hope these are of some help to you.

jim

TY this is actually some scope shots i wanted a while back! thanks! this will help me a lot!

[electricme]

@Altrez,
You are doing much better with your experiments, than I did with my setup, but I can see you are on the same plane of thought I have had previously.
This brings up a point I have noticed through out this thread, several of us here at times have been replicating without knowing someone else was thinking or had done a previous work, and it is almost identical, I think this is an indication that we are heading in the right directions.
Congrads Al on being able to recharge your batteries, that in itself is a big leep forward.

Wow we have almost the exact same setup! I have been running all night and its still charging How did you set your cap up on your pickup coil?

What type of motor did you run? Did it have a load? It seems like the winding has a lot to do with how well the toroid will perform.
Take Care,
-Altrez

The cap I used was a 35v DC 1000uF.
I wound a many many turns secondary and made a full wave bridge rectifier using 4 x 1N4004 diodes, the cap went on this output, then I soldered a switch (I just love switches) to the 12vDC CPU fan. When the cap charged up, I pressed trhe switch and the contents of the cap discharged into the fan.

I also experimented with trying to harness some radant energy by dumping the cap contents into a buzzer coil I modified, the coil worked, but not as well as I expected it to, but this has scope for further looking into.

This experiment I made was in the early days of this forum thread, no-one else at that time had progressed thus far and I suppose I just ran outa steem, speaking of steam, I wonder what IST is up to these days?

hooroo Al

jim

[electricme]

@ Artic-Knight,

You are more than welcome.

TY this is actually some scope shots i wanted a while back! thanks! this will help me a lot!

jim

[electricme]

@Bill,
Nice 1st scope shot Bill, although I think I replied previously, get to know the scopes settings, don't forget to jot them down to be used as a bench line in case you carnt find the magic trace line, don't worry, this has happened to the best scope drivers, even me.

@ All:

Here is a scope shot of my JT ferrite bead circuit.  Again, this is the 2n3904 with the 1k resistor on a ferrite bead.

Thanks again to Jim, who held my hand and led me to get these first scope shots.  (First of my life!!!)

Bill

Awww you is so kind Bill ha ha, seriously though, this is the only scope shot you will ever remember as it is your first one.

Just don't be in too much of a hurry to see what the ground telleric currents are doing, they will drive you bonkers trying to figure them out, I know I tried and gave up in the end, but this is where Al and Jeanna will have the edge over us, with their hand held scopes.

One minute they make sence, then right before your very eyes they alter all by them selves, the wave form gets bigger and bigger, then gets smaller and smaller, it can happen slowly, fast, or stay static. Real funny stuff this.
At lest when all you scope drivers are going troppo, trying to figure out earth battery stuff, I will have a little chuckle to myself, you will know what I was going through last year ROFL
   
Goodnight all, this has been a fun day 4 me, and I havent been able to play catchup yet, groannnn

jim

[Pirate88179]

@ Jeanna:

Thank you.  Yes, it is fun, but I also leaned that I have much more to learn.

Xee2:

Thanks for the explanations of Jim's scope shots.  That helps me "see" what is happening.


@ Jim:

Ah, the scope on the EB.  At first, I was going to take the scope outside for a try but then, I am now thinking that I can just add some heavy wire to the EB leads (only about 6 feet or so) and it will reach into the house.  I will have to give that a try just to see if I can see anything from it that makes sense.  Thanks again, you have given me a great start for learning this complicated device.

Bill