Need help identifying/replicating capacitor to DC circuit

[Goat]

@ All

I posted the following on the Jule Thief thread earlier today but would like to know if anyone else on the forum knows of a circuit that does the following:

@ All

Just ran across this little article where a small wind turbine is used to charge up a capacitor and power an electric toy car at
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/08/wind_turbine_to_1.php .

Since we can charge up caps to hundreds of volts in a small amount of time using the JT or Fuji circuits it seems to me that if a circuit like the one used in this toy car to convert the potential in the capacitor to drive a small DC motor could be used to slowly bleed off the cap back to the input side, couldn't it?  If so then the small amount of power needed to drive the JT or Fuji circuit could load many more caps if they were in parallel to the first cap, then we'd get even more energy to play with.

Anyone know of a circuit to slowly bleed off a cap at a certain voltage, say 1.5 to 12 VDC?

Anyways, just a thought.

The main reason I'm starting a new thread is so that it doesn't derail the JT thread and to expose it to all EE's on this OU forum that could help. So, if anyone knows of this type of circuit and could post a schematic on how to replicate the circuit it would be greatly appreciated.


Regards,
Paul

[jadaro2600]

http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=ja&tl=en&u=http://www.loopwing.co.jp/en/entop.html

Looks like a loopwing!

Children are too impatient for this type of device, you might as well buy them a kite.

[Goat]

@ jadaro2600

Thanks for the reply but the question was, do you know of this circuit and how it functions in taking the voltage from a capacitor and slowly leaking it to a dc motor or dc circuit?

Regards,
Paul

[weri812]

Hello Paul

just ordered this toy  be here in 7-14 days  will let you know

God Bless
wer

[jadaro2600]

There is most likely a resistor bridged with a diode.  This would allow current to flow more easily in than out (so to speak).

There may in fact be a battery there in it's place - this would allow for a longer duration voltage controlled expenditure.

The diode in question may be a zener diode, activated by a transistor.   The above person may be able to shed a little light on this matter.

I recently took apart a plane that you mount on a battery charger - and it spins up and maintains quite a charge.

The circuit in this particular plane isn't that complicated - it looks like this:  The one you have pictured is more likely got a few more parts to it.