Another update, part 3, on the unity motor using two AA batteries to recharge four AA batteries while at the same time powering a motor. All four batteries that are recharging were completely drained before the experiment, and now each read at 1.400 volts. And motor is still spinning fast. Its been 58 hours run time for the motor at the making of this video. http://youtu.be/0Ae62f2luQw (http://youtu.be/0Ae62f2luQw)
Excellent demonstration Steven,
This process is well known in the electrical industry, but much information is kept from the public awareness, for the sake of economic value of the resource.
almost all of our electronics ( Joule Thief excepted, among a few others) waste a great deal of electrical current, that simply passes through the circuit to ground.
In the U.S., the power companies know this, and take advantage of it.
This is evident in the return-path circuit that takes the (ground) current, and redistributes it on the grid for "re-use".
[Note: That you are metered and charged for this electricity, even though it is not "used", there is no reverse meter.]
When we run current through our devices, the energy that is not directly consumed by the electronics, or wasted as 'heat',
continues along its' path to the ground of the circuit.
This current, as you have shown here, can be intercepted, and recycled.
Quote from: sm0ky2 on March 17, 2015, 09:31:22 AM
almost all of our electronics ( Joule Thief excepted, among a few others) waste a great deal of electrical current, that simply passes through the circuit to ground.
In the U.S., the power companies know this, and take advantage of it.
This is evident in the return-path circuit that takes the (ground) current, and redistributes it on the grid for "re-use".
[Note: That you are metered and charged for this electricity, even though it is not "used", there is no reverse meter.]
I ask, with apologies for not researching first, is there a way to 'keep' all the power you pay for? In other words intercept the return power before it leaves your house and either use it or store it? Maybe put up a fake solar panel and grid-tie it back and get paid for it. :) There are a few methods for using power 'now' to be used 'later', such as batteries, thermal storage, etc.
It's mine, I paid for it, ya ain't getting it back! Seems too simple doesn't it?
Quote from: stevensrd1 on March 17, 2015, 08:44:46 AM
Another update, part 3, on the unity motor using two AA batteries to recharge four AA batteries while at the same time powering a motor. All four batteries that are recharging were completely drained before the experiment, and now each read at 1.400 volts. And motor is still spinning fast. Its been 58 hours run time for the motor at the making of this video. http://youtu.be/0Ae62f2luQw (http://youtu.be/0Ae62f2luQw)
Hi stevensrd1. What type of electric motor are you using, and what voltage is it rated for? Is it a 3V DC motor?
Brushless or with brushes?
When you charge batteries, the terminal voltage on the batteries being charged can quickly climb up to near their
nominal charged value, although the batteries will still be far from fully charged. You need a way to test how
charged the batteries are after you remove them from your charging circuit, such as connecting a load to them
and timing how long the voltage takes to fall down to a certain voltage under load. Compare that discharge time
down to a certain voltage to the time it takes a fully charged battery of the same type and under the same load to
discharge down to the same voltage. Comparing the discharge time to a fully charged battery this way with the same
load should give you a half decent comparison of how charged your batteries really are. Have you tried something like this?
All the best...
Quote from: tak22 on March 17, 2015, 12:54:31 PM
I ask, with apologies for not researching first, is there a way to 'keep' all the power you pay for? In other words intercept the return power before it leaves your house and either use it or store it? Maybe put up a fake solar panel and grid-tie it back and get paid for it. :) There are a few methods for using power 'now' to be used 'later', such as batteries, thermal storage, etc.
It's mine, I paid for it, ya ain't getting it back! Seems too simple doesn't it?
hmm.... I'd say "possibly",.. but im not exactly sure how you would go about doing that. Should probably talk to someone that is familiar with the 110V, 60Hz architecture.
If you look at your circuit panel where the mains comes in, theres 2 lines (in) from the pole,
This is run in series (110 and 110) to support both normal appliances and high voltage (220) [dryer,sometimes fridge, etc]
the 3rd wire (out) (usually a different color) feeds back into their system.
the earth-ground is grounding the case to earth, as a fail-safe, and to keep the box from gathering a potential voltage.
The 3-prong outlets have a tie-in to this earth ground.
In theory, you could stick a power transformer in-line on the 3rd wire (out) and store the energy in a battery bank, so it doesn't feed back into the grid.
But, I would definitely seek professional advice before tampering with that system.... It's fairly dangerous if you don't know what you're doing.
hope this helps.
@ VOID
go check out stevens videos on youtube. That's exactly what hes doing in his process.
He charges the batteries up in parallel,
then he will switch them out and use the charged batteries through the cycle again to re-charge the first ones
Documenting the run-times of each as he goes.
Taking what he says at face value, it sounds like he's doing a thorough job at testing this in his process.
Quote from: sm0ky2 on March 17, 2015, 09:31:22 AM
Excellent demonstration Steven,
This process is well known in the electrical industry, but much information is kept from the public awareness, for the sake of economic value of the resource.
almost all of our electronics ( Joule Thief excepted, among a few others) waste a great deal of electrical current, that simply passes through the circuit to ground.
In the U.S., the power companies know this, and take advantage of it.
This is evident in the return-path circuit that takes the (ground) current, and redistributes it on the grid for "re-use".
[Note: That you are metered and charged for this electricity, even though it is not "used", there is no reverse meter.]
When we run current through our devices, the energy that is not directly consumed by the electronics, or wasted as 'heat',
continues along its' path to the ground of the circuit.
This current, as you have shown here, can be intercepted, and recycled.
Neither voltage nor current by itself is power. The voltage potential dropped across a circuit branch multiplied by the current that drop drives through the branch is the power applied to the branch. The current from the hot lead (barring a leakage issue which is a safety problem) returns through the neutral lead. The hot to neutral is a single circuit branch with a single voltage across it, and a single current through it. The analog power meters that are in the process of disapppearing use a clever design that spins at a rate that results from multiplying the voltage and current to obtain the real power.
Quote from: MarkE on March 17, 2015, 05:39:26 PM
Neither voltage nor current by itself is power. The voltage potential dropped across a circuit branch multiplied by the current that drop drives through the branch is the power applied to the branch. The current from the hot lead (barring a leakage issue which is a safety problem) returns through the neutral lead. The hot to neutral is a single circuit branch with a single voltage across it, and a single current through it. The analog power meters that are in the process of disapppearing use a clever design that spins at a rate that results from multiplying the voltage and current to obtain the real power.
correct
The voltage is whatever is on the line and what drops across the circuit implemented. that's either measured or assumed to be there.
Its the current that passes through and out the other side that we are concerned about. Much more goes through the circuits than is necessary.
(Total Voltage - voltage Drop through branch) * current = wasted power returning through ground of circuit?
that may not be a complete analysis of all the energy consumed, but should give an idea of what to look for when recycling unused power in your circuit.
A lot of it has to do with the duty cycle of our devices, which is why a Joule Thief inserted into a circuit increases the efficiency of almost everything. But a return circuit, such as shown by steven, can make use of some of our wasted energy.
utter nonsense. There is no 'wasted power' in the system. This is similar to Morin's garbage.
Quote from: sm0ky2 on March 17, 2015, 07:02:03 PM
correct
The voltage is whatever is on the line and what drops across the circuit implemented. that's either measured or assumed to be there.
Its the current that passes through and out the other side that we are concerned about. Much more goes through the circuits than is necessary.
What makes you think such a thing? The current in and the current out are one in the same. There is a small amount of voltage drop in the wiring resistance that causes wasted power.
Quote
(Total Voltage - voltage Drop through branch) * current = wasted power returning through ground of circuit?
Unless you have a dangerous ground fault, the voltage is the voltage from hot to neutral, the current flow is from hot through whatever is running in your house and back through the neutral. The voltage drop across the resistance of your house wiring has to be kept small so that the neutral line voltage remains near earth potential for safety reasons.
Quote
that may not be a complete analysis of all the energy consumed, but should give an idea of what to look for when recycling unused power in your circuit.
It looks like an incorrect analysis to me.
Quote
A lot of it has to do with the duty cycle of our devices, which is why a Joule Thief inserted into a circuit increases the efficiency of almost everything. But a return circuit, such as shown by steven, can make use of some of our wasted energy.
JT's don't necesarily increase efficiency. Many JT's operate at poor efficiency. A JT is a circuit that allows one to extract energy from a nearly discharged battery.
We as people are not even aware of what we waste.
Its' not so much wasted , its' how we use it.
I can recharge batteries , but to what end?
The batteries will die.
Change the way you look at things, The standard doesn't work, use the rise and fall...
Use the inherent force of the magnet , requires an external force..
A falling magnet provides this force , gravity provides to make the magnet fall.
Put some coils on the sides of the falling magnet and produce power..?
Waste not want not!
artv
Quote from: stevensrd1 on March 17, 2015, 08:44:46 AM
Another update, part 3, on the unity motor using two AA batteries to recharge four AA batteries while at the same time powering a motor. All four batteries that are recharging were completely drained before the experiment, and now each read at 1.400 volts. And motor is still spinning fast. Its been 58 hours run time for the motor at the making of this video. http://youtu.be/0Ae62f2luQw (http://youtu.be/0Ae62f2luQw)
What did you find in your experiments with this in 2011?
And again we come to the issue of wastage of backspike TOTAL energy.total backspike energy will be high volts and lowish amps.it is pointless to cram 100 volts of backspike into 4 volts worth of batteries as almost all the power is lost as heat this way.those 4 batteries will be nowhere near fully charged in amp-hours even though they show full volts
Quote from: MarkE on March 17, 2015, 07:38:15 PM
What makes you think such a thing? The current in and the current out are one in the same.
What is it you think you are measuring? V * I is not the power consumed by the device, it is the power allowed to flow through the circuitry (resistance?)... these are two entirely different concepts.
Quote
There is a small amount of voltage drop in the wiring resistance that causes wasted power.
Yes, this generates heat and EMF, This voltage drop * current = some of the power we cannot recycle. i.e. - part of that which is consumed.
Quote
JT's don't necesarily increase efficiency. Many JT's operate at poor efficiency. A JT is a circuit that allows one to extract energy from a nearly discharged battery.
"many" - these are probably JT experimenters or replicators that don't know what they are doing....
a JT is a type of Armstrong self-oscillating voltage amplifier, designed to be operated as resonant frequencies.
It can be operated by ANY low-voltage/low-current source,
"dead batteries" are simply a convenience. It can also run off of an earth battery, or the voltage potential build up a metal desk your computer sits on, an aerial, or any other various source...
The efficient function the JT performs, is lowering the duty cycle, while performing the same amount of "work".
Which, does in fact, inherently increase a circuits efficiency.
This is demonstrated by operating a wide array of devices, at maximum device operation, using less than the standard power requirements for said device.
The increase in efficiency, is described as being the result of removing the excess part of the duty cycle, in the devices normal operating condition, that is not part of the work function of the device.
This is directly related to power recycling, because this excess portion of the duty cycle is part of what is wasted, by passing through the circuitry.
Quote from: sm0ky2 on March 18, 2015, 09:49:54 PM
What is it you think you are measuring? V * I is not the power consumed by the device, it is the power allowed to flow through the circuitry (resistance?)... these are two entirely different concepts.
Where did you get such a idea? Instantaneous power is the product of instantaneous applied voltage and instantaneous current. Over any interval: Energy is the time integral of the applied power. Over the course of any cycle where a load absorbs energy during part of the cycle and releases energy back to the source over another part of the cycle, the real energy consumed by the load is the difference between the energy absorbed, and the energy released back to the source. This difference appears mathematically as voltage applied to a resistance. The average power consumed by the load is the energy consumed by the load divided by the duration of the time interval of the repetitive cycle.
Quote
Yes, this generates heat and EMF, This voltage drop * current = some of the power we cannot recycle. i.e. - part of that which is consumed.
You are confused. See above.
Quote
"many" - these are probably JT experimenters or replicators that don't know what they are doing....
there is a lot of that in OU land.
Quote
a JT is a type of Armstrong self-oscillating voltage amplifier, designed to be operated as resonant frequencies.
It can be operated by ANY low-voltage/low-current source,
It is designed as a regenerative amplifier. The original JT still requires at least one V
BE from the source to start.
Quote
"dead batteries" are simply a convenience. It can also run off of an earth battery, or the voltage potential build up a metal desk your computer sits on, an aerial, or any other various source...
The efficient function the JT performs, is lowering the duty cycle, while performing the same amount of "work".
Which, does in fact, inherently increase a circuits efficiency.
JT efficiency is limited by: switching losses- how fast the transistor switches on and off which is a function of the GBW of the one transistor used, and the switching speed of the LED load, and conduction losses in the transistor and the transformer secondary. Efficiencies in the 50% to 60% range are common.
Quote
This is demonstrated by operating a wide array of devices, at maximum device operation, using less than the standard power requirements for said device.
That's meaningless word salad.
Quote
The increase in efficiency, is described as being the result of removing the excess part of the duty cycle, in the devices normal operating condition, that is not part of the work function of the device.
That is more BS word salad.
Quote
This is directly related to power recycling, because this excess portion of the duty cycle is part of what is wasted, by passing through the circuitry.
That is so much nonsense. A JT alternately stores energy in the magnetizing inductance of the transformer, and releases that energy into the load which is usually an LED. The finite turn-on, and turn-off times of the JT oscillator transistor, and the finite recovery time of the LED load scale the amount of cross conduction and switching loss each cycle. The coupling between the transformer secondary and the transformer primary results in regenerative feedback that helps reduce the transistor turn-on and turn-off transition times, which helps reduce switching loss.
@ MarkE
The "salad" is from tossing your brain around with things you seem to have a hard time comprehending.
As you stated yourself, the energy is "being released back to the source". <- this is the key point.
Because when we measure current, we assume this energy being "used", when it is in fact NOT!
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In the Joule Thief example:
The Armstrong oscillator was invented in 1912 by Edwin Armstrong, and has undergone over 100 years of technological advancement.
The "original" JT device, was derived from a specific test unit invented by Steven Mark, in 1997, as a demonstration of his "TPU", or Toroidal Power Unit. It was debuted publicly in 1999 in a magazine called Everyday Practical Electronics, and was NOT in fact the original schematic, but a user-friendly, dummed-down version, designed for the idiot to make at home.
I say this, to state the importance of resonance in that particular circuit being the operational condition. Therefore, analysis of a non-resonant JT, it is by definition, inefficient.
The voltage requirements of the device are a function of the transistor and the transformer, there is no "1v minimum" as you are trying to imply, but rather a very wide range of power requirements, depending on the circuit design.
Here is one I made, operating from an Earth Battery, at 0.86V - this was blinking 8 LED's and has a lot of inefficiencies.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrrFsiMXrvA (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrrFsiMXrvA)
also: Use of an LED in a JT circuit is not part of its construction, but rather a usable 'load' to demonstrate that power is actually being drawn through the circuit. We can see the light !!
And- you must include the energy of these photons in your efficiency calculations.
Furthermore, to speak in terms of "switching" of the LED, is a farce, because in most applications that use an LED, the transistor is switching at a rate well beyond the response time of the diode, and the LED never actually "turns off".
i.e. it does not stop emitting photons before the next pulse arrives, giving it a truncated negative side of the square-wave.
(generally the biased 0-line of waveform analysis gives us a positive value at the "off cycle")
The "power recycling" effect, utilizes the collapse of the magnetic field through the inductor, to send some of the energy back through the transistor, instead of draining more power from the source. This lowers the total energy over time consumed by the circuit.
The "original" Joule Thief used an electrolytic capacitor as the voltage source, which was recharged each cycle, through the transformer. The capacitor slowly drained over time, through the losses in the circuit. In resonance, it operated at efficiencies over 90%.
This was analyzed using an oscilloscope, to observe its operation. The LED was added later, as a load, and to visualize the effect.
The JT threads can give you more information if you are interested.
Sm0ky2:
I hate to tell you this but you have been smoked out. You are saying a lot of silly things about electricity and Joule Thieves that are not true. You can learn a lot from Mark and others around here. That's my suggestion to you.
MileHigh
QuoteI say this, to state the importance of resonance in that particular circuit being the operational condition.
A Joule Thief doesn't even resonate when you use the standard definition of that term. It would be more appropriate to say that it has an operating frequency determined by the values of certain components.
Quote from: sm0ky2 on March 19, 2015, 07:27:00 AM
@ MarkE
The "salad" is from tossing your brain around with things you seem to have a hard time comprehending.
As you stated yourself, the energy is "being released back to the source". <- this is the key point.
Because when we measure current, we assume this energy being "used", when it is in fact NOT!
Power absorbed by a branch is the product of voltage across and current through that branch. It is no more and no less. There is no assumption involved.
Quote
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In the Joule Thief example:
The Armstrong oscillator was invented in 1912 by Edwin Armstrong, and has undergone over 100 years of technological advancement.
The "original" JT device, was derived from a specific test unit invented by Steven Mark, in 1997, as a demonstration of his "TPU", or Toroidal Power Unit. It was debuted publicly in 1999 in a magazine called Everyday Practical Electronics, and was NOT in fact the original schematic, but a user-friendly, dummed-down version, designed for the idiot to make at home.
I say this, to state the importance of resonance in that particular circuit being the operational condition. Therefore, analysis of a non-resonant JT, it is by definition, inefficient.
JT circuits are well documented and they are not resonant power converters.
Quote
The voltage requirements of the device are a function of the transistor and the transformer, there is no "1v minimum" as you are trying to imply, but rather a very wide range of power requirements, depending on the circuit design.
JT circuits will not start with a supply voltage less than one Vbe. Vbe for common NPN transistors at room temperature is around 0.6V.
Quote
Here is one I made, operating from an Earth Battery, at 0.86V - this was blinking 8 LED's and has a lot of inefficiencies.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrrFsiMXrvA (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrrFsiMXrvA)
also: Use of an LED in a JT circuit is not part of its construction, but rather a usable 'load' to demonstrate that power is actually being drawn through the circuit. We can see the light !!
And- you must include the energy of these photons in your efficiency calculations.
Shall we remove the LED as see how long your typical 2N2222A transistor survives?
Quote
Furthermore, to speak in terms of "switching" of the LED, is a farce, because in most applications that use an LED, the transistor is switching at a rate well beyond the response time of the diode, and the LED never actually "turns off".
Common LEDs readily turn on and off at in one microsecond or less. For JT's operating under several hundred kHz the LEDs completely extinguish.
Quote
i.e. it does not stop emitting photons before the next pulse arrives, giving it a truncated negative side of the square-wave.
(generally the biased 0-line of waveform analysis gives us a positive value at the "off cycle")
The "power recycling" effect, utilizes the collapse of the magnetic field through the inductor, to send some of the energy back through the transistor, instead of draining more power from the source. This lowers the total energy over time consumed by the circuit.
That's more word salad. The positive feedback of the transformer wiring to the transistor helps square up the transistor transition times, reducing switching loss in the transistor. But the price to get there on the turn-off is saturation of the magnetics, which depending on the magnetics can be quite soft resulting in poor efficiency.
Quote
The "original" Joule Thief used an electrolytic capacitor as the voltage source, which was recharged each cycle, through the transformer. The capacitor slowly drained over time, through the losses in the circuit. In resonance, it operated at efficiencies over 90%.
If this "original" JT circuit is different than the well-documented JT circuit found in many references, then I would need to see a schematic in order to comment on its likely efficiency. The power source being a capacitor or a battery or a power supply is not germane to much of anything other than the run time, and losses in the ESR of the source.
Quote
This was analyzed using an oscilloscope, to observe its operation. The LED was added later, as a load, and to visualize the effect.
The JT threads can give you more information if you are interested.
Quote from: MileHigh on March 19, 2015, 08:15:02 AM
A Joule Thief doesn't even resonate when you use the standard definition of that term. It would be more appropriate to say that it has an operating frequency determined by the values of certain components.
On the contrary, the proper design of the JT circuit, is such that the resonant frequency of the inductor (i.e. ceramic toroid)
and the operating frequency of the transistor (controlled by the resistance) should be the same
or resonant octaves of one another.
To do anything else, is absurd, as you are fighting against the induction and field collapse each cycle, increasing losses in the system. If you do not understand this ( as many JT experimenters don't) then you are just playing around with the JT circuit.
You can make reference to a million erred replications of the JT, like the ones used in college demonstrations, or found on the "How to Make" websites, which do not discuss circuit resonance.
However, historically (for those who were not participatory in the process), this circuit is derived from a resonant SM TPU device.
Wherein the operating frequency of the components are necessarily and inherently resonant.
This is how the power is recycled.
If the waveforms are non-resonant octaves, it will result in an additional energy loss by destructive interference.
This can be observed on the scope, as the spike from the field collapse collides with the on/off switching of the transistor.
If mark can bring his JT into resonance, he will see the scope image will look a lot cleaner.
The lack of understanding in this area is why there is so much confusion over the JT, and thousands upon thousands of pages in this and many other forums, describing varying results.
But, to relate this back to the topic at hand:: The goal is to feed the energy that passes out of the load, back INTO the circuit,
or lead it off to another circuit to be further used, without increasing the losses in the system, or to decrease said loss.
and before you comment or state that it is not possible,
I urge you to think about where this energy is going after it leaves the load, and why.
Follow the energy in circuits shown in the battery recharging videos. And look at what is happening after it leaves the motor.
Now, look at a simple circuit with a resistor and a battery, that uses a given amount of energy over time.
How does this compare to a circuit with a battery and a capacitor that uses the same amount of energy to charge the cap?
In the second example, where does this energy go? can it be "reused" ??
Quote from: sm0ky2 on March 19, 2015, 09:04:14 AM
On the contrary, the proper design of the JT circuit, is such that the resonant frequency of the inductor (i.e. ceramic toroid)
and the operating frequency of the transistor (controlled by the resistance) should be the same
or resonant octaves of one another.
Did you inhale deeply before you wrote that?
Quote
To do anything else, is absurd, as you are fighting against the induction and field collapse each cycle, increasing losses in the system. If you do not understand this ( as many JT experimenters don't) then you are just playing around with the JT circuit.
You can make reference to a million erred replications of the JT, like the ones used in college demonstrations, or found on the "How to Make" websites, which do not discuss circuit resonance.
However, historically (for those who were not participatory in the process), this circuit is derived from a resonant SM TPU device.
Wherein the operating frequency of the components are necessarily and inherently resonant.
This is how the power is recycled.
JT circuits do not recycle
energy.[qutoe]
If the waveforms are non-resonant octaves, it will result in an additional energy loss by destructive interference.[/quote]Did you pay extra to take a course in bafflegab?
Quote
This can be observed on the scope, as the spike from the field collapse collides with the on/off switching of the transistor.
If mark can bring his JT into resonance, he will see the scope image will look a lot cleaner.
My JT???
Quote
The lack of understanding in this area is why there is so much confusion over the JT, and thousands upon thousands of pages in this and many other forums, describing varying results.
But, to relate this back to the topic at hand:: The goal is to feed the energy that passes out of the load, back INTO the circuit,
or lead it off to another circuit to be further used, without increasing the losses in the system, or to decrease said loss.
and before you comment or state that it is not possible,
I urge you to think about where this energy is going after it leaves the load, and why.
You are sounding more and more like a complete put-on.
Quote
Follow the energy in circuits shown in the battery recharging videos. And look at what is happening after it leaves the motor.
Now, look at a simple circuit with a resistor and a battery, that uses a given amount of energy over time.
How does this compare to a circuit with a battery and a capacitor that uses the same amount of energy to charge the cap?
In the second example, where does this energy go? can it be "reused" ??
Energy that has not yet been used cannot be reused. Storing energy does not use that energy.
Quote from: MarkE on March 19, 2015, 09:37:20 AM
My JT???
I'm sorry,.. did you post a scope image of SOMEONE ELSES JT ?? how can you pretend to know the operating conditions being observed?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interference_(wave_propagation) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interference_(wave_propagation))
Quote
Energy that has not yet been used cannot be reused. Storing energy does not use that energy.
Yes, but both are equivalent energy values drained from the source (battery).
In one example, the unused portion of the energy returns to the source, in the other, the threshold prevents the energy from making a complete cycle, and instead stores it in the capacitor.
Now, combine the two, but adjust the values of R and C, such that total E remains constant.
Now you are both using energy, and storing it in a manner that does not return to the source.
examine this, using the known equations for heat loss and power consumption through a resistor.
with respect to the "stored" energy left in your capacitor.
And you will begin to get an idea of how "power recycling" can take place.
Quote from: sm0ky2 on March 19, 2015, 09:04:14 AM
On the contrary, the proper design of the JT circuit, is such that the resonant frequency of the inductor (i.e. ceramic toroid)
and the operating frequency of the transistor (controlled by the resistance) should be the same
or resonant octaves of one another.
To do anything else, is absurd, as you are fighting against the induction and field collapse each cycle, increasing losses in the system. If you do not understand this ( as many JT experimenters don't) then you are just playing around with the JT circuit.
Nope, what you are saying above is wrong, and "not even wrong."
You need to put aside the "teaching mode" and switch over into learning mode. I am not going to make the effort to teach you how a Joule Thief works, I ran out of gas for doing that. However, if you were wise, you would be trying to understand what MarkE is telling you and then do a bunch of background reading and researching and learning and Googling.
Your statements are counterproductive and you are just "imprinting" stuff on other people that will set them off on the wrong path when it comes to electronics.
How a Joule Thief actually works is pretty cool, and can teach you quite a few things about electronics. What is vague in your mind is what actually happens when the inductor discharges and the LED flashes. You have to get down to the bare bones of how a coil really and actually works. It appears to me that you don't understand that because you keep on throwing the word resonance around. You have to understand how power and energy flow. These are among several tings that you have to cover to truly understand what a Joule Thief is doing.
MileHigh
@ MileHigh
http://www.vishay.com/docs/49782/49782.pdf (http://www.vishay.com/docs/49782/49782.pdf)
scroll down to about page 4/8, it will describe the resonance of the ferromagnetic core.
The coil will also affect this to some lesser degree, but the ideal condition is generally a factor of the response time of the ceramic material.
Steven Mark was not an idiot just soldering together random components....
He carefully planned his devices to be intentionally resonant. That is why the original JT's operated for months at a time, using an electrolytic capacitor, and NOT a battery.
"what makes the JT work" is simply the boosted voltage. The voltage of a "dead battery" is too low to turn on the transistor, and the diode, thus boosting the voltage enables us to turn it on. This is not the proper use of the circuit, as it was intended.
Using it in this manor, is just a 'parlor trick'. "hey look! I can still use this dead battery!"
That's not the way its supposed to be made.
In either case, the power sent through the diode, returns to the beginning of the cycle to some degree, and a portion of this is recycled.
You linked to a pdf about inductors. I am assuming that you are referring to the stuff about the self-resonant frequency which I clipped out of the pdf and attached to this posting.
That self-resonance property of inductors has nothing to do with the operation of a Joule Thief.
That illustrates a common problem of making false connections just because they "sound cool." Inductors have a self-resonant frequency. So what? Does this property of inductors come into play in circuit design? It would be safe to say that this property of inductors is never used in circuit design. Certainly it is never considered in the design of a Joule Thief circuit. They are completely unrelated.
So you can see an example of the problem. Somebody tells you that a Joule Thief works better with "resonance." (Which is wrong.) You see some educational material about the self-resonance of inductors and you put the two things together. There is no connection.
I will repeat: The way a Joule Thief works has absolutely nothing to do with the self-resonance of an inductor. The two things are not related to each other in the slightest.
So you need to go back to the electronics drawing board with a fresh outlook, a clean slate.
Quote from: sm0ky2 on March 19, 2015, 09:45:40 AM
I'm sorry,.. did you post a scope image of SOMEONE ELSES JT ?? how can you pretend to know the operating conditions being observed?
I posted a schematic of an archetypical JT. We have on this planet a thing called circuit analysis. It is taught in institutions called colleges.
Quote
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interference_(wave_propagation) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interference_(wave_propagation))
That's nice, and completely irrelevant.
Quote
Yes, but both are equivalent energy values drained from the source (battery).
Energy can be transferred to storage. That process does not consume the energy. There is no first use placing the energy into storage. Therefore there is no reuse when the energy is finally dissipated.
Quote
In one example, the unused portion of the energy returns to the source, in the other, the threshold prevents the energy from making a complete cycle, and instead stores it in the capacitor.
There is no threshold. There is no energy cycle.
Quote
Now, combine the two, but adjust the values of R and C, such that total E remains constant
Now you are both using energy, and storing it in a manner that does not return to the source.
More bafflegab.
Quote
examine this, using the known equations for heat loss and power consumption through a resistor.
with respect to the "stored" energy left in your capacitor.
And you will begin to get an idea of how "power recycling" can take place.
All you are doing is talking through your hat using meaningless bafflegab.
QuoteIn either case, the power sent through the diode, returns to the beginning of the cycle to some degree, and a portion of this is recycled.
There is no energy recycled, period. If you disagree with me then I challenge you to put up a circuit and associated timing diagram and show on the timing diagram how the energy is recycled.
sm0ky2, LISTEN to what Mark and MH are saying. As a electronics professional with > 50 years of practical experience, these two can (and do) teach me a lot, but you have to be receptive to being taught. You are not.
Quote from: MileHigh on March 19, 2015, 10:32:29 AM
That self-resonance property of inductors has nothing to do with the operation of a Joule Thief.
Go read Steven Mark on this issue, he designed the devices to operate at resonant frequencies, and resonant octaves thereof .
And the performance run-time can be easily doubled (or more) by this action.
Compare the results of a resonant JT to that of a non-resonant one. The evidence speaks for itself.
To think that interference "has nothing to do with" the efficiency of a circuit, is one of the reasons our circuits are inefficient to begin with.
Go study the power levels of a signal transmitted up the metal of a radio broadcast antenna.
There's a reason why sitting next to all of them, is a large transformer series, wasting power to do NOTHING OTHER THAN get rid of the extra built up power caused by the constructive interference of signals traveling the length of the conductor.
Without this excess energy used to destroy the built-up potential of the waveform, it would destroy the antenna and the circuitry because of power overload.
Power = I * V, an increase in voltage results in a much greater power level at the same current.
Two resonant oscillations combine into one, being of greater amplitude (V). That is what constructive interference does.
Take a jump rope and tie it to a tree, then move your hand up and down in a consistent motion.
you will quickly see the rope building up a wave greater than your movements initially provided.
This is what happens in the resonant circuit. Losses are decreased by sending an unused portion of the wave back through the transformer at the right time.
Quote from: memoryman on March 19, 2015, 11:19:09 AM
sm0ky2, LISTEN to what Mark and MH are saying. As a electronics professional with > 50 years of practical experience, these two can (and do) teach me a lot, but you have to be receptive to being taught. You are not.
Thank you mem, I respect a lot of what Mark teaches, as I learn from him as well,
but on this point It seems like he is refusing to acknowledge a simple concept that is well known and proven, even in engineering schools. It is not however, often implemented in practice. ( in fact we do the reverse most of the time)
There may be economic factors involved, or simple ignorance based on inherited methodology....
I'll give you another example of this gross misconception...
JT is a fad, and it took off before people understood what it was doing. Thus, they ignore much of what the original device did.
The Tesla Coil::
there are thousands of tesla coil replications.
But what most people don't realize is that Tesla designed this as a RESONANT circuit.
He meticulously engineered each coil to be resonant at a specific frequency.
Then carefully adjusted his spark gap to bring the entire circuit into resonance to achieve optimal efficiency.
Replicators today completely ignore this....
which results in a much greater power consumption to achieve the same result.
Quote from: sm0ky2 on March 19, 2015, 11:34:02 AM
Go read Steven Mark on this issue, he designed the devices to operate at resonant frequencies, and resonant octaves thereof .
Using made up terms such as "resonant octaves" betrays your put on.
Quote
And the performance run-time can be easily doubled (or more) by this action.
Sure: Using imaginary methods can easily double the performance of arbitrary circuits. It can also cure baldness.
Quote
Compare the results of a resonant JT to that of a non-resonant one. The evidence speaks for itself.
First there would have to be one of each to compare.
Quote
To think that interference "has nothing to do with" the efficiency of a circuit, is one of the reasons our circuits are inefficient to begin with.
Go study the power levels of a signal transmitted up the metal of a radio broadcast antenna.
Now you are conflating RF power coupling with operation of circuits using lumped elements. Tell us all about interference in structures that are electrically tiny fractions of a wavelength.
Quote
There's a reason why sitting next to all of them, is a large transformer series, wasting power to do NOTHING OTHER THAN get rid of the extra built up power caused by the constructive interference of signals traveling the length of the conductor.
How does that work when the circuits are all electrically small compared to the shortest wavelenght involved?
Quote
Without this excess energy used to destroy the built-up potential of the waveform, it would destroy the antenna and the circuitry because of power overload.
Power = I * V, an increase in voltage results in a much greater power level at the same current.
In order to get quarter wave effects, there must first be a structure that is electrically a quarter wavelength long. 1/100
th or less of a wavelength doesn't cut it.
Quote
Two resonant oscillations combine into one, being of greater amplitude (V). That is what constructive interference does.
No, superposition means that you get two side-bands: one at the sum frequency and one at the difference frequency.
Quote
Take a jump rope and tie it to a tree, then move your hand up and down in a consistent motion.
you will quickly see the rope building up a wave greater than your movements initially provided.
So?
Quote
This is what happens in the resonant circuit. Losses are decreased by sending an unused portion of the wave back through the transformer at the right time.
This is just more BS. A resonant network stores applied energy in alternating forms. Resonant circuits can massively increase losses.
Quote from: sm0ky2 on March 19, 2015, 11:46:10 AM
I'll give you another example of this gross misconception...
JT is a fad, and it took off before people understood what it was doing. Thus, they ignore much of what the original device did.
The Tesla Coil::
there are thousands of tesla coil replications.
But what most people don't realize is that Tesla designed this as a RESONANT circuit.
He meticulously engineered each coil to be resonant at a specific frequency.
Then carefully adjusted his spark gap to bring the entire circuit into resonance to achieve optimal efficiency.
Replicators today completely ignore this....
which results in a much greater power consumption to achieve the same result.
This is yet more BS. The spark gap in a Tesla coil acts as a medium to high voltage switch. The operating frequency is controlled by the parameters of the inductance and capacitance of the Tesla coil elements. The switch physical dimensions determine breakdown voltage and power capacity.
Quote from: MarkE on March 19, 2015, 01:27:28 PM
This is yet more BS. The spark gap in a Tesla coil acts as a medium to high voltage switch. The operating frequency is controlled by the parameters of the inductance and capacitance of the Tesla coil elements. The switch physical dimensions determine breakdown voltage and power capacity.
Hmm......
Someone didn't read their Tesla......
The spark gap, via the break-down voltage controls the FREQUENCY of the discharge.
which is (should be set to ) RESONANT with the LC coil properties.
i.e. switch timing.
This is the same function the transistor performs in the JT circuit.
You still deny this, I can throw these examples at you all day, you are just blinding yourself to the most obvious fact in electronics, which was made evident to us at the beginning of its' history...
http://powerbyproxi.com/wireless-power/ (http://powerbyproxi.com/wireless-power/)
On resonant octaves (harmonics)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sympathetic_resonance (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sympathetic_resonance)
Quote
A resonant network stores applied energy in alternating forms. Resonant circuits can massively increase losses
Of course it can. Resonance can be made to decrease efficiency, exactly the inverse of how it can increase efficiency.
we have a forum for that too....
www.underunity.com (http://www.underunity.com)
Sm0ky2:
From time to time on the forums you encounter people that either pretend or believe that they know a lot about electronics or they "fake" that they know a lot about electronics. The problem is is that you really can't get away with that. It's just impossible to do that because there is a large body of knowledge out there to absorb, and just "dropping buzzwords" or trying to leverage what you know into areas that you don't know is basically impossible. When someone is doing this they tend to reveal themselves very quickly. Usually within five or less points made, they are revealed.
It looks to me like you believe that you know what you are talking about. But again, you just can't accumulate bits of pieces of stuff that you have read, even if you have been doing it for a long time, and then "proclaim" to yourself that you know what you are talking about. Also, if you have been accumulating a lot of information about electronics from the free energy forums, that information is often wrong, so you end up accumulating a corrupted view of how electronics really works.
A Joule Thief is just a timing circuit designed to switch a transistor on and off fairly quickly, along with an inductor that gets energized and discharged trough an LED. That's all that it is, nothing more than that. It's a switching circuit, sometimes referred to as a pulse circuit.
When the transistor switches on, the inductor gets energized. When the transistor switches off, the inductor discharges through the LED. There is no resonance at play here, just on and off switching. It doesn't even make any sense to switch the transistor on and off at the self resonant frequency of the inductor. That is "not even wrong."
So, you need to hit that old "reset button" and realize that whatever "system" you have accumulated in your mind about electronics is both wrong and lacking in a lot of information.
There are some people around here that really really know their stuff and you would be wise to listen to what they have to say.
MileHigh
Quote from: sm0ky2 on March 19, 2015, 03:15:43 PM
Hmm......
Someone didn't read their Tesla......
The spark gap, via the break-down voltage controls the FREQUENCY of the discharge.
which is (should be set to ) RESONANT with the LC coil properties.
i.e. switch timing.
The dimension of the spark gap impact the
repetition rate based on the power supplied to the input. That is because the gap width sets the voltage at which the break down occurs. This is completely independent of the LC resonant frequency. The driving oscillator at the input needs to drive at or close to the LC resonant frequency.
Quote
This is the same function the transistor performs in the JT circuit.
You still deny this, I can throw these examples at you all day, you are just blinding yourself to the most obvious fact in electronics, which was made evident to us at the beginning of its' history...
The JT circuit does not have a resonant tank. The circuit is a variation of a blocking oscillator. The frequency depends heavily on the saturation flux of the transformer and the supply voltage. The JT transistor on time gets longer and longer as the battery voltage drops.
Quote
http://powerbyproxi.com/wireless-power/ (http://powerbyproxi.com/wireless-power/)
On resonant octaves (harmonics)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sympathetic_resonance (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sympathetic_resonance)
There is no sympathetic resonance occurring in a JT. "Resonant octaves" is a term of your invention. An octave is a 2X frequency relationship. Harmonics can be any integer. You are either doing a put on routine, or you are completely out of your depth.
@ MileHigh
if you don't understand how the resonance effects the charging / discharging of a ceramic ferromagnetic core, air-cores, or other such inductive coupling effects, why are you arguing against such action?
I'm not here to argue back and forth about silly misconceptions.
There are thousands of references to this, I can only read through so many, but
don't take my word for it, see what others far beyond the scope of my knowledge have to say
[Now - some of this is applied to "wireless transmission", but for all intensive purposes, the transformers we are discussing use an inductive coupling and there is no direct electrical connection, so the information applies to both Tesla and JT.]
Here's what some of the best universities and institutions on the face of our planet have to say on the issue.
http://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/45429/317879200.pdf (http://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/45429/317879200.pdf)
http://rfic.eecs.berkeley.edu/142/pdf/book_chap7.pdf (http://rfic.eecs.berkeley.edu/142/pdf/book_chap7.pdf)
http://cdn.intechopen.com/pdfs-wm/26759.pdf (http://cdn.intechopen.com/pdfs-wm/26759.pdf)
http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1182&context=eeng_fac (http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1182&context=eeng_fac)
This discusses fluorescent lamp ballasts, so the circuitry is double to accommodate bi-directional current from an A/C signal
but the same applies to a simplified circuit
http://ecee.colorado.edu/copec/paper_archives/designofresonant_may2007.pdf (http://ecee.colorado.edu/copec/paper_archives/designofresonant_may2007.pdf)
This one is a long read, mostly talking about applications specific to their device, but Chapter 4 has a nice explanation pertinent to our discussion
http://www.ksp.kit.edu/download/1000036098 (http://www.ksp.kit.edu/download/1000036098)
here is a rep from Microchip Technologies, discussing the process in an edition of Power Electronics magazine
http://powerelectronics.com/regulators/llc-resonant-converters-increase-efficiency-dc-dc-applications (http://powerelectronics.com/regulators/llc-resonant-converters-increase-efficiency-dc-dc-applications)
http://www.raftabtronics.com/TECHNOLOGY/ElectromagneticBasics/TransformerBasics/tabid/110/Default.aspx#Resonant_transformers (http://www.raftabtronics.com/TECHNOLOGY/ElectromagneticBasics/TransformerBasics/tabid/110/Default.aspx#Resonant_transformers) - the remnants of Caledonia one of the biggest players in the transformer field since 1940
http://www.raftabtronics.com/TECHNOLOGY/ElectromagneticBasics/TransformerBasics/tabid/110/Default.aspx#Resonant_transformers (http://www.raftabtronics.com/TECHNOLOGY/ElectromagneticBasics/TransformerBasics/tabid/110/Default.aspx#Resonant_transformers) - a TI device, that maximizes efficiency using the principle
and i'll even throw another wiki link in here for shits and giggles
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resonant_inductive_coupling (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resonant_inductive_coupling)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
NOW - let's tie this information back into the topic at hand, and learn how the energy that is not destroyed by our self-induced obliviousness, can be conserved in our circuitry.
here is a commercially available device that does just that
http://peakenergytech.com/products/ (http://peakenergytech.com/products/) but how does it work?
This device is placed in the return path (-) side of the current flow, after the device has used what it needs to operate.
The remaining electricity is then cycled back through the loop, to be further used by the devices in your home.
parallel capacitors and/or batteries are used in a manner almost identical to the set-up shown in the battery recharging video, modified for 60Hz A/C
An inventor in Jamaica has a similar thing going on
http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/environment/RECYCLING-waste-electricity (http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/environment/RECYCLING-waste-electricity)
Sm0ky2:
For starters, what I stated to you in my previous posting is important and true and you haven't acknowledged it.
Quoteif you don't understand how the resonance effects the charging / discharging of a ceramic ferromagnetic core, air-cores, or other such inductive coupling effects, why are you arguing against such action?
I'm not here to argue back and forth about silly misconceptions.
There are thousands of references to this, I can only read through so many, but
don't take my word for it, see what others far beyond the scope of my knowledge have to say
[Now - some of this is applied to "wireless transmission", but for all intensive purposes, the transformers we are discussing use an inductive coupling and there is no direct electrical connection, so the information applies to both Tesla and JT.]
Above you are trying a bait-and-switch on me. We are talking about a Joule Thief.
Your first pdf is entitled, "Power Transfer Through Strongly Coupled Resonances."
Your second pdf is entitled, "Resonance and Impedance Matching."
Your third pdf is entitled, "Maximizing Efficiency of EM Resonance Wireless Power Transmission with Adaptive Circuits."
Those three pdfs have
nothing to do with a Joule Thief.
You gotta be real, man. Just pointing your fingers in all different directions to information that is not relevant to the subject at hand does not advance your argument at all.
Quoteif you don't understand how the resonance effects the charging / discharging of a ceramic ferromagnetic core, air-cores, or other such inductive coupling effects, why are you arguing against such action?
The above statement doesn't really make sense. You are just winging it and throwing spaghetti at the wall but it is not sticking.
You gotta be real.
This link: http://peakenergytech.com/products/ (http://peakenergytech.com/products/)
That looks like a totally BS web site to me.
They say this, "The Peak Energy Saver reduces the amount of power drawn from the utility by storing electricity otherwise lost from the motors in your home. The unit supplies this stored electricity back to your appliances, decreasing demand from the utility. Lower demand means lower electric bills!"
The statement above is pure crap. It's almost certainly a piece of junk from scammers that sell junk to unknowing and gullible people.
Quotehis device is placed in the return path (-) side of the current flow, after the device has used what it needs to operate.
The remaining electricity is then cycled back through the loop, to be further used by the devices in your home.
Not a chance in the world, this is quackery.
Going back to the
real subject at hand, it's the Joule Thief. The Joule Thief has nothing whatsoever to do with any kind of self resonance of an inductor. Your statements about this are wrong. You disagree? Then I challenge you to post a circuit and a timing diagram that shows this with a full explanation by you.
Likewise, on the matter of "energy recycling" I already challenged you to post a circuit and a timing diagram fully explaining that in an earlier posting.
MileHigh
Sm0ky2:
Some follow-up comments on this:
http://peakenergytech.com/products/ (http://peakenergytech.com/products/)
Only in the picture does the label state that it is a power factor correction unit. They don't state that on the web page, which is why I trashed it at first. I don't know much about power factor correction units for the home or industry, so I can't really comment much. It may or may not be legit. However, the web page is pure BS as far as I am concerned. All that I can say is I have very rarely heard about the need for one in the home. I know that computer power supplies are typically not power factor friendly but I suppose it depends on the model.
This critical thing to keep in mind is that a PFC correction unit operates within the timing of a single cycle of the AC mains power. This statement by you, "This device is placed in the return path (-) side of the current flow, after the device has used what it needs to operate." is wrong.
I attached a picture of the device. The wire gage going in the bottom of the box doesn't look right to me at all. I am also suspicious about the UL label and I think it is lacking a proper registration number. So this company's device doesn't smell right to me.
I am attaching a document about industrial power faction correction from Eaton, which is a 100% legit company for anyone that wants to do more research.
MileHigh
@ M.H. and M.E.
S. S. D. D.
Trampling some one's topic again ?
Tried starting your own ? didn't pan out ?
Ganging up as well ?
Are you guys really are trying to take down the forum, or what?
Dominate a topic untill the actual point being investigated is lost / misdirected / distorted
Paid to do so?
Being extorted ?
saviours of the misguided ?
other ?
please explain.
bad form old chaps
Quote from: sm0ky2 on March 19, 2015, 08:59:03 PM
@ MileHigh
if you don't understand how the resonance effects the charging / discharging of a ceramic ferromagnetic core, air-cores, or other such inductive coupling effects, why are you arguing against such action?
I'm not here to argue back and forth about silly misconceptions.
There are thousands of references to this, I can only read through so many, but
don't take my word for it, see what others far beyond the scope of my knowledge have to say
[Now - some of this is applied to "wireless transmission", but for all intensive purposes, the transformers we are discussing use an inductive coupling and there is no direct electrical connection, so the information applies to both Tesla and JT.]
Here's what some of the best universities and institutions on the face of our planet have to say on the issue.
http://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/45429/317879200.pdf (http://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/45429/317879200.pdf)
http://rfic.eecs.berkeley.edu/142/pdf/book_chap7.pdf (http://rfic.eecs.berkeley.edu/142/pdf/book_chap7.pdf)
http://cdn.intechopen.com/pdfs-wm/26759.pdf (http://cdn.intechopen.com/pdfs-wm/26759.pdf)
http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1182&context=eeng_fac (http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1182&context=eeng_fac)
This discusses fluorescent lamp ballasts, so the circuitry is double to accommodate bi-directional current from an A/C signal
but the same applies to a simplified circuit
http://ecee.colorado.edu/copec/paper_archives/designofresonant_may2007.pdf (http://ecee.colorado.edu/copec/paper_archives/designofresonant_may2007.pdf)
This one is a long read, mostly talking about applications specific to their device, but Chapter 4 has a nice explanation pertinent to our discussion
http://www.ksp.kit.edu/download/1000036098 (http://www.ksp.kit.edu/download/1000036098)
here is a rep from Microchip Technologies, discussing the process in an edition of Power Electronics magazine
http://powerelectronics.com/regulators/llc-resonant-converters-increase-efficiency-dc-dc-applications (http://powerelectronics.com/regulators/llc-resonant-converters-increase-efficiency-dc-dc-applications)
http://www.raftabtronics.com/TECHNOLOGY/ElectromagneticBasics/TransformerBasics/tabid/110/Default.aspx#Resonant_transformers (http://www.raftabtronics.com/TECHNOLOGY/ElectromagneticBasics/TransformerBasics/tabid/110/Default.aspx#Resonant_transformers) - the remnants of Caledonia one of the biggest players in the transformer field since 1940
http://www.raftabtronics.com/TECHNOLOGY/ElectromagneticBasics/TransformerBasics/tabid/110/Default.aspx#Resonant_transformers (http://www.raftabtronics.com/TECHNOLOGY/ElectromagneticBasics/TransformerBasics/tabid/110/Default.aspx#Resonant_transformers) - a TI device, that maximizes efficiency using the principle
and i'll even throw another wiki link in here for shits and giggles
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resonant_inductive_coupling (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resonant_inductive_coupling)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
NOW - let's tie this information back into the topic at hand, and learn how the energy that is not destroyed by our self-induced obliviousness, can be conserved in our circuitry.
here is a commercially available device that does just that
http://peakenergytech.com/products/ (http://peakenergytech.com/products/) but how does it work?
This device is placed in the return path (-) side of the current flow, after the device has used what it needs to operate.
The remaining electricity is then cycled back through the loop, to be further used by the devices in your home.
parallel capacitors and/or batteries are used in a manner almost identical to the set-up shown in the battery recharging video, modified for 60Hz A/C
An inventor in Jamaica has a similar thing going on
http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/environment/RECYCLING-waste-electricity (http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/environment/RECYCLING-waste-electricity)
There are lots of resonant circuits used in this world. Middlebrook and Cuk literally wrote the book on resonant power converters back around 1980. The archetypical JT circuit does not have a resonant tank.
Your other idea that there is energy to reclaim after powering a circuit branch is utter nonsense. The Peak Energy device is a power factor corrector. Power factor correctors are good for reducing losses in wires between the utility and one's home by bringing apparent power down much closer to real power. But since anyone living in a residence that uses a traditional analog power meter is billed only for real power, a PFC does not reduce their power bill. Utilities would like to bill residences for apparent power, or surcharge for poor power factors but presently are not allowed to do so.
The Jamaica Observer article is terrible. It conflates a power factor corrector with energy reclamation mechanisms. PFC's do not reclaim power. They
reduce the energy stored each cycle. That may seem ironic as they use energy storage devices: capacitors, but that is the truth. A very inductive load's current lags the line voltage by nearly 90 degrees. A capacitor matched to the load inductance at mains frequency attached in parallel to the inductive load stores and releases energy in a complementary fashion to the inductor, so that the net energy supplied and released between the LC network and the utility each cycle goes way down, and what the utility ends up seeing is an apparent much more resistive load.
Quote from: MileHigh on March 19, 2015, 10:44:29 PM
Sm0ky2:
Some follow-up comments on this:
http://peakenergytech.com/products/ (http://peakenergytech.com/products/)
Only in the picture does the label state that it is a power factor correction unit. They don't state that on the web page, which is why I trashed it at first. I don't know much about power factor correction units for the home or industry, so I can't really comment much. It may or may not be legit. However, the web page is pure BS as far as I am concerned. All that I can say is I have very rarely heard about the need for one in the home. I know that computer power supplies are typically not power factor friendly but I suppose it depends on the model.
This critical thing to keep in mind is that a PFC correction unit operates within the timing of a single cycle of the AC mains power. This statement by you, "This device is placed in the return path (-) side of the current flow, after the device has used what it needs to operate." is wrong.
I attached a picture of the device. The wire gage going in the bottom of the box doesn't look right to me at all. I am also suspicious about the UL label and I think it is lacking a proper registration number. So this company's device doesn't smell right to me.
I am attaching a document about industrial power faction correction from Eaton, which is a 100% legit company for anyone that wants to do more research.
MileHigh
PFCs for residences with traditional analog electric meters are a waste of money. Those traditional analog meters respond to real power which is almost entirely independent of power factor. (PF affects the amount of heating in your homes wires. If you have a power loss problem there you have a bigger problem in the form of a fire hazard.) If one had a pool 1000' feet away from the power entry, then one would have a motivation to install a pump that has a power factor close to 1.0. A PFC corrector located close to the pump if it is a single phase AC induction motor could help reduce the wire gauge required back to the electrical panel and save a few bucks. But a much better solution is to use a variable frequency drive / motor combination which will both present a near 1.0 power factor to the wiring and also require typcically about 25% as much electricity as a pool pump driven by a single phase AC induction motor.
Quote from: Floor on March 20, 2015, 01:29:22 AM
@ M.H. and M.E.
S. S. D. D.
Trampling some one's topic again ?
Tried starting your own ? didn't pan out ?
Ganging up as well ?
Are you guys really are trying to take down the forum, or what?
Dominate a topic untill the actual point being investigated is lost / misdirected / distorted
Paid to do so?
Being extorted ?
saviours of the misguided ?
other ?
please explain.
bad form old chaps
Let me get this straight: You object that sm0ky's BS claims are being challenged? What is the benefit of unchallenged misinformation? Shouldn't your exception be with sm0ky publishing misleading BS?
There needs be no inductive coupling in order for a JT like circuit to work well. The switching can be done with one inductor and the transistor itself-->no need for inductive coupling between the two inductors at all. You can also return the unused portion of current back to the source-->after it has passed through an LED and another !charge battery.
Here is a simple little circuit i called the cool joule-->works a treat.
Floor:
Sometimes threads change direction, that's life. Beyond that, are you here to be an "ignorance and stupidity enforcer?" Are you here to stop people from thinking and debating? Are you here to be a truth suppressor?
Is somebody paying you to stop people from learning so that they will keep on spending their money on junk?
MileHigh
Quote from: MileHigh on March 20, 2015, 06:12:35 AM
Floor:
Beyond that, are you here to be an "ignorance and stupidity enforcer?" Are you here to stop people from thinking and debating? Are you here to be a truth suppressor?
Is somebody paying you to stop people from learning so that they will keep on spending their money on junk?
MileHigh
QuoteSometimes threads change direction, that's life.
Indeed MH,one should expect this sort of thing by now here on OU. No harm done,and i think the diversion dose relate some what to the original topic,in that it's really the good old inductive kickback showing it's magic again-in way of deceptive voltage climb's of charging batteries-->the hollow charge as i call it.Been caught a few times myself in the !way back when!.
But there is some truth to the !!unused energy return to the source!! The simple circuit i posted a couple of post ago dose exactly this. L1 go's high when L2 go's low,and the capacitive coupling between base/collector junction provides the current path,and keeps the oscillations going-no need for inductive coupling between L1&L2 :D
Quote from: tinman on March 20, 2015, 06:08:35 AM
There needs be no inductive coupling in order for a JT like circuit to work well. The switching can be done with one inductor and the transistor itself-->no need for inductive coupling between the two inductors at all. You can also return the unused portion of current back to the source-->after it has passed through an LED and another !charge battery.
Here is a simple little circuit i called the cool joule-->works a treat.
Guess what? I disagree with your claim that L1 is not coupled to L2. L1 shorts the base of the transistor to the emitter. Absent induced current in L1, as the circuit is drawn there is no source of energy to turn on the transistor.
If you want to try and prove the claim that the circuit works without coupling between L1 and L2, then move L1 a foot away from L2 and connect L1 to the transistor through a pair of tightly twisted wires. Then, leaving L1 still connected through the twisted pair, move L1 back to the position you have previously had it.
Possible Results:
Circuit works with L1 near or far: The transistor is receiving bias current from something other than L2 coupling to L1.
Circuit only works with L1 near: L2 is coupling to L1.
Circuit only works with L1 far: There is some other energy source int he room coupling into L1.
Circuit doesn't work at all. Check circuit.
Quote from: MarkE on March 20, 2015, 06:35:32 AM
Possible Results:
Circuit works with L1 near or far: The transistor is receiving bias current from something other than L2 coupling to L1.
QuoteGuess what? I disagree with your claim that L1 is not coupled to L2. L1 shorts the base of the transistor to the emitter.
Many many replications MarkE
QuoteIf you want to try and prove the claim that the circuit works without coupling between L1 and L2, then move L1 a foot away from L2 and connect L1 to the transistor through a pair of tightly twisted wires. Then, leaving L1 still connected through the twisted pair, move L1 back to the position you have previously had it.
Been there-done that-->many times.
QuoteAbsent induced current in L1, as the circuit is drawn there is no source of energy to turn on the transistor.
Incorrect. But dont stress to much Mark-> it had the best of them trying to work it out for weeks.
QuoteCircuit only works with L1 near: L2 is coupling to L1.
Incorrect
QuoteCircuit only works with L1 far: There is some other energy source int he room coupling into L1.
Incorrect
QuoteCircuit doesn't work at all. Check circuit.
Incorrect-Circuit diagram is correct. L1 is not inductively coupled to L2. Tested at distances of 10 meters apart,and in solid steel faraday cages.L1 can be swaped out for a small ceramic inductor,and still opperates.
Lets see if you can work out how Mark,as it took some very talented people some time to do so. In fact,i dont think a conclusion was ever reached
Whats your guess,and we'll see how close you get. :D
@ MarkE
Hint
Have you heard of the Miller effect capacitance ?
Without L1 at base but still grounded with an uncoupled shielded inductor. It oscillates as a class C oscillator using capacitative coupling between leads and / or internal transistor capacitances. It will be at higher frequency than normal. Called parasitic oscillations. Ham radio books are full of examples and how to eliminate the problem. Everything simple like these circuits has been done before we were even born.
Quote from: pomodoro on March 20, 2015, 07:48:59 AM
Without L1 at base but still grounded with an uncoupled shielded inductor. It oscillates as a class C oscillator using capacitative coupling between leads and / or internal transistor capacitances. It will be at higher frequency than normal. Called parasitic oscillations. Ham radio books are full of examples and how to eliminate the problem. Everything simple like these circuits has been done before we were even born.
Yes,Internal transistor capacitance. As we are useing an NPN transistor,the NP layer between collector and base will charge L1 when L2 go's low(negative). So no need for inductive coupling with this one.
It is often caused by positive feedback from the capacitance between base and emitter when the emitter lead to ground (battery negative) is kept long. The lead acts an inductor and develops a voltage which couples to the base as positive feedback through the b-e capacitance. It would normally be in the mid MHz range, up to UHF sometimes, depending of the transistor Ft , as the feedback cap is quite small. L2 would function as an RF choke, no need for it to be tuned with a cap. Any feedback , so long as it is in phase will cause oscillations.
Theres at least a dozen JT threads we can have this argument on, but its already taken place several times.
and replicators have posted their results with and without resonance. I really don't care if you want to remain ignorant or not...
Also, Steven Mark has made public hours and hours of video of the devices in continuous operation.
Explaining their operational theory, etc.
You try to say that the information I posted is "not related", but the simple fact is, they all say the same thing when it comes to resonance in the circuit. and how it can be used to increase efficiency. They are completely related, as the information pertains to almost every circuit.
To blind yourself to these facts, only locks us in the same place that brought us here.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Besides the fact, the TOPIC, concerns the energy that returns to the circuit. Which takes place on the back end of what you guys are arguing about. - So, you want to make your JT as inneficient as possible... ok, fine.
There is still some amount of power being recycled. So let's talk about THAT>
Looking into Peak Energy Technologies::
I agree, the Peak Energy website is mediocre at best. and Some of their information looks hoakie.
However, Their technology is consistent with other power recycling, and in lines with the author of this thread.
Also i contacted the mayor's office of one Kennedale, Texas - to speak with Mayor Brian Johnson. He was not available, but the woman answering the phone was extremely helpful. She says they DO in fact use the peak energy device in a few of their offices, and vouches that it "saves them money on their electricity bills". Also, she mentioned that they pay the company for this service as part of the city budget.
Mayor Gerald Joubert of Forest Hill, Tx was unavailable, and their offices did not wish to comment on this subject, but referred me to their finance office, who states that their offices use 2.5M Kw/hrs of electricity out of the city's budgeted 11M KWHrs, they show no recent records of business with Peak Energy, but also stated that their search abilities only go back to 2011.
Couple dead ends, but next I was able to contact a Camp Gulf, RV / Campgrounds in Destin, Fl. he vouches for their devices, said they use it in their lodge, hes got one at home and he even got his sister to buy one.
The town of Century Florida had great things to say about the device. They weren't that expensive, and quickly paid for itself.
Looks like they're about $1500.00 (US), so I will not be buying one myself, although I'd love to see more about whats inside.
from the technical descriptions, it sounds like a capacitor bank, placed on the last breaker in the panel.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This girl in Jamaica is completely open with her technology, and it appears to be a similar concept.
capacitors store the energy "not used" by the circuit, to reduce waste. (pic added below)
Green Box Co., Kingston, JA
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Digging further, it seems the "heat waste" salvaged by these devices, is a scapegoat.
Most proponents of electricity recycling are using this to get around the energy combatants, by stating the device reduces waste heat. But in analysis, there is no amount of heat, or heat reduction for that matter, to account for the energy consumption reduction by these devices. It looks like the "heat" argument is total B.S.
If anyone can find more info regarding this --- it would help.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
greenbox
Quote from: tinman on March 20, 2015, 07:31:16 AM
@ MarkE
Hint
Have you heard of the Miller effect capacitance ?
Yes, and if you understood it in relation to this circuit you would realize that Miller capacitance suppresses switching: rising collector voltage couples a rising base current which then passes emitter current that works against the rising voltage. Miller capacitance can cause oscillations when the wiring is crap. But before Miller capacitance can do a thing, you still need an energy source to drive current from the base to emitter. Otherwise the collector just rides merrily along at the battery voltage.
Quote from: tinman on March 20, 2015, 07:22:28 AM
Many many replications MarkEBeen there-done that-->many times.Incorrect. But dont stress to much Mark-> it had the best of them trying to work it out for weeks.
IncorrectIncorrectIncorrect-Circuit diagram is correct. L1 is not inductively coupled to L2. Tested at distances of 10 meters apart,and in solid steel faraday cages.L1 can be swaped out for a small ceramic inductor,and still opperates.
Lets see if you can work out how Mark,as it took some very talented people some time to do so. In fact,i dont think a conclusion was ever reached
Whats your guess,and we'll see how close you get. :D
I listed out the four possibilities and what each would imply. If you have actual test data of a documented circuit including with pictures so we can see the "hidden circuit" caused by the wiring then we can analyze it and physics will as it always does, will once more prevail.
Quote from: sm0ky2 on March 20, 2015, 10:02:47 AM
Theres at least a dozen JT threads we can have this argument on, but its already taken place several times.
and replicators have posted their results with and without resonance. I really don't care if you want to remain ignorant or not...
A circuit that does not contain a tank circuit does not resonate. The archetypical JT circuit is a form of blocking oscillator. The transistor on time is a function of the E*T product required to saturate the transformer.
Quote
Also, Steven Mark has made public hours and hours of video of the devices in continuous operation.
Explaining their operational theory, etc.
No circuit schematic is just handwaving.
Quote
You try to say that the information I posted is "not related", but the simple fact is, they all say the same thing when it comes to resonance in the circuit. and how it can be used to increase efficiency. They are completely related, as the information pertains to almost every circuit.
They are about as related as black ink is related to the circuit function. There is no resonant tank in the archetypical JT being discussed. If you wish to discuss some other circuit that has a tank, then I am happy to do so.
Quote
To blind yourself to these facts, only locks us in the same place that brought us here.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Besides the fact, the TOPIC, concerns the energy that returns to the circuit.
You keep insisting on this mythical energy that you have not shown to exist.
QuoteWhich takes place on the back end of what you guys are arguing about. - So, you want to make your JT as inneficient as possible... ok, fine.
There is still some amount of power being recycled. So let's talk about THAT>
The archetypoical JT does not recycle
any energy to the power source. It draws energy charging up the inductor, and then dumps energy from the inductor into the load. None returns to the power source.
Quote
Looking into Peak Energy Technologies::
I agree, the Peak Energy website is mediocre at best. and Some of their information looks hoakie.
However, Their technology is consistent with other power recycling, and in lines with the author of this thread.
Peak offers a PFC. A PFC is not a "power recycling" device.
Quote
Also i contacted the mayor's office of one Kennedale, Texas - to speak with Mayor Brian Johnson. He was not available, but the woman answering the phone was extremely helpful. She says they DO in fact use the peak energy device in a few of their offices, and vouches that it "saves them money on their electricity bills". Also, she mentioned that they pay the company for this service as part of the city budget.
PFC's are widely used in business and industry, because power companies do charge businesses for power factors less than 1.0. Analog power meters used by residences do not register power factor or apparent power. The meters register only real power. Smart meters can measure apparent power and power factor.
Quote
Mayor Gerald Joubert of Forest Hill, Tx was unavailable, and their offices did not wish to comment on this subject, but referred me to their finance office, who states that their offices use 2.5M Kw/hrs of electricity out of the city's budgeted 11M KWHrs, they show no recent records of business with Peak Energy, but also stated that their search abilities only go back to 2011.
Couple dead ends, but next I was able to contact a Camp Gulf, RV / Campgrounds in Destin, Fl. he vouches for their devices, said they use it in their lodge, hes got one at home and he even got his sister to buy one.
The town of Century Florida had great things to say about the device. They weren't that expensive, and quickly paid for itself.
Looks like they're about $1500.00 (US), so I will not be buying one myself, although I'd love to see more about whats inside.
from the technical descriptions, it sounds like a capacitor bank, placed on the last breaker in the panel.
Automatic PFC devices selectively switch in capacitors to drive the phase shift towards zero. they are commonly sold to businesses and industry. Many power companies require PFCs for certain industrial activities such as welders.
Quote
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This girl in Jamaica is completely open with her technology, and it appears to be a similar concept.
capacitors store the energy "not used" by the circuit, to reduce waste. (pic added below)
Green Box Co., Kingston, JA
Whether she is or is not, the referenced article was junk. A PFC is only going to save money when the power utility measures and tariffs power factor.
Quote
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Digging further, it seems the "heat waste" salvaged by these devices, is a scapegoat.
Most proponents of electricity recycling are using this to get around the energy combatants, by stating the device reduces waste heat. But in analysis, there is no amount of heat, or heat reduction for that matter, to account for the energy consumption reduction by these devices. It looks like the "heat" argument is total B.S.
When the power factor is low, there is extra heating in the wiring. The wiring heats according to the rms current no matter what the phase is. When the phase shift is large, the rms current can be several to many times the real current. Once upon a time a power utility ended up buying PFCs for one of its customers because the power utility failed to account for low power factor from that customer's many computers when the power company engineered the building wiring. The wiring caught fire.
PFCs do not recycle electricity. When they work properly, they
reduce the reactive current that circulates between the utility and the premise.
Quote
If anyone can find more info regarding this --- it would help.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
greenbox
The depicted device is an "Airco Saver". It is a control device that reduces the duty cycle (minutes time frame) of air conditioning compressors operating at less than full load. It basically keeps the compressor off more of the time when there is lots of reserve heat capacity in the AC heat exchanger.
@ M.H. and M.E.
S. S. D. D.
Trampling some one's topic again ?
Tried starting your own ? didn't pan out ?
Ganging up as well ?
Are you guys really trying to take down the forum, or what?
Dominate a topic until the actual point being investigated is lost / misdirected / distorted
Paid to do so?
Being extorted ?
saviors of the misguided ?
other ?
No response to the questions? How typical of you.
How non communicative and troll like.
In the vernacular of the system, how agent provocateur like.
Winning at any cost eventually becomes a purely destructive pursuit.
We need not to be blind to our own actions and motivations, for the examined
life is not worth living.
.
People are watching and they can study anyone's posting history
like an open book. People's intentions and motivations can become
pretty clear after a bit of this.
The joule thief is a device that resulted from some ones explorations
of the possibility of over unity. The very thing which this forum is named for,
but also some thing which the two of you consistently revile and vilify.
Why ?
The joule thief, and it's intended purpose are not some thing you can change,
even with your relentless misdirection, distortions, confounding, and misunderstandings.
It's more like an exploration of the possibility of shaking some energy out of the vacuum, than an
exploration of an energy efficiency device. But this bold of an exploration is too much for some
people to approach. They are too conditioned by the educational system and others. They have too
great of a fear of the ridicule, humiliation and banishment the can result from the mere discussion of
such a topic. Unless of course, the discussion is criticlal or derisive.
floor
Hmmm, some of us are discussing technical issues. You keeping lobbing ad hominem attacks, including with ridiculous accusations that you cannot support.
QuoteIt's more like an exploration of the possibility of shaking some energy out of the vacuum
Learn how an inductor is as dead as a proverbial doornail.
Quote from: MarkE on March 20, 2015, 10:37:51 AM
Yes, and if you understood it in relation to this circuit you would realize that Miller capacitance suppresses switching: rising collector voltage couples a rising base current which then passes emitter current that works against the rising voltage. Miller capacitance can cause oscillations when the wiring is crap. But before Miller capacitance can do a thing, you still need an energy source to drive current from the base to emitter. Otherwise the collector just rides merrily along at the battery voltage.
Oh ok-so my circuit dosnt work then-->regardless of the fact that many have replicated it,and some are still running today.
Did you take into account the diode layer between the collector and base Mark when deciding that the miller effect would suppress switching. Both L1 & L2 have capacitance as well as inductance,so what happens in L1 when L2 switches off Mark?.
Quote from: tinman on March 20, 2015, 07:34:07 PM
Oh ok-so my circuit dosnt work then-->regardless of the fact that many have replicated it,and some are still running today.
Serious question:
If
many have replicated it, why would only
some be still running.
Shouldn't they
all be still running. Or were the 3 dollars parts needed for another project ?
It is a serious question because it gets missed all the time. Something so simple, should either work or not.
Is there a gray area that can yield unpredictable results ?
Were the rest of the replicators not excited enough to show their results?
With the number of facebook postings and tweets going on each minute, we should be seeing this constantly in our feeds.
Thanks
Pete
Quote from: MarkE on March 20, 2015, 10:40:38 AM
I listed out the four possibilities and what each would imply. If you have actual test data of a documented circuit including with pictures so we can see the "hidden circuit" caused by the wiring then we can analyze it and physics will as it always does, will once more prevail.
I guess this one would be as close as you got-->Circuit works with L1 near or far: The transistor is receiving bias current from something other than L2 coupling to L1.
No hidden circuit caused by the wiring. You can place a small ceramic inductor(the ones that look like resistors) straight across the base/emitter if you like,and it will still work fine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Mbp1iuB7as
Quote from: tinman on March 20, 2015, 07:34:07 PM
Oh ok-so my circuit dosnt work then-->regardless of the fact that many have replicated it,and some are still running today.
Did you take into account the diode layer between the collector and base Mark when deciding that the miller effect would suppress switching. Both L1 & L2 have capacitance as well as inductance,so what happens in L1 when L2 switches off Mark?.
I listed the four
possible experiment observations with the two variables, and what each possible observation would imply. If you have conducted such tests then kindly produce at least one clear photograph of the test set-up with L1 isolated.
I trust that you appreciate that an oscillator requires positive feedback. Absent positive feedback, the signal does not build-up. Miller capacitance introduces negative feedback. Miller capacitance can still contribute to oscillations when other circuit elements shift the phase sufficiently. That happens typically with MOSFETs where there is lots of Miller capacitance and high gain bandwidth product. The Miller capacitance then reacts with excessive inductance in the gate drive circuit generating the necessary phase shift.
As Pomodoro has said several times now, positive feedback can be generated with inductance in the emitter (bipolar) or source (MOSFET) lead. That in fact was a source of oscillations in the Rosemary Ainslie fixtures that had atrocious wiring. However, those oscillations did not start until there was sufficient gate to source drive in the first place. For a 2N2222A or similar transistor which has a so-so gain bandwidth product of around 300MHz, and tiny parasitic capacitances that transistor is politely behaved in most hand wired circuits with several inches of wiring to each lead. It takes a lot of emitter wiring inductance to get anywhere near the kind of time constant in the parasitics that is long enough for the transistor to amplify.
Quote from: tinman on March 20, 2015, 08:01:58 PM
I guess this one would be as close as you got-->Circuit works with L1 near or far: The transistor is receiving bias current from something other than L2 coupling to L1.
No hidden circuit caused by the wiring. You can place a small ceramic inductor(the ones that look like resistors) straight across the base/emitter if you like,and it will still work fine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Mbp1iuB7as
In that video Lidmotor states that he moved the inductor using clip leads. Clip leads make great antennae. The test that you want to run is much as ZFF suggested: Put L1 in a Faraday cage, or better yet, take a twisted pair from Q1 base and emitter over to L1 just far away and/or in a Faraday cage.
Quote from: MarkE on March 20, 2015, 09:11:14 PM
In that video Lidmotor states that he moved the inductor using clip leads. Clip leads make great antennae. The test that you want to run is much as ZFF suggested: Put L1 in a Faraday cage, or better yet, take a twisted pair from Q1 base and emitter over to L1 just far away and/or in a Faraday cage.
Are you saying that the clip leads can provide the .7 odd volts that is required to switch on the transistor?
How about a faraday cage with two very large magnets in it?
Watch from 4 minutes on.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7DlD8MIEes
Quote from: MarkE on March 20, 2015, 09:11:14 PM
... The test that you want to run is much as ZFF suggested: Put L1 in a Faraday cage, or better yet, take a twisted pair from Q1 base and emitter over to L1 just far away and/or in a Faraday cage.
why not just hit it with a hammer and ground out the positive, short the caps, and see ?? it doesn't work........
all the energy balances out and we can go back to what we were doing....
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
There's about a dozen people on this forum, who do nothing other than argue against, deny operation of, negate, refute, dismiss misrepresent knowledge, etc. of every attempt to examine a situation with an open mind.
Despite evidence that we should be doing so.
with no intent other than to obviously detract from the learning experience of experimentation, reverting back upon a foundation of their educational background based on theories which themselves, admit to a lack of complete understanding, giving citation to exceptions, anomalies, special conditions, unknown factors, and all the things that keep such classified as THEORIES, rather than scientific "laws".
This course of action, prevents further study of anything, truncates the learning process, and prevents further development of the process being examined. This is, in and of itself, UNSCIENTIFIC in nature. Which leads one to question their motives.
This is not the high school debate team.
The person with the better ability to argue a point to futility, has no effect on the operation of a device in question.
All this does is prevent the debater from learning anything from the experience.
The experimenter, however, will continue along his path as he did before such debate occurred.
So what does this do other than waste the time of the readers, and those who wish to conduct such experimentation?
We should take notice, that the author of this thread has ceased to post his information here, because of this behavior.
Meanwhile, he continues his work, and diligently records his results in a scientific manner.
While the argument stands that "power cannot be recycled", the experiments indicate something else entirely.
Very simple, is the set-up shown in this thread.
1) Motor + Battery = run time x.
2) Motor + Battery + recycling circuit and batteries = run time x, + run time y, + run time z, ...... etc.
Sm0ky2:
Quotewith no intent other than to obviously detract from the learning experience of experimentation, reverting back upon a foundation of their educational background based on theories which themselves, admit to a lack of complete understanding, giving citation to exceptions, anomalies, special conditions, unknown factors, and all the things that keep such classified as THEORIES, rather than scientific "laws".
You need to get real. It's you spouting off electronics nonsense that isn't true that detracts from the learning experience of experimentation. Many times you are talking nonsensical untrue junk. Do you get that? I asked you to back up your silly untrue claims with a circuit and a fully explained timing diagram and you ignored those questions because you can't.
Go ahead, put up a timing diagram of a "Joule Thief in resonance" and let's watch you choke because you can't do it. If you can't do it then what the hell are you doing except spouting electronics nonsense?
Even the people that are very open minded don't want to be misled by a peddler of junk. Think about that.
QuoteThis course of action, prevents further study of anything, truncates the learning process, and prevents further development of the process being examined. This is, in and of itself, UNSCIENTIFIC in nature. Which leads one to question their motives.
It's your course of action that screws up people's heads so they don't know what they are doing and screws up the learning process. You are acting like some false messiah saying, "Listen to my BS." I already told you in a full posting that you barely understand electronics. What you really should do is man-up to that, roll up your shirtsleeves, open up a book, and _really_ try to learn about electronics if you are serious about this subject.
When you talk about electronics, most of the time you are spouting UNSCIENTIFIC babble. That's the truth and people reading deserve hearing that.
That makes us question your motives. Why do you talk BS when it's readily apparent that you don't know what you are talking about? Why?
Quote
While the argument stands that "power cannot be recycled", the experiments indicate something else entirely.
Very simple, is the set-up shown in this thread.
1) Motor + Battery = run time x.
2) Motor + Battery + recycling circuit and batteries = run time x, + run time y, + run time z, ...... etc.
Yeah, but the problem is that a guy like Stephen Dickens is not doing his experiments in a scientific manner. If he did do them in a proper scientific manner then he would realize that nothing special is going on. It appears that your thought processes cannot extend out that far and your are just taking the information at face value without questioning it.
Listen, if you spout off nonsense about electronics that is not true then you are the bad guy. It's as simple as that. The smartest thing you could do, in my opinion, is to curb your desire to talk about stuff that you don't actually know about, and open up a book and start learning. You do that and apply yourself and chances are in a few months you will start saying things that make sense and that will be a positive contribution to the forum.
This is not some kind of anything-goes I'm okay-you're okay fantasy land when it comes to electronics.
MileHigh
Has anyone actually scoped that circuit to see if it's actually oscillating?
Quote from: sm0ky2 on March 20, 2015, 11:28:33 PM
why not just hit it with a hammer and ground out the positive, short the caps, and see ?? it doesn't work........
The claim is on the table that L1 is not coupled to L2. Isolating L1 and testing will either confirm or refute that claim.
Quote
all the energy balances out and we can go back to what we were doing....
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
There's about a dozen people on this forum, who do nothing other than argue against, deny operation of, negate, refute, dismiss misrepresent knowledge, etc. of every attempt to examine a situation with an open mind.
Despite evidence that we should be doing so.
So on the one hand you like evidence, but on the other you object to inquiry. That's ... interesting.
Quote
with no intent other than to obviously detract from the learning experience of experimentation, reverting back upon a foundation of their educational background based on theories which themselves, admit to a lack of complete understanding, giving citation to exceptions, anomalies, special conditions, unknown factors, and all the things that keep such classified as THEORIES, rather than scientific "laws".
My understanding of circuit theory does OK. How is yours?
Quote
This course of action, prevents further study of anything, truncates the learning process, and prevents further development of the process being examined. This is, in and of itself, UNSCIENTIFIC in nature. Which leads one to question their motives.
This is not the high school debate team.
No, it isn't. So why are you engaging in ad hominem attack rather than trying to get to the root of what is actually occurring?
Quote
The person with the better ability to argue a point to futility, has no effect on the operation of a device in question.
All this does is prevent the debater from learning anything from the experience.
The experimenter, however, will continue along his path as he did before such debate occurred.
So what does this do other than waste the time of the readers, and those who wish to conduct such experimentation?
Are you trying to argue that ignorance is bliss? If one doesn't understand what is and is not controlled in an experiment, they are very unlikely to be able to learn anything from it. In this case the transistor will not conduct without base - emitter current.
Quote
We should take notice, that the author of this thread has ceased to post his information here, because of this behavior.
No, he has been spamming new threads at the rate of several per day. He has not taken to answering questions.
Quote
Meanwhile, he continues his work, and diligently records his results in a scientific manner.
Really? What is scientific about the presentations? What controls were designed into the experiment and conducted? Despite obviously owning a meter, and likely able to spring $2. for a good current sense resistor there are no current measurements on the input or the output. So just exactly do you think his experiments can tell us? What do they measure or compare that anyone including the experimenter can tell is meaningful?
Quote
While the argument stands that "power cannot be recycled", the experiments indicate something else entirely.
The circuits and devices that you have referred to do not recycle power. There are devices that do.
Quote
Very simple, is the set-up shown in this thread.
1) Motor + Battery = run time x.
2) Motor + Battery + recycling circuit and batteries = run time x, + run time y, + run time z, ...... etc.
And what do you think that means?
Quote from: TinselKoala on March 21, 2015, 01:21:03 AM
Has anyone actually scoped that circuit to see if it's actually oscillating?
As much as I czn make out the wiring with the dim lighting and shaky camera work, it does require oscillations to light the LED. the latter part of the more recently linked video has entertainment value, because the "trigger coil" L1 does get set in a fairly thick walled aluminum tube that at 16kHz or so is a pretty good shield. Tinman shows oscillation waveforms on the oscilloscope.
Quote from: MarkE on March 21, 2015, 04:50:16 AM
As much as I czn make out the wiring with the dim lighting and shaky camera work, it does require oscillations to light the LED. the latter part of the more recently linked video has entertainment value, because the "trigger coil" L1 does get set in a fairly thick walled aluminum tube that at 16kHz or so is a pretty good shield. Tinman shows oscillation waveforms on the oscilloscope.
Yes it is oscillating,and the LED simply wont light with 1.2 volt's.
Mark-the motor casing is steel,not aluminum. It's just painted with an aluminum colored paint.
Sorry about the shaky camera work,but as you could hear,it was raining that day,and quite cold lol.
I should throw this one back together,and have a look around the circuit with my digital scope -now that i have one.
Well... hmm.
So I built the LidMotor version from MarkE's redrawn diagram above. I wound two toroidal inductors to measure 1.0 mH each on my ProsKit meter; this required 32 turns of #33 on each toroid. I used a BC337-25 transistor as I do not have any MPSA06 on hand. A blue LED, a 1n4004 diode and a 220 ohm resistor completed the circuit. I used two depleted batteries for power instead of supercaps. The circuit needs to be "tickled" to get it started, and I found the easiest way is to tickle the cathode of the LED with a little piece of solder. The collector of the transistor also is a good place to "tickle" to start oscillation. I could not get it to stay on with a Red LED, just single flashes when tickled but no sustained oscillation. It works with Blue LED just fine. Have not tried other colors.
My impression is that the circuit does _NOT_ appear to work by coupling between the inductors! At least, moving or reorienting the L1 inductor appears to make no difference in behaviour of the circuit in terms of startup or LED brightness. I have not yet scoped the circuit.
(I'm still waiting for the "friend-funded" Rigol scope to arrive. Supposedly things have been delayed by the Longshoreman's strike on the West Coast container ports and it is not expected to get to me until the first week of April sometime.)
ETA: It still works with the L1 inductor 2 feet away connected by a twisted pair to the solder pads. Still needs to be tickled to start but once it starts, LED brightness, etc. is unchanged from the previous test.
Hi TinselKoala,
Just for fun, would you connect a capacitor between the collector and base of the transistor? 8) I do not know the oscillating frequency, perhaps a 22 pF or maybe higher sounds good for a test I think in the some 10 kHz range. Then check whether oscillation starts for battery voltage switch-on, without tickling.
Gyula
Quote from: tinman on March 21, 2015, 05:00:17 AM
Yes it is oscillating,and the LED simply wont light with 1.2 volt's.
Mark-the motor casing is steel,not aluminum. It's just painted with an aluminum colored paint.
Sorry about the shaky camera work,but as you could hear,it was raining that day,and quite cold lol.
I should throw this one back together,and have a look around the circuit with my digital scope -now that i have one.
I thought I saw a label on the tube that said "Aluminum". I agree that with the circuit as represented, the LED will not light unless the transistor oscillates. The but for the D1 diode, the LED would be reverse biased when L2 is not flying back.
I constructed the circuit on a solderless breadboard using a 2N2222A transistor, 1N4005 diode, and OVLBR4C7 red LED. I used two NiMH cells. I used several choke configurations with the following results:
1) 1812 1mH 42 Ohm unshielded chokes 6" apart. No oscillations.
2) 1mH 2.9 Ohm shielded choke L2 for the flyback, and 1mH 1812 42 Ohm choke L1 for the base-emitter. No oscillations.
3) 1mH 2.9 Ohm shielded chokes both positions. No oscillations.
4) 470uH x 2 coupled choke. 120 Ohm series base resistor. Oscillates with coils oriented as in the graphic below, LED glows brightly, but the frequency wanders.
Peak collector to emitter voltage is just over 6V. 2.5V for the NiMH batteries + ~2V for the LED Vfw and ~0.8V for the 1N4005 and the rest is resistive drops in the choke and LED.
Quote
Very simple, is the set-up shown in this thread.
1) Motor + Battery = run time x.
2) Motor + Battery + recycling circuit and batteries = run time x, + run time y, + run time z, ...... etc.
Quote from: MarkE
and what do you think that means?
I think that means that some of the power that is not used by the motor, but is lost through the circuit, may be being "recycled"
We should investigate this, instead of blindly dismissing it.
Is that the only possible answer?
absolutely not, it could be the result of power distribution, leaking from the run-batteries, into the re-charging batteries.
If this is the case, it should effect the run-time
There are other possibilities as well. But when the entire concept is thrown out the window because of some preconceived notion that everything we waste "must be wasted", and recycling the power drawn through our admittedly inefficient circuitry is "impossible" we shut the door to such investigation.
Quote from: TinselKoala on March 21, 2015, 07:08:31 AM
Well... hmm.
So I built the LidMotor version from MarkE's redrawn diagram above. I wound two toroidal inductors to measure 1.0 mH each on my ProsKit meter; this required 32 turns of #33 on each toroid. I used a BC337-25 transistor as I do not have any MPSA06 on hand. A blue LED, a 1n4004 diode and a 220 ohm resistor completed the circuit. I used two depleted batteries for power instead of supercaps. The circuit needs to be "tickled" to get it started, and I found the easiest way is to tickle the cathode of the LED with a little piece of solder. The collector of the transistor also is a good place to "tickle" to start oscillation. I could not get it to stay on with a Red LED, just single flashes when tickled but no sustained oscillation. It works with Blue LED just fine. Have not tried other colors.
My impression is that the circuit does _NOT_ appear to work by coupling between the inductors! At least, moving or reorienting the L1 inductor appears to make no difference in behaviour of the circuit in terms of startup or LED brightness. I have not yet scoped the circuit.
(I'm still waiting for the "friend-funded" Rigol scope to arrive. Supposedly things have been delayed by the Longshoreman's strike on the West Coast container ports and it is not expected to get to me until the first week of April sometime.)
ETA: It still works with the L1 inductor 2 feet away connected by a twisted pair to the solder pads. Still needs to be tickled to start but once it starts, LED brightness, etc. is unchanged from the previous test.
TK
Remove the 220 ohm base resistor,and you have my original circuit.
Quote from: MarkE on March 21, 2015, 07:47:20 AM
I thought I saw a label on the tube that said "Aluminum". I agree that with the circuit as represented, the LED will not light unless the transistor oscillates. The but for the D1 diode, the LED would be reverse biased when L2 is not flying back.
I constructed the circuit on a solderless breadboard using a 2N2222A transistor, 1N4005 diode, and OVLBR4C7 red LED. I used two NiMH cells. I used several choke configurations with the following results:
1) 1812 1mH 42 Ohm unshielded chokes 6" apart. No oscillations.
2) 1mH 2.9 Ohm shielded choke L2 for the flyback, and 1mH 1812 42 Ohm choke L1 for the base-emitter. No oscillations.
3) 1mH 2.9 Ohm shielded chokes both positions. No oscillations.
4) 470uH x 2 coupled choke. 120 Ohm series base resistor. Oscillates with coils oriented as in the graphic below, LED glows brightly, but the frequency wanders.
Peak collector to emitter voltage is just over 6V. 2.5V for the NiMH batteries + ~2V for the LED Vfw and ~0.8V for the 1N4005 and the rest is resistive drops in the choke and LED.
Mark
Remove the 120ohm base resistor-no need for it,as the inductor is already a resistor,and the circuit is already low powered.
Quote from: MileHigh on March 21, 2015, 12:32:14 AM
Go ahead, put up a timing diagram of a "Joule Thief in resonance"
MileHigh
you know, im really trying not to get too deep into this ridiculous argument here, because it's off-topic for this thread.
This should be, and has been many times, discussed in the JT threads.
but since our benevolent author also uses a JT circuit with recharging batteries in a similar manner as the video posted here,
i'll show you this.
When you send a pulsed DC signal through a transformer, there is a reluctance through the core, due to timing differences during charging of the core.
When this signal is at the resonant frequency (adjusted by the resistance through the transistor), the function becomes a purely resistive factor, and a clean waveform is produced, at maximum amplitude.
My lab was lost, and I don't have the tools to do this myself, so I dug up someone elses.
TK makes a great demonstration of this effect in his video, using a fairly accurate signal generator, and his O-scope.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9ZN5QJZClY (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9ZN5QJZClY)
as you can see here, this greatly alters the effect of the induction through the secondary coil, which will increase the efficiency of your joule thief circuit.
This is how a JT circuit was intended to be used. This is the effect described by Steven Mark.
The "toy" that has become so famous, makes no reference to this critical factor, and therefore, the quickie-circuits produced in the How-To instructionals are not resonant, and inherently inneficient.
This circuits opperation was found quite by accident. It started out as a simple pulse motor circuit where the trigger coil was sepperate from the run coil. I designed it like this so as i could adjust the trigger timeing. Anyway,i gave it a run with the rotor,and it worked quite fine. But when i stopped the rotor,the circuit continued to oscillate. So i removed the rotor altogether,and found i could move the trigger coil to any position,and the circuit would continue to oscillate-->and thus,the birth of the cool joule circuit.
Sm0ky2:
QuoteTK makes a great demonstration of this effect in his video, using a fairly accurate signal generator, and his O-scope.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9ZN5QJZClY (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9ZN5QJZClY)
as you can see here, this greatly alters the effect of the induction through the secondary coil, which will increase the efficiency of your joule thief circuit.
This is how a JT circuit was intended to be used.
Unfortunately you are off base one more time. You are seemingly blindly applying one thing to something else when it does not jive - it does not make any sense.
TK is looking for the self-resonant frequency for a
stand alone coil. He is making "a mistake" by using a square wave but the test still works.
Going back to the subject at hand: Big deal. You are talking about a Joule Thief, not a stand-alone inductor. You have to understand that they are not the same thing. In addition, your "logic" is crap. You are saying, "Look, an inductor has a self-resonant frequency and that makes a Joule Thief work better." Really?
Really? Where is big missing gap in your explanation that is not there? How do you jump from point A to point B?
You are simply showing classic nonsensical "failure mode logic" that you see on the forums all the time. The truth is that for years the Joule Thief threads were low tech and people were just doing stuff by trial and error and finding solutions without understanding them. With fairly high confidence I can state that all the talk of "resonance" was no different than everybody making references to resonance on every second thread without even knowing what they were meaning.
So it comes back to you: Show two timing diagrams for a Joule Thief, one without resonance, and one with resonance, and explain what is going on and explain the advantage of the setup with resonance. You are going to have a real hard time showing the timing diagram with resonance because it doesn't exist.
I have an interesting factoid for you that I alluded to earlier: When a coil hits its self-resonant frequency for all practical intents and purposes it is "crapping out" and failing to do its job. Electronics designers make sure that their designs do not get close to the self-resonant frequencies of their coils because that will screw up their circuit.
You have read a lot of BS about Joule Thieves and resonance and believed it. The simple fact is that it is a BS concept. If you disagree then prove me wrong with a set of fully explained timing diagrams and a circuit. And that apparently is what you can't do.
MileHigh
Quote from: TinselKoala on March 21, 2015, 07:08:31 AM
Well... hmm.
So I built the LidMotor version from MarkE's redrawn diagram above. I wound two toroidal inductors to measure 1.0 mH each on my ProsKit meter; this required 32 turns of #33 on each toroid. I used a BC337-25 transistor as I do not have any MPSA06 on hand. A blue LED, a 1n4004 diode and a 220 ohm resistor completed the circuit. I used two depleted batteries for power instead of supercaps. The circuit needs to be "tickled" to get it started, and I found the easiest way is to tickle the cathode of the LED with a little piece of solder. The collector of the transistor also is a good place to "tickle" to start oscillation. I could not get it to stay on with a Red LED, just single flashes when tickled but no sustained oscillation. It works with Blue LED just fine. Have not tried other colors.
My impression is that the circuit does _NOT_ appear to work by coupling between the inductors! At least, moving or reorienting the L1 inductor appears to make no difference in behaviour of the circuit in terms of startup or LED brightness. I have not yet scoped the circuit.
(I'm still waiting for the "friend-funded" Rigol scope to arrive. Supposedly things have been delayed by the Longshoreman's strike on the West Coast container ports and it is not expected to get to me until the first week of April sometime.)
ETA: It still works with the L1 inductor 2 feet away connected by a twisted pair to the solder pads. Still needs to be tickled to start but once it starts, LED brightness, etc. is unchanged from the previous test.
Those results suggest that the LED damps the oscillation. That in turn does suggest that it is circuit parasitics causing the oscillations.
Based on that I went back to the two shielded 1mH chokes, and found that by using more than one red LED in series I could get the oscillations to start. Unlike the blocking oscillator using the coupled choke, the LED brightness is very dim. By playing with it enough I was eventually able to get oscillations to start with just one red LED. Loading the base with a 10X scope probe made the LEDs much brighter. Opening the base connection kills the oscillations, as does adding even a tiny amount of capacitance from the collector to the emitter common, or a large resistance from the base to emitter. This tells us that Tinman was right that Miller capacitance is the energy source. The Miller capacitance reacts with the large inductance in series with the base to drive these oscillations.
The last scope shot is the collector and base waveforms with the LEDs open.
Quote from: sm0ky2 on March 21, 2015, 08:49:17 AM
you know, im really trying not to get too deep into this ridiculous argument here, because it's off-topic for this thread.
This should be, and has been many times, discussed in the JT threads.
but since our benevolent author also uses a JT circuit with recharging batteries in a similar manner as the video posted here,
i'll show you this.
When you send a pulsed DC signal through a transformer, there is a reluctance through the core, due to timing differences during charging of the core.
When this signal is at the resonant frequency (adjusted by the resistance through the transistor), the function becomes a purely resistive factor, and a clean waveform is produced, at maximum amplitude.
My lab was lost, and I don't have the tools to do this myself, so I dug up someone elses.
TK makes a great demonstration of this effect in his video, using a fairly accurate signal generator, and his O-scope.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9ZN5QJZClY (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9ZN5QJZClY)
as you can see here, this greatly alters the effect of the induction through the secondary coil, which will increase the efficiency of your joule thief circuit.
This is how a JT circuit was intended to be used. This is the effect described by Steven Mark.
The "toy" that has become so famous, makes no reference to this critical factor, and therefore, the quickie-circuits produced in the How-To instructionals are not resonant, and inherently inneficient.
Once more: The archetypical Joule thief circuit is a blocking oscillator not an oscillator timed by a resonant tank. If you wish to discuss a circuit that is timed by a tank as it turns-out Tinman's circuit is, then show a diagram for such a circuit.
There is a disconnect with Sm0ky2 where he doesn't understand that the method of excitation for the coil in a Joule Thief is not even related to a method for finding the self-resonant frequency for a coil. He is also blindly believing the generic catch-all phrase that "resonance make the circuit more efficient" and applying it to a Joule Thief.
Sm0ky2: With a few months of diligent study you will be in a better position to appreciate this.
Quote from: MarkE on March 21, 2015, 09:42:18 AM
Once more: The archetypical Joule thief circuit is a blocking oscillator not an oscillator timed by a resonant tank. If you wish to discuss a circuit that is timed by a tank as it turns-out Tinman's circuit is, then show a diagram for such a circuit.
So i threw together a quick cool joule circuit,just so as i could have a look at it with my digital scope.Below is the slightly modified circuit(D1 removed),and a scope shot. The blue trace is across emitter/base,and the yellow trace is across emitter/collector. I am useing two identical solenoid coils from an old washing machines water valves-->both have the steel core removed,so as they are air core now. I have changed the transistor to a TIP35C. Looking at the scope,it seems that the transistor is switching on with only 480mV on the leading pulse,but not sure how the trailing pulse is happening,as the base of the transistor is still a negative polarity ???
Quote from: MileHigh on March 21, 2015, 10:01:46 AM
There is a disconnect with Sm0ky2 where he doesn't understand that the method of excitation for the coil in a Joule Thief is not even related to a method for finding the self-resonant frequency for a coil. He is also blindly believing the generic catch-all phrase that "resonance make the circuit more efficient" and applying it to a Joule Thief.
Sm0ky2: With a few months of diligent study you will be in a better position to appreciate this.
It's a pretty much a put up or shut up situation for him. Anyone can make claims. Providing evidence for those claims, that can be another matter.
Quote from: tinman on March 21, 2015, 11:44:12 AM
So i threw together a quick cool joule circuit,just so as i could have a look at it with my digital scope.Below is the slightly modified circuit(D1 removed),and a scope shot. The blue trace is across emitter/base,and the yellow trace is across emitter/collector. I am useing two identical solenoid coils from an old washing machines water valves-->both have the steel core removed,so as they are air core now. I have changed the transistor to a TIP35C. Looking at the scope,it seems that the transistor is switching on with only 480mV ???
The LED / B1 branch just load the oscillator down. I've got my measurements and simulation in pretty close agreement now using the parts I listed. The base current is pretty much a sawtooth. It takes a big jump on the falling side of the collector voltage waveform and then ramps towards zero, where the collector voltage pulses upward and then collapses as L2 discharges.
If you are using your scope probes in X1 mode, you should change that to X10 mode. It will reduce the loading effects of your probes.
Quote from: MarkE on March 21, 2015, 09:38:55 AM
This tells us that Tinman was right that Miller capacitance is the energy source. The Miller capacitance reacts with the large inductance in series with the base to drive these oscillations.
The last scope shot is the collector and base waveforms with the LEDs open.
I am learning--> i have great teachers.
TK & MarkE
Thanks for taking the time to check it out.
Quote from: MarkE on March 21, 2015, 11:52:45 AM
The LED / B1 branch just load the oscillator down. I've got my measurements and simulation in pretty close agreement now using the parts I listed. The base current is pretty much a sawtooth. It takes a big jump on the falling side of the collector voltage waveform and then ramps towards zero, where the collector voltage pulses upward and then collapses as L2 discharges.
If you are using your scope probes in X1 mode, you should change that to X10 mode. It will reduce the loading effects of your probes.
I have switched the probes to 10x,and i dont see much difference in the wave forms,but the voltage across the circuit has risen some. I set the voltage on each channel to 100mV/PD,and dropped both channels down one devision so as to fit the whole wave form in the frame.
To the likes of Floor and sm0key,
MarkE , TK, MH etc. are trying to educate, read and learn before making
comments, everything they say can be verified. If any of them err and you point
out they'll retract or amend as necessary, we should all be on the same side!
John.
Quote from: minnie on March 21, 2015, 12:41:22 PM
To the likes of Floor and sm0key,
MarkE , TK, MH etc. are trying to educate, read and learn before making
comments, everything they say can be verified. If any of them err and you point
out they'll retract or amend as necessary, we should all be on the same side!
John.
Indeed,but dont always asume that the guru's know everything,and if you feel that you are correct,then stick to your gun's-just as has happened here in this thread.
Quote MarkE post 47-Guess what? I disagree with your claim that L1 is not coupled to L2.
Quote TinMan post 49-Have you heard of the Miller effect capacitance ?
Quote MarkE post 54-Yes, and if you understood it in relation to this circuit you would realize that Miller capacitance suppresses switching:
Quote MarkE post 81(after MarkE took the time to look a little closer)-This tells us that Tinman was right that Miller capacitance is the energy source.
So as you say Minnie,they'll retract or amend as necessary,but if you feel you are right,then stick to your gun's. I will say though,i am yet to see a resonant JT in action,but that dosnt mean one dosnt exist. Maybe a combination of the right core material,turns of the right size wire,and maybe a small cap across the driven coil might hold a chance of true resonance-but lot's of experimenting would be needed.
@ MarkE,TK,and MH.
Insted of saying rubbish,how would we go about building a resonant JT,or makeing my circuit opperate as it dose,but with a much higher power output?.Maybe a small cap in series with a diode across the collector/base?.
Tinman,
Thanks for your response. I know TK fairly well by now and he's always
helped me, using his own time and money. You can't ask for more than that!
Thought for the day, nobody really knows gravity. There's still a fair way to go!!
John.
Quote from: minnie on March 21, 2015, 01:59:08 PM
Tinman,
Thanks for your response. I know TK fairly well by now and he's always
helped me, using his own time and money. You can't ask for more than that!
Thought for the day, nobody really knows gravity. There's still a fair way to go!!
John.
Gravity-the attraction of two masses of atoms.
Electric field-the atomic differential between two masses.
Magnetic field-a secondary result of the electric field.
Well thats my theory anyway.
Quote from: tinman on March 21, 2015, 08:34:34 AM
TK
Remove the 220 ohm base resistor,and you have my original circuit.
Not quite. My ferrite-cored coils are much lower in DC resistance than the air-core coils you used, and the BC33-25 transistor is very different from the 2n3055. But nevertheless we seem to have similar functions.
Here's a scopeshot that I just took, from the transistor Collector referred to the Emitter. It is essentially identical to MarkE's one-LED scopeshot from his breadboard build.
Quote from: gyulasun on March 21, 2015, 07:38:52 AM
Hi TinselKoala,
Just for fun, would you connect a capacitor between the collector and base of the transistor? 8) I do not know the oscillating frequency, perhaps a 22 pF or maybe higher sounds good for a test I think in the some 10 kHz range. Then check whether oscillation starts for battery voltage switch-on, without tickling.
Gyula
I tried some small capacitors between B and C and also other places already and they don't work. The oscillation frequency is surprisingly high, over 500 kHz. (But dropping slowly as batteries discharge.)
"This tells us that Tinman was right that Miller capacitance is the energy source. " I am sure that Mark meant that : capacitors are a energy storage medium, not an energy source. Is that how you understood that, Tinman?
@minnie
Quote from minnie "To the likes of Floor and sm0key,
MarkE , TK, MH etc. are trying to educate, read and learn before making
comments, everything they say can be verified. If any of them err and you point
out they'll retract or amend as necessary, we should all be on the same side!" end quote
"MarkE , TK, MH etc. are trying to educate,"
Educating and instructing are two distinct things, surely related but distinct.
I suggest that you take your own advise and investigate this IN DEPTH by means of
"read and learn before making comments"
Will you now, in following their good example verify, then "retract and amend" ?
If and when I or anyone else wishes instruction, we can ask for it. yes ? no ?
--------------- END OF MY INSTRUCTING PHASE -------------------------------
This was just to make a point,(I hope for a good cause)
Notice please, that in my comments above:
1. when "I suggest" I am subtly implying that you need directions (instructing)
2. I imply that you never or don't often follow YOUR OWN ADVICE (insult)
3. that you are not thorough."(IN DEPTH)" (insult)
4. I throw your own words back in your face, as they say
which implys the question (how do you like it), and furthers it implies that
a. I wish pain upon you
b. that I think you deserve this pain or that it will teach you a lesson and so on
"read and learn........"
5. Taunt you "will you now ...."
6. devalue your opinion and then dismiss " If and when I or ........."
At the OU forum, unlike at a university, I'm not being extorted with the threat of the loss
of some enormous tuition I have paid, nor with expulsion. These are not methods of education,
by the way, they are methods of enforcing authoritarianism. While education and authoritarianism
are inherently counter to one another, instruction and authoritarianism are not.
I think Stephan understands this distinction, and it is one of the reasons, banning from
the OU forum is as uncommon as it is. I have great respect for that vision./choice, in spite of the
difficulties it some times presets us all with.
People can learn a lot faster (better) when punishment, ranking and authoritarianism are taken
out of the equasion. The OU forum is one of many proofs of this "new model"
"everything they say can be verified."
Only to a point. I don't think this is generally (in science) a problem. However, it is a problem
when we consider, that, the fundamental principles of science (such as the conservation of energy)
may be inherently at odds with over unity research. This doesn't mean that we as people have to be.
That all for now
floor
Scopeshot with Base signal included. Essentially identical to the shot that MarkE showed.
(The Tek 2213a delayed timebase function was used to display the single pulse nicely centered on the screen.)
Quote from: memoryman on March 21, 2015, 02:51:03 PM
"This tells us that Tinman was right that Miller capacitance is the energy source. " I am sure that Mark meant that : capacitors are a energy storage medium, not an energy source. Is that how you understood that, Tinman?
The puzzle of this circuit has been to find the energy "source" for the transistor Base that is able to turn the transistor on enough to oscillate. The capacitance provides this energy, even though it originally comes from the battery or other power supply source. It's a loose way of speaking but not inaccurate ... after all, even the batteries aren't the absolute original "source" of the energy involved. One can trace back to the sun (hydroelectric or fossil fuels) or nuclear powerplants ... or even further back to the mysterious Big Bang quantum fluctuation that may have caused all of this ... but trying to find and define the absolute ultimate "source" of energy will always tangle up science and philosophy.
Quote from: tinman on March 21, 2015, 01:32:42 PM
@ MarkE,TK,and MH.
Insted of saying rubbish,how would we go about building a resonant JT,or makeing my circuit opperate as it dose,but with a much higher power output?.Maybe a small cap in series with a diode across the collector/base?.
I'm not entirely sure that a resonant condition is what is wanted in order to get more efficiency or higher output from a JT-type circuit. After all, a resonant tank stores energy, and as the tank components aren't perfect, they will inevitably be dissipating some of that stored energy in unwanted ways, like by Joule heating of the components and RF radiation, removing it from being available for "output".
It might be true that a resonant condition could enable a circuit to extract some energy from the "ambiance", like a tuned receiver of the electrosmog harvester or crystal radio type does, allowing some of this "outside" energy to be put to use by the circuit.
The old JT threads on this forum have a lot of information as to making JTs as efficient as possible by carefully tuning coils and circuitry. The closest thing to a "resonant JT" that I can think of is the Slayer Exciter-type solid-state Tesla coil kind of thing.
MH:
Way back in the original JT topic I was the one that used a vr in place of the base resistor. I found that I could "tune" the circuit for the brightest light output, or lowest amp draw, or a compromise between the two. I had always called that the "sweet spot" and others said it was resonance.
I know I was tuning to "something". Funny thing is, as I found out early on, as you tuned the vr the led would get brighter...and brighter...and then start to dim...so you backed off on the vr and had your brightest light possible with that set-up. In other words, you could go past the sweet spot if not careful. Also, this allowed you to "retune" the circuit as the input voltage dropped, to maintain you nice bright light.
So, by tuning the vr...what was I tuning to then? The most efficient resistance for that circuit? I had thought it would have been linear but, as I said, you could go past the sweet spot. What would be the proper term for that sweet spot in relation to the optimum resistance for that circuit?
If I am not explaining this correctly, let me know and I will have another shot at it.
Thanks,
Bill
PS Great circuit Tinman. I remember this one.
Bill:
The answer to your question is that in a JT circuit you are not supposed to change the value of the base resistor. In any generic transistor switching circuit, the base resistor value is normally chosen to provide the minimum amount of current to fully switch on the transistor. It's a standard design exercise when designing a switching circuit. How much current does the transistor need to switch? What is the current gain of my transistor? How much voltage is available behind the base resistor? What is the voltage drop across the base-emitter diode? Add a 10% margin of safety and then you can determine the value of the base resistor.
When you varied the value of the base resistor you varied the way the JT circuit responded. The way to answer why the LED got brighter would be to look at the waveforms with your scope, construct a timing diagram, and then analyze the timing diagram.
Without analyzing the timing timing diagram and making proper measurements you are just observing. Think of a small transistor radio. As long as you stay away from the tuning section, chances are that varying the value of any other capacitor, resistor, or inductor in the circuit will make the sound from the speaker get louder or softer. Do you know why? Assume the answer is no. So does that mean that there are 15 "volume controls" in a transistor radio? Obviously the answer is no. By changing the value of a random component you were skewing the circuit with an observable effect: The volume got softer or louder. However, the right component value to change is the setting of the volume control pot.
There are no "rules" saying that you can't change the value of the base resistor. However, there are real design principles: In a switching circuit you choose the value of the base resistor to ensure that your transistor is fully saturated when it switches on and there is minimum amount of power expended to do that. So in theory there is truly a "right" value of base resistor for a given Joule Thief configuration.
If you want to change the brightness in a Joule Thief chances are varying the value of many of the individual components will do that. But the point is to make an intelligent design choice as opposed to the transistor radio example where you just change values willy-nilly and observe the effects without actually knowing why the effects are happening.
Going back to your example, you were not "tuning" the circuit, but it more like you were "skewing" the circuit. It's very possible that when the LED got brighter than normal the overall efficiency of the JT circuit went down. Certainly you were not finding any "resonance" because a JT circuit does not resonate.
You also mentioned that when the battery voltage got lower you could play with the base resistor value to bring the LED brightness back up. That's all fine but the true JT circuit is not normally changed as the battery voltage lowers.
All of the answers to the question of why the LED gets brighter or dimmer come from using your scope and making good measurements and analyzing the timing diagram. In a generic sense the LED gets brighter because the (inductor + battery) is dumping more average power into the LED. So you start by looking at your timing diagram and observing the charge/discharge timing for the main inductor.
MileHigh
Quote from: MileHigh on March 21, 2015, 09:26:12 AM
Sm0ky2:
You are talking about a Joule Thief, not a stand-alone inductor. .
MileHigh
Again, you are blinding yourself to the clear and present, obvious truth.
The transistor switching function performs the task his Signal Generator is doing in the video.
When you adjust this to the resonant frequency of the transformer ( this is the ceramic core and both coils of the JT)
it is EXACTLY the same !!!
Get a scope and see for yourself. The video he made was FOR A JT!!!!
Quote from: TinselKoala on March 21, 2015, 02:37:13 PM
I tried some small capacitors between B and C and also other places already and they don't work. The oscillation frequency is surprisingly high, over 500 kHz. (But dropping slowly as batteries discharge.)
Thanks for cheking that. I hoped that when the supply voltage appears the capacitor would put an initial current 'kick' into the base emitter to switch the transistor on. Probably the 1 mH coil in the collector is already high enough to oppose hence reduce this current kick.
Gyula
QuoteThe transistor switching function performs the task his Signal Generator is doing in the video.
When you adjust this to the resonant frequency of the transformer ( this is the ceramic core and both coils of the JT)
it is EXACTLY the same !!!
Really? How about you give a detailed text description of what actually happens when the circuit is allegedly in "resonance?" You won't do a timing diagram but it's a very simple circuit so text will suffice.
You are still just making a pie-in-the-sky observation without truly knowing what you are talking about.
Please try to prove me wrong by answering my question above to the best of your abilities.
Quote from: Pirate88179 on March 21, 2015, 04:03:11 PM
MH:
Way back in the original JT topic I was the one that used a vr in place of the base resistor. I found that I could "tune" the circuit for the brightest light output, or lowest amp draw, or a compromise between the two. I had always called that the "sweet spot" and others said it was resonance.
I know I was tuning to "something". Funny thing is, as I found out early on, as you tuned the vr the led would get brighter...and brighter...and then start to dim...so you backed off on the vr and had your brightest light possible with that set-up. In other words, you could go past the sweet spot if not careful. Also, this allowed you to "retune" the circuit as the input voltage dropped, to maintain you nice bright light.
So, by tuning the vr...what was I tuning to then? The most efficient resistance for that circuit? I had thought it would have been linear but, as I said, you could go past the sweet spot. What would be the proper term for that sweet spot in relation to the optimum resistance for that circuit?
If I am not explaining this correctly, let me know and I will have another shot at it.
Thanks,
Bill
PS Great circuit Tinman. I remember this one.
What you were tuning to Bill, was the resonant frequency of the transformer. Which is a combination of the resonant freq. for the inductor and the resonant freq. of the two coils. These factors combine to create the resonant freq of that transformer.
Its what TK was showing in his video, although the transformer he was using will have a resonance closer to that of the core material, and the normal JT circuit uses way less coils, and thicker wire, which will affect the freq. it resonates at.
reluctance and inductance will fight each other at frequencies lower and higher than the resonant.
there are also peaks and troughs in between, at certain harmonics.
Quote from: MileHigh on March 21, 2015, 05:45:07 PM
Really? How about you give a detailed text description of what actually happens when the circuit is allegedly in "resonance?" You won't do a timing diagram but it's a very simple circuit so text will suffice.
You are still just making a pie-in-the-sky observation without truly knowing what you are talking about.
Please try to prove me wrong by answering my question above to the best of your abilities.
I don't need to "prove" you wrong, you are the one who doesn't understand, who hasn't performed the task at hand, and who refuses to even evaluate the situation.. multiple experimenters have already verified this, and it was the INSTRUCTIONS given by the guy who INVENTED the circuit.... For some reason you just want to argue until the horse is dead...
Or until I gather all the materials to make another JT,buy a scope to put it on your screen for you, and probably that wont be enough,.. so you'll ask for more. Who bother? it doesn't affect me one iota.
QuoteWhat you were tuning to Bill, was the resonant frequency of the transformer.
Nope, because if you were switching at the self-resonant frequency of the transformer the circuit would crap out and not even work. The self-resonant frequency of the transformer would also be much higher than a typical JT circuit operates at.
Quote from: sm0ky2 on March 21, 2015, 05:51:18 PM
I don't need to "prove" you wrong, you are the one who doesn't understand, who hasn't performed the task at hand, and who refuses to even evaluate the situation.. multiple experimenters have already verified this, and it was the INSTRUCTIONS given by the guy who INVENTED the circuit.... For some reason you just want to argue until the horse is dead...
Or until I gather all the materials to make another JT,buy a scope to put it on your screen for you, and probably that wont be enough,.. so you'll ask for more. Who bother? it doesn't affect me one iota.
A few years ago with Poynt99 and possibly TK and others I analyzed a JT circuit inside-out so I know how it works. Like I already mentioned, many people on the forums have a "resonance fetish" and they use the term without even knowing what they are talking about. Please take a look at the long posting I just made to Bill.
If you know your stuff, you should be able to articulate what's going on with the alleged resonance process in a JT circuit.
Permit me to ask you a litmus test question about a JT: A JT can light up a series string of 20 LEDs just as easily as it can light up a single LED. Why is that? In other words, please explain the mechanism for that.
Quote from: MileHigh on March 21, 2015, 05:23:44 PM
Bill:
The answer to your question is that in a JT circuit you are not supposed to change the value of the base resistor. In any generic transistor switching circuit, the base resistor value is normally chosen to provide the minimum amount of current to fully switch on the transistor. It's a standard design exercise when designing a switching circuit. How much current does the transistor need to switch? What is the current gain of my transistor? How much voltage is available behind the base resistor? What is the voltage drop across the base-emitter diode? Add a 10% margin of safety and then you can determine the value of the base resistor.
When you varied the value of the base resistor you varied the way the JT circuit responded. The way to answer why the LED got brighter would be to look at the waveforms with your scope, construct a timing diagram, and then analyze the timing diagram.
Without analyzing the timing timing diagram and making proper measurements you are just observing. Think of a small transistor radio. As long as you stay away from the tuning section, chances are that varying the value of any other capacitor, resistor, or inductor in the circuit will make the sound from the speaker get louder or softer. Do you know why? Assume the answer is no. So does that mean that there are 15 "volume controls" in a transistor radio? Obviously the answer is no. By changing the value of a random component you were skewing the circuit with an observable effect: The volume got softer or louder. However, the right component value to change is the setting of the volume control pot.
There are no "rules" saying that you can't change the value of the base resistor. However, there are real design principles: In a switching circuit you choose the value of the base resistor to ensure that your transistor is fully saturated when it switches on and there is minimum amount of power expended to do that. So in theory there is truly a "right" value of base resistor for a given Joule Thief configuration.
If you want to change the brightness in a Joule Thief chances are varying the value of many of the individual components will do that. But the point is to make an intelligent design choice as opposed to the transistor radio example where you just change values willy-nilly and observe the effects without actually knowing why the effects are happening.
Going back to your example, you were not "tuning" the circuit, but it more like you were "skewing" the circuit. It's very possible that when the LED got brighter than normal the overall efficiency of the JT circuit went down. Certainly you were not finding any "resonance" because a JT circuit does not resonate.
You also mentioned that when the battery voltage got lower you could play with the base resistor value to bring the LED brightness back up. That's all fine but the true JT circuit is not normally changed as the battery voltage lowers.
All of the answers to the question of why the LED gets brighter or dimmer come from using your scope and making good measurements and analyzing the timing diagram. In a generic sense the LED gets brighter because the (inductor + battery) is dumping more average power into the LED. So you start by looking at your timing diagram and observing the charge/discharge timing for the main inductor.
MileHigh
Thank you for the explanation. Back then, all I was using was a DMM but I will dig out some of my older circuits and put them on my scope.
Thanks,
Bill
Quote from: MileHigh on March 21, 2015, 05:23:44 PM
When you varied the value of the base resistor you varied the way the JT circuit responded. The way to answer why the LED got brighter would be to look at the waveforms with your scope, construct a timing diagram, and then analyze the timing diagram.
MileHigh
Are you implying that operating a JT at resonance by using the transistor switching function,
would have a different result than operating the transformer in an LRC circuit of the same frequency?
Quote from: MileHigh on March 21, 2015, 06:05:42 PM
Permit me to ask you a litmus test question about a JT: A JT can light up a series string of 20 LEDs just as easily as it can light up a single LED. Why is that? In other words, please explain the mechanism for that.
No, it actually can't. At least not "just as easily"
As you will find, that adding each successive series LED will slightly decrease the voltage until you reach the limits of the circuit. Also, doing this will affect the operating frequency, which will bring the JT out of resonance. Which will significantly reduce the run-time if you are using batteries or a charged capacitor.
Quote from: sm0ky2 on March 21, 2015, 06:24:30 PM
Are you implying that operating a JT at resonance by using the transistor switching function,
would have a different result than operating the transformer in an LRC circuit of the same frequency?
Sorry, but if you want to flesh that out and make it clearer, then I may be able to answer your question.
Quote from: MileHigh on March 21, 2015, 06:31:18 PM
Sorry, but if you want to flesh that out and make it clearer, then I may be able to answer your question.
ok... Where you assume that the resistance value should be calculated to the transistor - this is not the case with the JT.
Because the batteries do not have enough voltage to turn the transistor on.
The first cycle (which is microseconds) it is reversed biased through the inductor.
(and yes this is true, even though theres a diode..)
the next cycle, and every one after that, the voltage is fed from the transformer, and the resistance should be determined from that value instead. At resonance, the voltage is the highest, and so is the current, because reluctance is (near) 0.
This will also affect the capacitance of the transformer, which is a function of each coil, as well as the inductor material.
Because the current is looped, and not enough to break the minimum potential to charge the battery, it will loop back through the circuit, again and again
Quote from: sm0ky2 on March 21, 2015, 06:27:54 PM
No, it actually can't. At least not "just as easily"
As you will find, that adding each successive series LED will slightly decrease the voltage until you reach the limits of the circuit. Also, doing this will affect the operating frequency, which will bring the JT out of resonance. Which will significantly reduce the run-time if you are using batteries or a charged capacitor.
Unfortunately you are not correct. Also, notice you state "slightly decrease the voltage" without even stating what voltage you are talking about.
Again, there is no resonance at play in a JT circuit. I asked you to describe the actual process of the alleged resonance and you refuse.
I will state it again: All that a JT circuit does is energize an inductor, and then the battery and the inductor then discharge through the LED. That is not resonance. The transformer does not operate at it's self-resonant frequency and if it was excited at the self-resonant frequency the JT would crap out and not even work. The whole point of a JT is to energize the inductor and then have it dump that energy into an LED. If the inductor is in self-resonance that's like the component is having an epileptic seizure and there is no mechanism for it to dump any stored energy into the LED. Self resonating means that
the energy stays inside the inductor and oscillates back and forth
without being dumped into the LED.
Quote from: sm0ky2 on March 21, 2015, 06:38:04 PM
ok... Where you assume that the resistance value should be calculated to the transistor - this is not the case with the JT.
Because the batteries do not have enough voltage to turn the transistor on.
The first cycle (which is microseconds) it is reversed biased through the inductor.
(and yes this is true, even though theres a diode..)
the next cycle, and every one after that, the voltage is fed from the transformer, and the resistance should be determined from that value instead. At resonance, the voltage is the highest, and so is the current, because reluctance is (near) 0.
This will also affect the capacitance of the transformer, which is a function of each coil, as well as the inductor material.
Sorry Sm0ky2, but it sounds like you are off on a wild goose chase. The JT circuit is somewhat akin to a 555 timer circuit. A 555 timer circuit has a operating frequency, nothing is in resonance with a 555 timer circuit.
The big clue for you to pick up on is that you can't explain why a JT circuit can light a series string of 20 LEDs. That's telling you that if you are truly interested in the subject of electronics, you need to open up a book and start at page one.
You are picking up a lot of stuff from the forums and elsewhere without having a "discriminating ear" that allows you to make a distinction between valid information and junk. That's a serious issue that many people on the forums have. You end us just parroting stuff to other people that are in the same boat and the vicious cycle self-propagates. I have literally read threads where three or four people are supposedly having a discussion about electronics but in actual fact all of the participants are just talking electronics gibberish. The soluton is education or self-education.
Quote from: MileHigh on March 21, 2015, 06:40:47 PM
Unfortunately you are not correct. Also, notice you state "slightly decrease the voltage" without even stating what voltage you are talking about.
Again, there is no resonance at play in a JT circuit. I asked you to describe the actual process of the alleged resonance and you refuse.
I will state it again: All that a JT circuit does is energize an inductor, and then the battery and the inductor then discharge through the LED. That is not resonance. The transformer does not operate at it's self-resonant frequency and if it was excited at the self-resonant frequency the JT would crap out and not even work. The whole point of a JT is to energize the inductor and then have it dump that energy into an LED. If the inductor is in self-resonance that's like the component is having an epileptic seizure and there is no mechanism for it to dump any stored energy into the LED. Self resonating means that the energy stays inside the inductor and oscillates back and forth without being dumped into the LED.
I gave you like 9(?) detailed descriptions of this effect from universities, transformer manufacturers, engineers,.....
you need me to baby step you through this?
resonance of an inductor ( and subsequently the transformer) lowers reluctance through the inductor, ideally to 0.
This has the effect of widening the bandwidth ( or sharpening the rise - if you look at it on a scope) [Q?]
This increases the peak voltage, well beyond the expected value calculated by the # of turns.
This will decrease the induction losses.
Induction losses are primarily a function of rising and collapsing magnetic field interference, and reluctance.
with reluctance at 0, and magnetic field at resonance with the INPUT SIGNAL, a pure sine-wave results on the output of the secondary coil, and at a higher voltage. - make no mistake, this is a direct increase of power. And if your circuit is not designed properly, you WILL burn up resistors and transistors!!! The diodes are usually more robust, so they are (relatively) safe.
Each resonant cycle, adds voltage on top of the remaining voltage passed through from the previous cycle.
This is V - V(drop). Where V(drop) is the voltage loss across the resistor, transistor, and diode, as well as any other components added to the circuit. This voltage is added to the voltage building up in the transformer secondary, because the waveforms are in (phase?) synchronized? not sure the proper way to say that, but they line up on the scope images, and amplitude increases in the secondary.
Current remains generally the same, but total power increases each cycle until it reaches a maximum for the circuit, based on load and losses. Load, in this scenario has a dual-fold effect, both increasing resistance, and increasing power. Somewhere in the middle it will level out.
That is why I say it is energy "recycling" because the remaining voltage from the previous loop is added to the next loop.
If the transformer is NOT operating as resonant frequencies, the voltage from the previous loop collides with the induction, either on the rise or the collapse, or both. This will minimize or limit the voltage on the secondary.
As you adjust the vr on the base of your transistor, and bring the transformer closer to resonant operating frequency, you will obtain a maximum voltage level. and this is HIGHER than the calculated voltage from # of turns primary / secondary.
If you read the information I posted a couple pages back from the electronics authorities,
and still don't understand my explanation.....
then,.. I am beyond the ability to describe this to you in a coherent manner.
That's all I got.
Bear in mind the Steven Mark devices ran on a single capacitor, charged only once to start the device.
and it operated the transistor for weeks, sometimes months before the power dissipated.
This was after blowing out a dozen transistors, and realizing I had to increase the load to consume the power build-up.
the base resistor was selected using a scope and a box full of different resistors,
to achieve as close to the resonant frequency as I could without fine tuning a vr
I added a 7-inch IRON core inductor, with no secondary. The purpose was to act as a 'resistor', that would fluctuate with the AC output.
adding only normal resistors, with a diode, only limited it in one direction, the collapsing field would still send a spike that blew up the transistor.
The JT had no problem energizing this large iron core, and still lighting up the LEDs
And in this manner, I got the circuit to maintain itself without power overload.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9RgjAgSQOg (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9RgjAgSQOg)
[edit] The iron core was fed off a 3rd coil, ran parallel to, but not physically connected to the secondary.
Sm0ky2:
You are still stuck on talking about resonance and giving examples of resonance. You are saying that "I don't get it" but the problem is that your examples don't even apply to a Joule Thief.
The JT transformer is not even being excited with a continuous signal. It sees a voltage source across its terminals when the transistor is on and then it sees nothing, no excitation, when the transistor is off.
I will use "inductor" instead of "transformer" for the discussion below.
Transistor on: The inductor is being energized. Current flow through the inductor starts at zero and starts to increase linearly. During this phase battery energy is being stored in the inductor and the LED is off.
Transistor switches off: Now you have a circuit like this: Battery -> inductor -> LED. Here the inductor "looks like another battery in series" but that's a simple easy-to-grasp way of stating it. To be more accurate the inductor acts like a discharging current source with a finite amount of energy. The real circuit is this: Battery -> current source -> LED.
The battery and the inductor current source will discharge into the LED until the inductor runs out of energy. Because it's a current source, you can just as easily discharge into 20 LEDs. When there are 20 LEDs instead of one LED, the inductor will discharge more quickly.
That's the basic cycle for a Joule Thief. It has nothing to do with the self-resonance of the inductor. Since the stimulation for the inductor is <voltage clamp> <nothing> <voltage clamp> <nothing> there is no real mechanism for self-resonance.
A Joule Thief is nothing more than a mechanism for energizing an inductor and discharging that inductor through an LED. You could do exactly the same thing with a 555 timer output controlling the switching of the transistor via the base input.
Pulse-type switching and discharging are not the same thing as self-resonance at all.
If you tried to stimulate the inductor with <voltage clamp> <nothing> <voltage clamp> <nothing> stimulation at the self-resonant frequency of the inductor then the inductor would not discharge nice fat chunks of stored energy through the LED. Instead, the inductor would be in epileptic seizure territory and just self-resonate due to the voltage clamp pinging from the switching transistor. There would be no orderly mechanism where the inductor is given sufficient time to discharge trough the LED. In addition, the actual method for maintaining the operating frequency for the JT requires that the inductor undergo regular energize-discharge cycles.
So all of your links and stuff about self-resonance do not apply. You are feigning trying to "teach" me here when you are the person that needs to be taught. That is a huge mistake and I have seen it before. You need to seriously reevaluate your self-perceived notion of how much you understand about electronics, and how much you understand the operation of a Joule Thief circuit.
MileHigh
I attached an annotated series of waveforms for a Joule Thief.
The red arrow shows the moment the transistor switches off. You can see how the current that was flowing through the inductor the moment before the transistor switches off becomes the current flowing through the LED the moment after the the transistor switches off. Then the whole process starts all over again when the inductor is fully discharged.
Do you see any "resonance" in that timing diagram? The answer is that you don't, you are looking at a switching circuit, a.k.a. a "pulse circuit" and there is no resonance at play.
Quote from: MileHigh on March 21, 2015, 08:44:12 PM
Sm0ky2:
You are still stuck on talking about resonance and giving examples of resonance. You are saying that "I don't get it" but the problem is that your examples don't even apply to a Joule Thief.
The JT transformer is not even being excited with a continuous signal. It sees a voltage source across its terminals when the transistor is on and then it sees nothing, no excitation, when the transistor is off.
I will use "inductor" instead of "transformer" for the discussion below.
Transistor on: The inductor is being energized. Current flow through the inductor starts at zero and starts to increase linearly. During this phase battery energy is being stored in the inductor and the LED is off.
Transistor switches off: Now you have a circuit like this: Battery -> inductor -> LED. Here the inductor "looks like another battery in series" but that's a simple easy-to-grasp way of stating it. To be more accurate the inductor acts like a discharging current source with a finite amount of energy. The real circuit is this: Battery -> current source -> LED.
The battery and the inductor current source will discharge into the LED until the inductor runs out of energy. Because it's a current source, you can just as easily discharge into 20 LEDs. When there are 20 LEDs instead of one LED, the inductor will discharge more quickly.
That's the basic cycle for a Joule Thief. It has nothing to do with the self-resonance of the inductor. Since the stimulation for the inductor is <voltage clamp> <nothing> <voltage clamp> <nothing> there is no real mechanism for self-resonance.
A Joule Thief is nothing more than a mechanism for energizing an inductor and discharging that inductor through an LED. You could do exactly the same thing with a 555 timer output controlling the switching of the transistor via the base input.
Pulse-type switching and discharging are not the same thing as self-resonance at all.
If you tried to stimulate the inductor with <voltage clamp> <nothing> <voltage clamp> <nothing> stimulation at the self-resonant frequency of the inductor then the inductor would not discharge nice fat chunks of stored energy through the LED. Instead, the inductor would be in epileptic seizure territory and just self-resonate due to the voltage clamp pinging from the switching transistor. There would be no orderly mechanism where the inductor is given sufficient time to discharge trough the LED. In addition, the actual method for maintaining the operating frequency for the JT requires that the inductor undergo regular energize-discharge cycles.
So all of your links and stuff about self-resonance do not apply. You are feigning trying to "teach" me here when you are the person that needs to be taught. That is a huge mistake and I have seen it before. You need to seriously reevaluate your self-perceived notion of how much you understand about electronics, and how much you understand the operation of a Joule Thief circuit.
MileHigh
Also, it is the duty cycle and frequency that allows us to "see" the led being "on" when indeed it is only flashing on/off faster than the eye can detect. Learning this did not bother me as I was after light, and being able to light a large amount of leds on a "dead" battery is useful to me. We know they are not really "on" but, I just want the light so I don't care. (It looks always on to the human eye.)
Nothing magic or overunity at all with the JT. It is, however, a very useful circuit in many applications and that I like about it. In a way, now that I know what I know, it is cheating a bit, but, if the outcome is what is desired then, it works. Lighting leds with high frequency/high voltage is a great way to get a lot of light with little power drain. (This is more about the advanced JT circuits not the basic ones)
Still, no magic. No O.U.
At least, not yet, ha ha.
Hey, you never know...right? (Just kidding)
Bill
I wouldn't pay too much attention to MileHigh.. He is only a distractor and usually give litmus tests to befuddle and never answers anyones requests to answer questions posed to him. Just go to his profile and check his posts.. You will see what his methods are and they are proven by those massive posts. He is a distractor meant to frustrate anyone trying to do any outside of the box thinking. Why because he has an ego the size of Russia and just as filled with gas... Some of it pointless gas.. Just ignore him like I and many others do. He is a self appointed police for this community driven by his many many years of in the box thinking. Only doing what he was told and paid to do, never going outside of that little world and never having an original thought in his whole life.
Take this for what you will he doesn't mater one bit but to the others who "police" this forum. You got to ask yourself who is paying him now?
Quote from: jbignes5 on March 21, 2015, 09:38:17 PM
I wouldn't pay too much attention to MileHigh.. He is only a distractor and usually give litmus tests to befuddle and never answers anyones requests to answer questions posed to him. Just go to his profile and check his posts.. You will see what his methods are and they are proven by those massive posts. He is a distractor meant to frustrate anyone trying to do any outside of the box thinking. Why because he has an ego the size of Russia and just as filled with gas... Some of it pointless gas.. Just ignore him like I and many others do. He is a self appointed police for this community driven by his many many years of in the box thinking. Only doing what he was told and paid to do, never going outside of that little world and never having an original thought in his whole life.
Take this for what you will he doesn't mater one bit but to the others who "police" this forum. You got to ask yourself who is paying him now?
You are a classic glazed-eyed forum-paranoid guy with no understanding of electronics. I am just explaining the simple truth behind a simple circuit to help someone.
What you are basically saying to Sm0ky2 is "Don't learn the truth about this simple circuit, drink my Kool-Aid instead."
You should be ashamed of yourself and at the same time it is very sad.
MH has helped me, and many others, understand basic electronics 101...for free....no invoice or credit card needed.
I, for one, really appreciate that.
Bill
Quote from: sm0ky2 on March 21, 2015, 07:13:05 PM
Bear in mind the Steven Mark devices ran on a single capacitor, charged only once to start the device.
and it operated the transistor for weeks, sometimes months before the power dissipated.
There went what little credibility you had left, out the window.
As for the rest of your statements about JTs and resonance etc ... I refute thee thusly:
Quote from: MileHigh on March 21, 2015, 08:44:12 PM
The JT transformer is not even being excited with a continuous signal. It sees a voltage source across its terminals when the transistor is on and then it sees nothing, no excitation, when the transistor is off.
When you get the timing right, as soon as the transistor cuts off - the field collapse induces a current in the opposite direction, and just as that stops, a pulse comes from the transistor again.
Quote
I will use "inductor" instead of "transformer" for the discussion below.
Transistor on: The inductor is being energized. Current flow through the inductor starts at zero and starts to increase linearly. During this phase battery energy is being stored in the inductor and the LED is off.
Transistor switches off: Now you have a circuit like this: Battery -> inductor -> LED. Here the inductor "looks like another battery in series" but that's a simple easy-to-grasp way of stating it. To be more accurate the inductor acts like a discharging current source with a finite amount of energy. The real circuit is this: Battery -> current source -> LED.
The battery and the inductor current source will discharge into the LED until the inductor runs out of energy. Because it's a current source, you can just as easily discharge into 20 LEDs. When there are 20 LEDs instead of one LED, the inductor will discharge more quickly.
That's the basic cycle for a Joule Thief. It has nothing to do with the self-resonance of the inductor. Since the stimulation for the inductor is <voltage clamp> <nothing> <voltage clamp> <nothing> there is no real mechanism for self-resonance.
In Resonance::
I will use "transformer", because it is center-tapped bifilar inductor, which makes it a "transformer"...
[The signal through the transformer is no longer a function of pulsed DC, but rather an A/C waveform, of energization and field collapse in rhythmic pattern, as visible on the scope. the energy from the battery is being converted to a higher voltage and the current changes over time, until the LED turns on. Since the resonant frequency is (100Khz-xMhz) faster than the response time of the diode, the LED does not turn off.]
Flip Switch:
Current flows through base and voltage is stepped up until it reaches cut-on potential::
Transistor on: the Inductor is being energized - current flow is not linear, but a function of COS, change in voltage over time is a function of the inductance times the time-variant current flow. In resonance, this is not linear either. Voltage increases until the LED turns ON.
Transistor switches off: Current reverses direction through the inductor as the magnetic field collapses. The other half of the sinewave presents itself across the coils, since there is a diode, it only exits out the secondary. Which makes a connection to both the battery and the base resistor. The induced voltage, and the time-variant current flows through the resistor until it reaches cut-on potential and the transistor turns on again. The LED has not yet stopped emitting photons.
By the time the inductor runs out of energy, the transistor is on again, recharging it. <- if not, the system is NOT in resonance.
Transistor On Again: remaining voltage flowing from secondary coil + battery recharges inductor, and the cycle repeats itself. Adding to the voltage each time, until it reaches system maximum.
a bunch of LEDs will discharge it more quickly, but also take longer to charge the inductor. and the voltage drop across each diode affects the total voltage over time induced in the coils.
You will notice each diode you add, they all (except maybe the first one, depending on the type of transistor you use) will get dimmer and dimmer, until no more of them light up at all. Your circuit may handle 10, 20, maybe 40, but eventually you will reach its' potential.
The mechanism for resonance is not "real", its simulated, by the switching of the transistor in place of where a capacitor would be in a resonant LRC. The inductor doesn't know the difference.
Quote
A Joule Thief is nothing more than a mechanism for energizing an inductor and discharging that inductor through an LED. You could do exactly the same thing with a 555 timer output controlling the switching of the transistor via the base input.
Pulse-type switching and discharging are not the same thing as self-resonance at all.
Instead of replacing the transformer, you can take your transistor out and replace it with a 555, if you set it to switch at the resonant frequency.
The inductor doesn't know the difference. although the 555 has its' own internal capacitance, so this will change the resonant frequency slightly.
Quote
So all of your links and stuff about self-resonance do not apply.
MileHigh
It applies if you apply it.
Quote from: MileHigh on March 21, 2015, 08:59:20 PM
I attached an annotated series of waveforms for a Joule Thief.
The red arrow shows the moment the transistor switches off. You can see how the current that was flowing through the inductor the moment before the transistor switches off becomes the current flowing through the LED the moment after the the transistor switches off. Then the whole process starts all over again when the inductor is fully discharged.
Do you see any "resonance" in that timing diagram? The answer is that you don't, you are looking at a switching circuit, a.k.a. a "pulse circuit" and there is no resonance at play.
Yes I can see that by your waveform, its not sin <---- fix that before you continue
LED " on" " off",. if you look at it in terms of current flow through the diode, there is a cut-off voltage that prevents a flow from the source, that doesn't mean there is no current flowing from the back side of the diode to the inductor.
The LED emits photons from the time it turns "off" until all the power is dissipated. So there is a flow of current leaving the diode even while current is not flowing "from" the source INTO the diode. it goes into the inductor and generally dissipates out of EMF / heat.
Quote from: TinselKoala on March 21, 2015, 09:48:39 PM
There went what little credibility you had left, out the window.
As for the rest of your statements about JTs and resonance etc ... I refute thee thusly:
TK, do you remember the beginning of the TPU epidemic.....
Why do you think the JT got so much attention to begin with?
Back before it even had an LED in the circuit....
people were trying to say it was pulling current from the wires inside the walls through inductive coupling or some crap...
all it does is oscillate back and forth from the inductor to the cap.
the LED added a load, which drained the cap, thus a battery was implemented.
Then it was discovered that you can use a "dead" battery and it still works....
They got less and less efficient over time, as more and more people began making them, and ignoring the operating conditions SM had placed on the circuit.
Sm0ky2:
QuoteTransistor switches off: Current reverses direction through the inductor as the magnetic field collapses.
You just shot yourself in the foot with the above statement. It's an old wives tale to believe that the current through the inductor reverses direction when the transistor switches off and the magnetic field starts to collapse.
I can't decipher much of the rest of your comments. One day when you are back on a bench and test a classic Joule Thief circuit, come back to this thread and look at your comments vs. my comments.
MileHigh
Quote from: tinman on March 21, 2015, 01:32:42 PM
@ MarkE,TK,and MH.
Insted of saying rubbish,how would we go about building a resonant JT,or makeing my circuit opperate as it dose,but with a much higher power output?.Maybe a small cap in series with a diode across the collector/base?.
It wouldn't look much like a JT. It would take multiple transistors.
This is exactly the problem he had.... no one would listen to what the was saying, which is based on simple, well known inductor theory...
He evne built a 9-inch torroid and tried to show people, no one could figure out why it did what it did, despite his attempts to show it to them..
he eventually sold his patents and moved to L.A.
Quote from: Tinman
@ MarkE,TK,and MH.
Insted of saying rubbish,how would we go about building a resonant JT?
Watch TK's video I posted, and do the exact same thing, but instead of using a signal generator, use a variable resistor on the JT
Quote from: TinselKoala on March 21, 2015, 03:49:01 PM
I'm not entirely sure that a resonant condition is what is wanted in order to get more efficiency or higher output from a JT-type circuit. After all, a resonant tank stores energy, and as the tank components aren't perfect, they will inevitably be dissipating some of that stored energy in unwanted ways, like by Joule heating of the components and RF radiation, removing it from being available for "output".
It might be true that a resonant condition could enable a circuit to extract some energy from the "ambiance", like a tuned receiver of the electrosmog harvester or crystal radio type does, allowing some of this "outside" energy to be put to use by the circuit.
The old JT threads on this forum have a lot of information as to making JTs as efficient as possible by carefully tuning coils and circuitry. The closest thing to a "resonant JT" that I can think of is the Slayer Exciter-type solid-state Tesla coil kind of thing.
Resonant switching reduces switching in the switching transistor(s) and diode (if present). An archetypical JT uses regenerative feedback to speed up switching edges, but still suffers losses due to switching the transistor off when the inductor current is at a maximum. The "cool Joule" has even more switching loss as the switching is not regenerative.
Reluctance = Henry ^ -1
It's not witchcraft,.. you can put away the torches and pitchforks
current flow through a center tapped transformer
Quote from: sm0ky2 on March 21, 2015, 10:12:57 PM
This is exactly the problem he had.... no one would listen to what the was saying, which is based on simple, well known inductor theory...
He evne built a 9-inch torroid and tried to show people, no one could figure out why it did what it did, despite his attempts to show it to them..
he eventually sold his patents and moved to L.A.
Where he buys his power from the local grid just like everybody else.
Quote from: sm0ky2 on March 21, 2015, 10:15:40 PM
Watch TK's video I posted, and do the exact same thing, but instead of using a signal generator, use a variable resistor on the JT
I just love it when people misrepresent my work. MH is 100 percent correct about the function of the Base resistor in the typical JT. It is used to set the optimum level of the Base drive signal. This has some effect on the frequency, but not by the mechanism you claim. Note the variable trimpot on the HVJT lighting up six NE-2s in series with spikes approaching 800 volts, from the single depleted AAA battery. As the battery voltage declines the trimpot can be adjusted slightly to maintain the proper drive level in the transistor.
Now, as we have determined, the "cool joule" or what I'm calling the TMLMJT circuit we have been discussing DOES depend on the resonant tank formed by the L1 coil and the Base-Emitter capacitance of the transistor, and operates at the resonant frequency of that tank circuit. I've just done a measurement of the tank resonance using the setup pictured below, by sweeping the FG's sine wave output and reading the voltage response of the tank, looking for the maximum p-p voltage, then reading that frequency using the Philips counter. The value is in agreement with the power-on operating frequency of the circuit.
Also, I feel its important to note at this point in the discussion::::
Make sure your coils are NOT reverse biased,.. meaning the magnetic field should be induced in the same direction.
The JT " will work" either way, but if they are in opposite directions, you are fighting the induction, and increase your losses.
this will also disrupt any inductor resonance.
Quote from: TinselKoala on March 21, 2015, 10:46:02 PM
Now, as we have determined, the "cool joule" or what I'm calling the TMLMJT circuit we have been discussing DOES depend on the resonant tank formed by the L1 coil and the Base-Emitter capacitance of the transistor, and operates at the resonant frequency of that tank circuit. I've just done a measurement of the tank resonance using the setup pictured below, by sweeping the FG's sine wave output and reading the voltage response of the tank, looking for the maximum p-p voltage, then reading that frequency using the Philips counter. The value is in agreement with the power-on operating frequency of the circuit.
can you loop this back to recharge a set of batteries?
something like this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bVzI58k-Dk (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bVzI58k-Dk)
Quote from: sm0ky2 on March 21, 2015, 09:54:22 PM
When you get the timing right, as soon as the transistor cuts off - the field collapse induces a current in the opposite direction, and just as that stops, a pulse comes from the transistor again.
Again: The archetypical Joule thief circuit does not have a resonant tank. The on time varies with the saturation characteristics of the transformer and the battery voltage.
Quote
In Resonance::
I will use "transformer", because it is center-tapped bifilar inductor, which makes it a "transformer"...
[The signal through the transformer is no longer a function of pulsed DC, but rather an A/C waveform, of energization and field collapse in rhythmic pattern, as visible on the scope. the energy from the battery is being converted to a higher voltage and the current changes over time, until the LED turns on. Since the resonant frequency is (100Khz-xMhz) faster than the response time of the diode, the LED does not turn off.]
All oscillating circuits are "rhythmic". Certain oscillators use resonant tanks. Many oscillators do not use resonant tanks: relaxation oscillators, RC phase shift oscillators, and blocking oscillators are all examples of oscillators that do not employ resonant tanks.
Quote
Flip Switch:
Current flows through base and voltage is stepped up until it reaches cut-on potential::
Wrong. When base current flows, the transistor turns on charging the inductor with more current. At this time the collector voltage is close to zero.
Quote
Transistor on: the Inductor is being energized - current flow is not linear, but a function of COS, change in voltage over time is a function of the inductance times the time-variant current flow. In resonance, this is not linear either. Voltage increases until the LED turns ON.
Once again, the collector voltage is very small during this phase of the cycle. When the transistor turns-off, the inductor flys back rapidly increasing the collector voltage.
Quote
Transistor switches off: Current reverses direction through the inductor as the magnetic field collapses.
That is absolutely wrong. The collector voltage increases because the inductor current continues in the same direction. The transistor turning off blocks the path to the emitter so the collector voltage rises as the inductor current charges local capacitance until another lower impedance path conducts. The LED provides that path once the collector voltage reaches the LEDs V
FW. The collector voltage waveform approximates a trapezoid, not a sine wave.
QuoteThe other half of the sinewave presents itself across the coils, since there is a diode, it only exits out the secondary. Which makes a connection to both the battery and the base resistor. The induced voltage, and the time-variant current flows through the resistor until it reaches cut-on potential and the transistor turns on again.
Rising collector voltage induces negative going base voltage in the base side winding. The transistor is held hard-off by the winding until the magnetic field in the inductor diminishes to zero, elminating the BEMF that works against the battery voltage, and the net value holds the base off. The battery then once again forward biases the base-emitter junction, the transistor begins to conduct and the falling collector voltage induces BEMF in the base winding that increases base drive, regeneratively turning the transistor on.
QuoteThe LED has not yet stopped emitting photons.
Perhaps if you have LEDs manufactured in 1973. Not so much for LEDs manufactured since the turn of this century.
Quote
By the time the inductor runs out of energy, the transistor is on again, recharging it. <- if not, the system is NOT in resonance.
The system is never in resonance.
Quote
Transistor On Again: remaining voltage flowing from secondary coil + battery recharges inductor, and the cycle repeats itself. Adding to the voltage each time, until it reaches system maximum.
After a number of cycles, the system reaches an equilibrium.
Quote
a bunch of LEDs will discharge it more quickly, but also take longer to charge the inductor. and the voltage drop across each diode affects the total voltage over time induced in the coils.
You will notice each diode you add, they all (except maybe the first one, depending on the type of transistor you use) will get dimmer and dimmer, until no more of them light up at all. Your circuit may handle 10, 20, maybe 40, but eventually you will reach its' potential.
In the archetypical Joule Thief, the transformer swings through 1/2 the magnetization curve. During the transistor on-time the transformer goes from zero bias to saturation. During the transistor off-time it returns from saturation to zero bias. The energy that the transformer stores and discharges each cycle is fixed by the transformer saturation magnetization energy. More series LEDs decreases the transistor off-time, increasing frequency, and thereby increasing the power stored and released by the transformer. However, it also increases the switching loss of the transistor.
Quote
The mechanism for resonance is not "real", its simulated, by the switching of the transistor in place of where a capacitor would be in a resonant LRC. The inductor doesn't know the difference.
Wrong again. An inductor in a resonant tank operates on both sides of the B-H curve. In the archetypical Joule thief circuit it operates on only one side.[qutoe]
Instead of replacing the transformer, you can take your transistor out and replace it with a 555, if you set it to switch at the resonant frequency.
The inductor doesn't know the difference. although the 555 has its' own internal capacitance, so this will change the resonant frequency slightly.[/quote]The capacitance of the 555 itself as well as the capacitance of the timing capacitor on the 555 has no bearing on the resonance of an external tank circuit, which again: the archetypical Joule thief circuit does not have.
Quote
It applies if you apply it.
Quote from: sm0ky2 on March 21, 2015, 11:13:32 PM
can you loop this back to recharge a set of batteries?
He is not looping back anything.
Quote from: sm0ky2 on March 21, 2015, 11:13:32 PM
can you loop this back to recharge a set of batteries?
Yes
When the transistor becomes open circuit(switches off),a current loop is created between L2,the LED and B1. What power isnt consumed by L2 and the LED in the form of heat and light, charges B1. You may put as many batteries in parallel as you like in the B1 position,and they will charge. But because of switching losses,heat and light output,the charge returned to B1 will always be less than that supplied to the system by B2
Quote from: TinselKoala on March 21, 2015, 10:46:02 PM
Now, as we have determined, the "cool joule" or what I'm calling the TMLMJT circuit we have been discussing DOES depend on the resonant tank formed by the L1 coil and the Base-Emitter capacitance of the transistor, and operates at the resonant frequency of that tank circuit. I've just done a measurement of the tank resonance using the setup pictured below, by sweeping the FG's sine wave output and reading the voltage response of the tank, looking for the maximum p-p voltage, then reading that frequency using the Philips counter. The value is in agreement with the power-on operating frequency of the circuit.
The first resonant JT ?
Tinman this is the comparative result with and without a base resistor with no load. The flyback voltage increases about 15%.
Quote from: tinman on March 22, 2015, 01:37:59 AM
The first resonant JT ?
The circuit clearly has more than one mode of operation. Your traces don't look like MarkE's or mine, and also look at the large difference in frequency. The "double peaks" of your traces are happening at more ordinary JT frequencies of 30 or 15 kHz (depending on whether you count the double peaks as two cycles, or one.) While the last traces MarkE has shown are at 200-250 kHz and mine is running at over 500 kHz.
I don't yet have a pair of coils comparable to yours but I'll probably find, or wind, some a bit later on.
Quote from: sm0ky2 on March 21, 2015, 10:46:59 PM
Also, I feel its important to note at this point in the discussion::::
Make sure your coils are NOT reverse biased,.. meaning the magnetic field should be induced in the same direction.
The JT " will work" either way, but if they are in opposite directions, you are fighting the induction, and increase your losses.
this will also disrupt any inductor resonance.
This is clearly not true for the normal basic JT. There are four possible ways to connect the two coupled coils in a normal JT; two will work and two will not work. We've all gotten used to flipping the connections to one coil if our JT doesn't work the first time around. It will _not_ work "either way". Have you not built a basic JT circuit for yourself?
The TMLMJT circuit does not depend on the relative phasing of the inductors so it should not matter which way they are connected, since it does not depend on coupling of the two inductors and they are acting "in isolation" as it were.
However I've been playing around with a magnet near the inductors of my test unit with some interesting results.
Quote from: MarkE on March 22, 2015, 02:11:10 AM
Tinman this is the comparative result with and without a base resistor with no load. The flyback voltage increases about 15%.
On mine, I get a doubling of voltage at the Collector with no LED load, from 6 volts peak with LED to 12 volts peak without the LED. This is with about 1.5 volts at both supply sources. I still have the 220R resistor in place. With the resistor shorted I see very little change.
Quote from: TinselKoala on March 22, 2015, 03:28:52 AM
The circuit clearly has more than one mode of operation. Your traces don't look like MarkE's or mine, and also look at the large difference in frequency. The "double peaks" of your traces are happening at more ordinary JT frequencies of 30 or 15 kHz (depending on whether you count the double peaks as two cycles, or one.) While the last traces MarkE has shown are at 200-250 kHz and mine is running at over 500 kHz.
I don't yet have a pair of coils comparable to yours but I'll probably find, or wind, some a bit later on.
Maybe because i am useing air core inductors,and my run battery voltage is only .8 volt's-->i just grabed two old batteries from some old solar garden lights.
I am interested in what you have found with the PM near the coil's :)
Quote from: MarkE on March 22, 2015, 02:11:10 AM
Tinman this is the comparative result with and without a base resistor with no load. The flyback voltage increases about 15%.
Mark
Do you have a darlington transistor you could try-i have none ATM. Just interested in what may happen?.
Quote from: tinman on March 22, 2015, 04:15:02 AM
Maybe because i am useing air core inductors,and my run battery voltage is only .8 volt's-->i just grabed two old batteries from some old solar garden lights.
I am interested in what you have found with the PM near the coil's :)
On a normal JT a mag near the inductor raises the freq. I used this trick a few times when the circuit emitted a high pitch squeal. Place a neo on the inductor and the freq is raised high enough so you can't hear it.
Bill
Quote from: TinselKoala on March 22, 2015, 03:47:18 AM
On mine, I get a doubling of voltage at the Collector with no LED load, from 6 volts peak with LED to 12 volts peak without the LED. This is with about 1.5 volts at both supply sources. I still have the 220R resistor in place. With the resistor shorted I see very little change.
Going from one to four LEDs to open circuit with the 120 Ohm resistor:
1 LED 4.88V peak, 2 LEDs 6.96V peak, 3 LEDs 9.04V peak, 4 LEDs 11.1V peak, open 19.2V peak.
With the base resistor shorted, the open voltage increased to 22.2V peak.
I went back and retested with the 1812 chokes and found that the circuit will oscillate with those like the others given a kick to start. I short the collector to emitter with tweezers to genrate the kick.
The one difference may be that the probe I am using on the collector is one of the 20X probes our mutual friend made up for me. It has pretty light capacitive loading. This is all running from 1.3V for the source battery B2. The recharging battery B1 was about 1.2V for all the tests with an LED.
Smoky.wher r u
Quote from: MarkE on March 22, 2015, 04:51:31 AM
Going from one to four LEDs to open circuit with the 120 Ohm resistor:
1 LED 4.88V peak, 2 LEDs 6.96V peak, 3 LEDs 9.04V peak, 4 LEDs 11.1V peak, open 19.2V peak.
With the base resistor shorted, the open voltage increased to 22.2V peak.
I went back and retested with the 1812 chokes and found that the circuit will oscillate with those like the others given a kick to start. I short the collector to emitter with tweezers to genrate the kick.
The one difference may be that the probe I am using on the collector is one of the 20X probes our mutual friend made up for me. It has pretty light capacitive loading. This is all running from 1.3V for the source battery B2. The recharging battery B1 was about 1.2V for all the tests with an LED.
It would be great to see at what efficiency the device is running at.
I must say Mark,i am most happy that you are experimenting with this setup.
Thanks
Quote from: tinman on March 22, 2015, 04:19:53 AM
Mark
Do you have a darlington transistor you could try-i have none ATM. Just interested in what may happen?.
I tried a TIP-102. I could not get it to start. The base - emitter resistors are likely damping out the tank. I did manage to find a 2N3055 in my junk box. It runs much slower than the 2N2222A which is quite understandable given the lower gain.
Quote from: tinman on March 22, 2015, 05:02:02 AM
It would be great to see at what efficiency the device is running at.
I must say Mark,i am most happy that you are experimenting with this setup.
Thanks
The efficiency is very low, around 1.2%: 2N2222A circuit 0 Ohms base resistor, 2 shielded 1mH 2.9 Ohm inductors: 4.2uA average current into two red LEDs in series and 1.3V average voltage for 5.5uW output, versus 1.29V in at 153uA for 458uW input.
Quote from: MarkE on March 22, 2015, 05:19:43 AM
I tried a TIP-102. I could not get it to start. The base - emitter resistors are likely damping out the tank. I did manage to find a 2N3055 in my junk box. It runs much slower than the 2N2222A which is quite understandable given the lower gain.
Yes,that would be one of the reasons mine has a low frequency. the TIP35C seems to give much the same results as the 3055.
Quote from: tinman on March 22, 2015, 06:33:24 AM
Yes,that would be one of the reasons mine has a low frequency. the TIP35C seems to give much the same results as the 3055.
So just for a lark, I measured the efficiency of an ordinary Joule Thief using a 470uH coupled choke from Coilcraft: MSD1260-474. For the transistor, I used a DMN2075 N channel MOSFET. This is a low threshold voltage, low on resistance device. I get about 65% efficiency at 7.4kHz. Peak current is about 140mA. There is only: the coupled choke, the MOSFET, and the LED.
Quote from: MarkE on March 22, 2015, 09:27:39 AM
So just for a lark, I measured the efficiency of an ordinary Joule Thief using a 470uH coupled choke from Coilcraft: MSD1260-474. For the transistor, I used a DMN2075 N channel MOSFET. This is a low threshold voltage, low on resistance device. I get about 65% efficiency at 7.4kHz. Peak current is about 140mA. There is only: the coupled choke, the MOSFET, and the LED.
I think a few years back there were people that were convinced that the Joule Thief was going to "revolutionize everything." I am not talking about Bill's JT threads either. It was almost a cult. Yet, I am willing to bet that nobody ever measured the efficiency like you just did.
There is so much junk and superstition and inane nonsense out there (in this realm) when it comes to electronics. Once my nemesis Jbignes5 said something like "The Tesla bifilar coil was going to change the world." Really?! The guy doesn't have the slightest clue when it comes to electronics. Sm0ky2 is a classic example of somebody buying into a lot of crap but he can't offer up any substance to back up his claims. Yet he really believes what he is saying.
Not that it really matters in the overall scheme of things, but it used to annoy me. People are going to do what they want, and the human condition is such that there is both brilliance and stupidity wherever you look.
There is a kind of "Milgram experiment" at play that goes something like this: Here we are experimenting outside the bounds of conventional science. Proper understanding and measurements don't count, just look at your results. People that challenge us with conventional science are demons working for the cabal and you are under orders to denounce them as heretics.
So you end up with ostensibly nice people accusing other people of being "paid government agents" just because they want to apply science to understand what's going on. On one level it's really sick and they are no different than the people in the Milgram experiment believing that they were administering pain and suffering onto other people because an authority figure told them to do that.
The "authority figure" in this case is the belief that "we are cool rebels outside normal science" and associated peer pressure and that gives them a "license" to denounce outer people as "paid government agents." The whole thing is completely retarded.
Sorry for that diversion and back to your discussion.
MileHigh
Quote from: MileHigh on March 22, 2015, 01:55:21 PM
I think a few years back there were people that were convinced that the Joule Thief was going to "revolutionize everything." I am not talking about Bill's JT threads either. It was almost a cult. Yet, I am willing to bet that nobody ever measured the efficiency like you just did.
There is so much junk and superstition and inane nonsense out there (in this realm) when it comes to electronics. Once my nemesis Jbignes5 said something like "The Tesla bifilar coil was going to change the world." Really?! The guy doesn't have the slightest clue when it comes to electronics. Sm0ky2 is a classic example of somebody buying into a lot of crap but he can't offer up any substance to back up his claims. Yet he really believes what he is saying.
Not that it really matters in the overall scheme of things, but it used to annoy me. People are going to do what they want, and the human condition is such that there is both brilliance and stupidity wherever you look.
There is a kind of "Milgram experiment" at play that goes something like this: Here we are experimenting outside the bounds of conventional science. Proper understanding and measurements don't count, just look at your results. People that challenge us with conventional science are demons working for the cabal and you are under orders to denounce them as heretics.
So you end up with ostensibly nice people accusing other people of being "paid government agents" just because they want to apply science to understand what's going on. On one level it's really sick and they are no different than the people in the Milgram experiment believing that they were administering pain and suffering onto other people because an authority figure told them to do that.
The "authority figure" in this case is the belief that "we are cool rebels outside normal science" and associated peer pressure and that gives them a "license" to denounce outer people as "paid government agents." The whole thing is completely retarded.
Sorry for that diversion and back to your discussion.
MileHigh
The real efficiency killer in a Joule Thief is its reliance on saturation of the magnetic core to switch. The inductor current and circuit conduction losses shoot through the roof during the transition into saturation. Using very square magnetic material as used in better magnetic amplifiers would reduce that loss a lot at a price of more expensive cores. The $1. Chinese solar stick lights get around that by using a multivibrator circuit to time turning the switching transistor on and off. They turn the transistor off well before the core approaches saturation avoiding the big uptick in current that occurs with an archetypical Joule Thief. This also lets them use simple inductors that cost only a couple of pennies. If you want to buy coupled chokes needed by a Joule Thief, they are around $0.40 in 5K quantities and $0.20 each in million piece quantities. A number of those $1. retail stick lights get efficiencies close to 90%. They are limited in the average power that they can deliver by the discontinuous conduction of the inductor. 10mA to 20mA average current to the LEDs is common. They can be modified to continuously conduct to obtain more power, but at the cost of a substantial efficiency hit due to the need for output rectification and hard switching on both edges.
Quote from: MarkE on March 22, 2015, 06:20:39 PM
The real efficiency killer in a Joule Thief is its reliance on saturation of the magnetic core to switch. The inductor current and circuit conduction losses shoot through the roof during the transition into saturation. Using very square magnetic material as used in better magnetic amplifiers would reduce that loss a lot at a price of more expensive cores. The $1. Chinese solar stick lights get around that by using a multivibrator circuit to time turning the switching transistor on and off. They turn the transistor off well before the core approaches saturation avoiding the big uptick in current that occurs with an archetypical Joule Thief. This also lets them use simple inductors that cost only a couple of pennies. If you want to buy coupled chokes needed by a Joule Thief, they are around $0.40 in 5K quantities and $0.20 each in million piece quantities. A number of those $1. retail stick lights get efficiencies close to 90%. They are limited in the average power that they can deliver by the discontinuous conduction of the inductor. 10mA to 20mA average current to the LEDs is common. They can be modified to continuously conduct to obtain more power, but at the cost of a substantial efficiency hit due to the need for output rectification and hard switching on both edges.
Those little solar garden light circuits only use around 3mA ,and the LED apears quite bright.
Maybe a half bridge circuit that triggers at the 0 volt line across the driving coil.
Quote from: MarkE on March 22, 2015, 06:20:39 PM
The real efficiency killer in a Joule Thief is its reliance on saturation of the magnetic core to switch. The inductor current and circuit conduction losses shoot through the roof during the transition into saturation. Using very square magnetic material as used in better magnetic amplifiers would reduce that loss a lot at a price of more expensive cores. The $1. Chinese solar stick lights get around that by using a multivibrator circuit to time turning the switching transistor on and off. They turn the transistor off well before the core approaches saturation avoiding the big uptick in current that occurs with an archetypical Joule Thief. This also lets them use simple inductors that cost only a couple of pennies. If you want to buy coupled chokes needed by a Joule Thief, they are around $0.40 in 5K quantities and $0.20 each in million piece quantities. A number of those $1. retail stick lights get efficiencies close to 90%. They are limited in the average power that they can deliver by the discontinuous conduction of the inductor. 10mA to 20mA average current to the LEDs is common. They can be modified to continuously conduct to obtain more power, but at the cost of a substantial efficiency hit due to the need for output rectification and hard switching on both edges.
Agreed, for low power applications, the two transistor complementary multi-vibrator has many advantages over the single transistor blocking oscillator (aka Joule Thief) especially when it comes to controlling inductor current and avoiding saturation.
Blocking oscillators can be well behaved regarding core saturation, but that requires an extra active component to detect the onset of saturation and clamp off base drive or otherwise careful design of base drive parameters.....a level of circuit design savvy rarely seen in the JT community at large.
Quote from: tinman on March 23, 2015, 08:36:17 AM
Those little solar garden light circuits only use around 3mA ,and the LED apears quite bright.
Maybe a half bridge circuit that triggers at the 0 volt line across the driving coil.
The problem with the Joule Thief is the same thing that allows it to run at low voltage: Timing by the transformer saturation. The ICs that drive those stick lights are generally capable of delivering up to 20mA average without a great deal of trouble. Some like the data sheet below can manage ~40mA down to a NiMH cell limit of about 1V. At lower input voltages the efficiency isn't much better than a Joule Thief, but the required inductor only costs a few pennies and at 1V this one is generally better than 80%. One of these would work: http://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/CBC3225T100MR/587-1625-2-ND/958009. If you're looking for 25mA or so it's a pretty good circuit that costs less than $0.50 to put together. Some LEDs will output around 10 lumens at 25mA, which is about the same as a 1W incandescent bulb.
There are other solutions out there as well.
Quote from: Vortex1 on March 23, 2015, 09:23:06 AM
Agreed, for low power applications, the two transistor complementary multi-vibrator has many advantages over the single transistor blocking oscillator (aka Joule Thief) especially when it comes to controlling inductor current and avoiding saturation.
Blocking oscillators can be well behaved regarding core saturation, but that requires an extra active component to detect the onset of saturation and clamp off base drive or otherwise careful design of base drive parameters.....a level of circuit design savvy rarely seen in the JT community at large.
More transistors help. Matched transistors help even more. I've yet to see a Joule Thief or similar discrete circuit that could get more Watt hours to an LED load from a single cell: alkaline, NiMH, etc than one of the specialty ICs when applied properly. The datasheet I posted just above does 85% - 90% efficiency over the entire run voltage range of a single NiMH. With an alkaline the efficiency falls from around 85% at 1V down to around 70% at 0.8V. There is only about another 5% energy in the cell from 0.8V down to 0.5V. So a Joule Thief or other discrete design even if it performs as well as one of these ICs isn't going to wring out much more energy. Since most won't come close to matching one of these ICs, KISS wins: Go buy the IC from Digikey, and an appropriate inductor for $0.07 or so and call it a day.
Quote from: MarkE on March 23, 2015, 10:11:32 AM
More transistors help. Matched transistors help even more. I've yet to see a Joule Thief or similar discrete circuit that could get more Watt hours to an LED load from a single cell: alkaline, NiMH, etc than one of the specialty ICs when applied properly. The datasheet I posted just above does 85% - 90% efficiency over the entire run voltage range of a single NiMH. With an alkaline the efficiency falls from around 85% at 1V down to around 70% at 0.8V. There is only about another 5% energy in the cell from 0.8V down to 0.5V. So a Joule Thief or other discrete design even if it performs as well as one of these ICs isn't going to wring out much more energy. Since most won't come close to matching one of these ICs, KISS wins: Go buy the IC from Digikey, and an appropriate inductor for $0.07 or so and call it a day.
MarkE, you are correct, when it comes to getting the job done quickly and in a decent manner the IC will win. Unfortunately the proliferation and use of IC's by the experimenter unburdens the novice from having to learn discrete transistor design and perform it well. Thus you see so many in the JT community not really knowing how to read a transistor data sheet, let alone properly design a single transistor circuit. Most of the experimentation we see is cut and try, lacking circuit fundamentals and the discipline of real electronics design. It is no wonder most don't go beyond one transistor circuits.
My experience spans three eras, tubes, transistors, and IC's. I still like to do discrete design that can sometimes match or exceed the performance of certain IC's', just for the fun of it, much the way some people like to do complex crossword puzzles, it keeps the mind sharp. Oftentimes it is a skill of limited value for today's high volume production runs which favor IC's, but great if your career choice includes analog IC design.
The Zetex part you mentioned is very nice for designs under 6 volts and low current. I only wish they had brought out the current sense resistor and a few other internals, but that's what keeps the cost down and application of the part easy. They probably have other parts with more flexibility.
Quote from: Vortex1 on March 23, 2015, 03:36:34 PM
MarkE, you are correct, when it comes to getting the job done quickly and in a decent manner the IC will win. Unfortunately the proliferation and use of IC's by the experimenter unburdens the novice from having to learn discrete transistor design and perform it well. Thus you see so many in the JT community not really knowing how to read a transistor data sheet, let alone properly design a single transistor circuit. Most of the experimentation we see is cut and try, lacking circuit fundamentals and the discipline of real electronics design. It is no wonder most don't go beyond one transistor circuits.
My experience spans three eras, tubes, transistors, and IC's. I still like to do discrete design that can sometimes match or exceed the performance of certain IC's', just for the fun of it, much the way some people like to do complex crossword puzzles, it keeps the mind sharp. Oftentimes it is a skill of limited value for today's high volume production runs which favor IC's, but great if your career choice includes analog IC design.
The Zetex part you mentioned is very nice for designs under 6 volts and low current. I only wish they had brought out the current sense resistor and a few other internals, but that's what keeps the cost down and application of the part easy. They probably have other parts with more flexibility.
There are other parts out there with more of the internal connections available. I have a colleague who has some sub 1V designs that do mid 80's% efficiency from well under 100mW to over 300mW output. The power transistors switch wicked fast which enables the circuit to run over 1MHz and still be very efficient hard switching. For people who want to build a Joule Thief like circuit, unless the goal is to learn discrete analog design those Zetex parts are probably the way to go.