Joule Ringer!

[conradelektro]

Update on the SlayerExciter type Joule Ringer (look at my older posts, 7 and 12 posts up)

A TIP31C works instead of the MPSA06. The termination of the bifilar coil on the base of the transistor is a 33K resistor.

Power consumption at 20 Volt is less than 20 mA. If the terminating resistor is 10 K, power consumption goes to 100 mA and the lamp becomes very bright.

After shut off, the lamp slowly goes off in about 45 seconds. An Avramenko-Plug (near the tower at the same time) with three LEDs goes off after about 90 seconds.

Experiments with this circuit without a lamp but with a LED-Avramenko plug:

Termination of bifilar coil is 100K, power supply is 20 Volt, no lamp connected, power consumption below my measurement capabilities (below 10 mA)    -->    the Avramenko plug with three LEDs near the tower stays bright to fairly bright for about 120 seconds after disconnection of the power supply (and is completely dark after about 150 seconds)

Termination of bifilar coil is 300K, power supply is 20 Volt, no lamp connected, power consumption below my measurement capabilities (below 10 mA)    -->    the Avramenko plug with three LEDs near the tower is only fairly bright and stays fairly bright for about 180 seconds after disconnection of the power supply (and is completely dark after about 240 seconds). A single red LED Avramenko plug takes about 10 minutes to go completely off, showing that the circuit keeps ringing (on a low level) for a rather long time.

Termination of bifilar coil is 100K, power supply is 10 Volt, no lamp connected, power consumption below my measurement capabilities (way below 10 mA)    -->    the Avramenko plug with three LEDs near the tower is only fairly bright and stays fairly bright for about 60 seconds after disconnection of the power supply (and is completely dark after about 90 seconds)


I have to experiment with the pancake coil on the tower to adjust the circuit better.

May be one can build a small tower coil with the right pancake coil to light LEDs on an Avramenko plug for a long time from caps? The "Voltage step up" of the small tower coil does not have to be high for a few LEDs on an Avramenko plug.

Greetings, Conrad

[conradelektro]

Joule Ringer according to xee2

I found a little fly back transformer in a cold cathode lamp driver. With this transformer and a TIP31C transistor I could replicate the circuit from xee2.

Using a bifilar coil instead of the resistor-capacitor combination on the base of the transistor did not improve the circuit.

With the resistor and the capacitor the brightness (and the power consumption) can be adjusted.

With 50 K and 100 nF the consumption is way below 10 mA at 12 Volt, and with 100 K and 200 nF even less (but the lamp is also less bright and stays on for about 180 seconds with the caps).

The original driver needs more than 100 mA at 12 Volt !! I fried the original transistors 2SD1616A, so I moved to a more sturdy TIP31C. Only one collector coil of the little fly back transformer is used.

I will try a Darlington pair soon. Greetings, Conrad

[xee2]

@ conradelektro

You might want to try this circuit. I found it works a little bit better.

[conradelektro]

@ conradelektro      You might want to try this circuit. I found it works a little bit better.

@xee2

I could do some power consumption measurements over an 1 Ohm resistor (voltage drop):

The circuit from my last post (with 100K and 200nF) with a CFL needs about 2 mA at 12 Volt. (With my smallest cold cathode lamp it only needs close to 1 mA at 12 Volt.)

With your modification (33K, 10 μF) it needs about 3 mA at 12 Volt and the lamp flickers.


The "stay on time" with a 9400 μF cap agrees with theory:
C = 0.0094 Farat = 9400 μF, 12 Volt, 2 mA
12 V and 0.002A --> 0.024 Watt
0.5 * C * V * V = 0.5 * 0.0094 * 12 * 12 = 0.6768 Joules (Wattseconds) in the caps
0.6768 / 0.024 = 28,2 seconds

In practice the lamp stays on about twice or even tree times as long on the caps because voltage and with that power consumption and brightness decrease as the caps discharge slowly.


The circuit is very sensitive and depends on the lamp, the transistor and the resistor-capacitor combination (with a given transformer and supply Voltage).

Whenever I get the lamp bright (with a certain resistor-capacitor combination) the power consumption goes up to about 20mA or even 200mA, even more depending on the lamp. This also agrees with theory, because my lamps need up to 4 Watt to shine very bright.

Really bad is switching lamps when the power is on, that can fry the transistor.

What I see so far: one can probably bring down the power consumption to may be 0.1 mA by reducing the frequency of the circuit to 50 Hz and adjusting everything very carefully, but then the lamp will be rather dim and prone to flickering. But still, it is a nice way to dimly light a gas discharge lamp with little power. As a novelty item, dimly lit gas discharge lamps look nice and interesting. And it is an interesting and educational experiment. It also teaches you how sensitive the eye is and how difficult it is to judge brightness without a Lumen-meter.

If one wants to light the lamp according to its specified brightness potential, the Watts have to go up to specification. Put the same lamp (unmodified) in a wall socket next to an identical lamp in a Joule Ringer circuit and you will be surprise as to how bright the lamp in the wall socket is (you can't even look at it without hurting your eyes).

Greetings, Conrad

[NickZ]

    @ Conrad and All:
      Thanks for keeping us informed of your tests , and letting us know what you've found with these joule ringer circuits. 
    I'm trying to get the Captret- Jt combination working. Although I see that at times for some unknown reason, the led(s) are bright and the (8 too 10 caps) caps are charging slightly. But most of the time the charge is dropping, until the batteries need to be recharged.  If I only use one led, ( and not all leds work the same), the circuit can maintain itself to some degree, but if I add any more leds... there goes the charge. Once the battery charges get to less than about 15 volts, the leds start getting dimmer and dimmer. 
  I have not tried the CFLs as my coil would need to be bigger for that, and I can't find big toroids here, nor am I interested in lighting only CFLs, as I don't like their light.
  Looks to me like the ringer system is very similar the the big Jtc., only using CFLs instead of leds, and a different and bigger coil.
It does look like the CFL is part of what make this circuit work, as possibly just with using the Leds will not provide for the same ringer effect.
  Has anybody gotten this to work with Leds, without the CFLs?

   My feeling is that using a battery connected to a small solar panel to back up the ringer circuit will make it run for a very, very, long time.
Otherwise it just a set of previously charged caps, discharging for a little while, until there is no more light.  NOT self running...  but, very efficient use of power in any case. 
   I'm still hoping to find the solution to a self runner.