Bedini SG notes

[Farmhand]

I just remembered I have a video from March 2011, back then there was quite a bit of fuss over the "Tesla" Solar Chargers from
Johns mob.
As it was rumored that the Johns patent above was the circuit, I decided to build it and see what happened. Even a crude beginner
like me at the time could see that the solar panels if used would be idle for 50% of the time.  So it was of no use to me for that. 

Two stage pulse charger clip.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvLomd757DY

[MarkE]

I just remembered I have a video from March 2011, back then there was quite a bit of fuss over the "Tesla" Solar Chargers from
Johns mob.
As it was rumored that the Johns patent above was the circuit, I decided to build it and see what happened. Even a crude beginner
like me at the time could see that the solar panels if used would be idle for 50% of the time.  So it was of no use to me for that. 

Two stage pulse charger clip.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvLomd757DY

One of your meters is the same model as a donated meter that TinselKoala uses.   I haven't looked at the schematics, but from what the meters were doing and your description, it looks designed to beat up on the batteries that it charges.

[TinselKoala]

I've noticed that the Excel XL830L DMM is a lot more sensitive to RF noise than the Harbor Freight Cen-Tech meters. (Most probably not a factor in Farmhand's setup.) Of course I only have a sample of one of the XLs, compared to about half a dozen of the Cen-Techs. But it's pretty easy to make the XL830 give bad indications if there is a lot of HF noise around, even when the meter isn't connected to the HF source. The Cen-Tech meters have a metal foil shield of sorts built into the case; I don't think the XL830 does. Other than that, I like the XL meter OK. It has a cool backlight function and a slightly better transistor socket for the Hfe test than the other meters. The thing I don't like about it is that the rotary switch is also the on-off switch, so the rotary switch gets a lot more use and stress than it needs to. The Cen-Tech meters have a separate on-off switch, but no backlight. And of course the XL meter has the neat little Fluke-type yellow sleeve thing, the Cen-Techs are just basic plastic boxes without sleeves.

But the really really neat thing about the XL meter (besides the fact that it was donated!) is that it came with an extra 9V battery!

[TinselKoala]

I just remembered I have a video from March 2011, back then there was quite a bit of fuss over the "Tesla" Solar Chargers from
Johns mob.
As it was rumored that the Johns patent above was the circuit, I decided to build it and see what happened. Even a crude beginner
like me at the time could see that the solar panels if used would be idle for 50% of the time.  So it was of no use to me for that. 

Two stage pulse charger clip.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvLomd757DY

Watching that video made a design sketch flash into my brain. Instead of using Time to regulate the pulse charging ... use Voltage! Use an op-amp comparator to monitor the voltage on the Capacitor as it charges up, and flip to the dump mode when the cap reaches the setpoint voltage!
This would be ideal for compensating for varying solar illumination because with variable input to the PV it will take more or less time to get the cap to its optimum voltage for discharging into the battery. If you use regular time intervals, the cap will sometimes have more charge (voltage), sometimes less, depending on the input light at the PV panel.
So using the op-amp comparator will allow you to set the voltage at which the cap dumps into the battery and also automagically compensates for varying input power as from a solar panel, charging the cap to the same voltage but taking longer or shorter time intervals to do it. Also you can just put in different cap banks and the system will automagically compensate, because it takes longer to charge a bigger cap to the same voltage, etc.

[Farmhand]

Yep, I used voltage level to trigger my picaxe solar pulser to dump it's cap and to stop charging when the battery voltage went too
high and the input voltage triggered weather or not to use the boost converter to pump up the cap or to just let the panel voltage
do it.
I've posted the schematic and the program code at different times and I should put them both here, I'll try to locate them, the schematic is on the other computer not repaired yet but it might be uploaded to a photo share site. I'll see if I can find it.