Selfrunning cold electricity circuit from Dr.Stiffler

[abassign]

@hoptoad

Also I am an active sceptic, but when I have built the circuit not noticed any strange phenomenon.
As you have built the circuit ?
The scheme of mine you have seen it, is yours different ?
The example of the 5 LEDs has served me to understand that I didn't produce OU, but rather the system was a little efficient... (< 30%)

Ciao
Adriano

[hoptoad]

@hoptoad

Also I am an active sceptic, but when I have built the circuit not noticed any strange phenomenon.
As you have built the circuit ?
The scheme of mine you have seen it, is yours different ?
The example of the 5 LEDs has served me to understand that I didn't produce OU, but rather the system was a little efficient... (< 30%)

Ciao
Adriano

@Adriano

I built mine on the week end out of parts I scrounged up from my shed. Whilst the circuit is based upon the "Thomas" oscillator, which is really just a blocking oscillator, the actual components vary. I blew up a few NPN's and ran out, so I substituted them with some PNP's
and reversed the polarity of the circuit. To prevent the transistors from burning out, I connected a 600 ohm (Audio) transfomer winding in series with the antenna primary. This reduced significantly the total brightness of the LEDS, but must also have contributed to a significant lowering of drive current, because the transistors only run very cool now.

Also I did away with the standard "AV" Plug and series connected loop of LEDS, and replaced the O/P with series "AV LEDS" which I described in an earlier post, and which Amigo responded to by posting a diagram of the LED arrangement I'm using.

Also, as I explained, I don't know what my Antennna coils are like, e.g, how many turns on primary and secondary, because it is a sealed unit. But it looks like my antenna is much smaller than the ones shown here so far.

To truly see what this type of LED circuit is capable of, I think it is necessary to build an on board stable "variable" frequency oscillator, so that the effects can be explored across a wide range of frequencies.

Cheers from the Toad who Hops.............KneeDeep 

[Thaelin]

@Hoptoad:
   I would like to caution you on randomly touching places to see whats there. RF burns happen very easy and it can take days for the effects to manifest. It is not like a normal electric shock which makes the muscles jump. It has a burning sensation to it and can do things in a short amount of time. Five watts of RF can really mess you up. I do realize that there is micro-watts here but just be safe. Until correct RF mesurements can be made, dont tempt fate.

  Otherwise, hey aint this fun? Makin a Bertha, I hope.

thaelin

[retrod]

This morning I remembered I had a few 'burned out' old fashion cool white tubes in the basement slated for disposal. I held one up with the outer metal ring touching the positive buss. I defused the LEDs with some bubble wrap (boy, they are sure bright). In the photo you will see the water cell and in the background the light from an oil lamp. What you do not see is the very neat undulating pattern in the light of cool white tube. You must see this pattern yourself.

Stay safe,

Dave

[MeggerMan]

Circuit Efficiency

How many people have reported the efficiency of their circuit?
Answer, not that many.

The best I have achieved so far is 32%, I still need to do some more tests to see if a toroidal core can improve on that - it should.
Input is 9.2V x 6.2mA = 59mW
Output is 22.4V x 0.82mA = 18.3mW
So I need the output to exceed 3mA before I can say I have OU, it would then be a simple case to feed this into a highly efficient DC-DC circuit with isolation to self power itself.

With an ideal setup using fast, low on-resistance mosfets and low dropout schottky diodes I would expect to see the efficiency rise to say 85%.

I have a couple of components that are different to the Thomas Oscillator spec. posted by Dr Stiffler: TR1 is a BC184L and the coupling capacitor is a standard disc ceramic type, not silver mica.
Someone mentioned that using a silver mica cap made a lot of difference.
Everyone is quoting input power but only a few have measured the output. If you put a meter on the output, it does effect the LED brightness, but at the same time the power input changes too.
I got around this problem to some degree by unplugging the long meter leads and just plugging short wires directly into the meter terminals.
Also I use a 10uF capacitor on the output to enable the output current and voltage to be measured.
Again, this anti-ripple device could be my un-doing.
Like Hoptoad has just said, maybe I need to drive the transistor base with a function generator to test a wider range of frequencies.

@Retrod,
I will try this tonight, I have some brand new 4 or 5ft tubes I can use.
What voltage/current are you pulling on the supply?

Regards
Rob