Joule Thief

[weri812]

hello all

you can use the  thermoelectric modules  on a steirling motor


wer

[nievesoliveras]

@resonanceman

You are having some success with the joule thief self charger.
I have not been able to put it to work again.

Jesus

[Pirate88179]

@ All:

I am posting this here even though it has nothing to do with the JT circuits....yet.  I need the advice of the smart folks here.  Yesterday, I received my 650 Farad maxcap from Gadgetmall (Thanks Al) and that sucker is huge!!  The polarity is clearly marked and there is a warning on the label not to reverse it.  I installed it into a plastic waterproof container (tupperware) to make it weatherproof and hooked it to my Earth battery yesterday afternoon.  Well, this morning I got up, got some coffee and decide to stick my meter on it just to see how it was doing.  Here are the results:

+2.4 volts dc
-9.7 amps dc  (This is on the 10 amp setting on my meter, not mA!)

I can't think of any reason that the polarity on the amp setting would be minus and the volts are plus.  I have never seen anything like this before while working with the EB and supercaps, etc.  If this -9.7 amps is usable given the reverse polarity, I will be able to run some great stuff from this but I am confused by this.

I tested it like 5 different times now and still get the same thing. 

Without any supercaps at all, I was getting about +1.95 vdc and +10 mA's from just the EB.

Can someone tell me why this amp reading has a - sign in front of it and, will this affect my trying to use this power?

Thanks.  These 650 caps from Al are really somethng and well worth the price he asks for them.

Bill

[Pirate88179]

I just had a thought.  Do I need to install diodes between the EB and the maxcap to keep the power from flowing back into the EB once the levels are higher than the EB output levels?  This might account for the - sign on the amp meter.

I mean, if the eb puts out 1.95 vdc and I have 2.4 vdc in the cap, what keeps that from flowing the other way back to the EB?  Same with the amps?

I am really confused here.  ***EDIT***  I have a bunch of 1N4001 and 1N4007's
from my Bedini stuff, would these be big enough for this?  Could I put several in series if they are not?  And, the anode (the silver stripe) goes toward the direction of flow right?  Sorry for all of these questions.

Bill

[jeanna]

Hi Bill,
I do not have an answer for you. Instead I have a place for inspiration and a good description of capacitors.

http://amasci.com/emotor/cap1.html
That is Bill Beaty's explanation about it. Be sure not to miss the last 2 paragraphs.

Bill Beaty is an EE who has a wide acceptance for moving into a much bigger box. In his bio he says he went into Engineering instead of physics because his family needed him to bring home the bacon, so to speak, and not be looking for grants. (from my memory, sorry Bill Beaty, if that is not exactly correct.)

jeanna