Joule Thief

[jeanna]

@jeanna,

Any tips on how to use this scope I am not sure how to even take a frequency reading I pressed the AUTO button and it goes all over the place!

Thanks!

-Altrez

Yeah, auto isn't for us. but it does prove the thing has working batteries.

There is a lot of undescribed stuff in (not in) the manual. pm me and tell me where you are. If you are where I was,,, fine.

jeanna

[resonanceman]

Anyone  out there  getting  OU ?

Can  someone  with a few JTs sitting around  varify my findings ?

I have been making quite a few variations of my LM JT
My OU  stuff might  work  better with  my LM coils  than  a regular JT because they are bigger .  I am  sure that  the concept  will work with  other JTs    I have  even added  regular inductors to my string  and  they added  a little .

Anyway     I start off  with a normal JT ( LM  in this case )
Start  with the  biggest  JT   you are planning on using .
Hook  it up  normally ......
Instead  of  driving  LEDs with the secondary   connect  the rest  of the JTs
in series  I usually  put them  on  one leg  but sense it is AC   they seem to work the same on  either leg .
I guess I am not being clear about how to connect the  other JTs.
All but  the   original JT are coil only ........no  transitors  no resistors
At this point ...... you will be connecting only the secondarys  in series .
Just  form a chain  from   the original JT secondary  through each other secondary   then to the  LEDs  or   whatever  you  are using for a load .
So  so far we are ignoring  all the  JT primarys except  for the  original one.
IN real life I add one  JT  coil at a time and see how it  works for a little while.

With  one  full LM JT  and 6 LM coils  I am  lighting  60 LEDs in an array at about half  brightness .
I am  using  3 meters 
One is  dedicated   to current from the  battery .
One  is used for battery voltage .
The  other one is   voltage across my LED array

Battery current is  stable  at .28 A
Battery  voltage has been fluctuating  a little but  has been holding  right around  1.150 for  a couple hours now .
Voltage  across my array  is  holding  at  around  67   V

I am working on  getting more power . .....   so far I have  got  it stable  at .30 A    That is my record .   

A few little  details
Start with your biggest  JT  .
Then   use  the next biggest    ...... untill   you have used all of them
If you put  a large inductor    after a small one  the large one acts as a choke  stopping almost all of the voltage .

Try to avoid  hooking up the  primary's of the  first  JT coil  if you can ...... it seems  to draw more  from the system than later  primary's

I started   out  using  a bridge .......but I found that a  diode  on each  primary  leg is  good enough .    I just  hook  a primary and diode  up  in  parallel  with the battery .  then check my meters
If the  voltages  are still winding down .....I hook  up another primary
I am  only  using 2 primary's   with my current setup.

As  far as I can see   all we are doing here is  making  pulses  with a JT
Then  feeding those pulses  into  other JT  coils to collect  the flyback 
It  uses  ALL of the original  JT output and  ALL  of the flyback .

The  only problem  I have had is  the  JT  drifing  out of  resonance .   If it  goes out of resonance and the  battery draw  goes up   it starts draining  the  battery .     
The  battery  seems  exert  some   force to keep  the  voltage in  a fairly narrow  band .
I am  guessing that the  battery resistance  goes up as it  nears full charge .

I hope  that this is clear enough to  understand   


gary 

[gadgetmall]

Anyone  out there  getting  OU ?

Can  someone  with a few JTs sitting around  varify my findings ?

I have been making quite a few variations of my LM JT
My OU  stuff might  work  better with  my LM coils  than  a regular JT because they are bigger .  I am  sure that  the concept  will work with  other JTs    I have  even added  regular inductors to my string  and  they added  a little .

Anyway     I start off  with a normal JT ( LM  in this case )
Start  with the  biggest  JT   you are planning on using .
Hook  it up  normally ......
Instead  of  driving  LEDs with the secondary   connect  the rest  of the JTs
in series  I usually  put them  on  one leg  but sense it is AC   they seem to work the same on  either leg .
I guess I am not being clear about how to connect the  other JTs.
All but  the   original JT are coil only ........no  transitors  no resistors
At this point ...... you will be connecting only the secondarys  in series .
Just  form a chain  from   the original JT secondary  through each other secondary   then to the  LEDs  or   whatever  you  are using for a load .
So  so far we are ignoring  all the  JT primarys except  for the  original one.
IN real life I add one  JT  coil at a time and see how it  works for a little while.

With  one  full LM JT  and 6 LM coils  I am  lighting  60 LEDs in an array at about half  brightness .
I am  using  3 meters 
One is  dedicated   to current from the  battery .
One  is used for battery voltage .
The  other one is   voltage across my LED array

Battery current is  stable  at .28 A
Battery  voltage has been fluctuating  a little but  has been holding  right around  1.150 for  a couple hours now .
Voltage  across my array  is  holding  at  around  67   V

I am working on  getting more power . .....   so far I have  got  it stable  at .30 A    That is my record .   

A few little  details
Start with your biggest  JT  .
Then   use  the next biggest    ...... untill   you have used all of them
If you put  a large inductor    after a small one  the large one acts as a choke  stopping almost all of the voltage .

Try to avoid  hooking up the  primary's of the  first  JT coil  if you can ...... it seems  to draw more  from the system than later  primary's

I started   out  using  a bridge .......but I found that a  diode  on each  primary  leg is  good enough .    I just  hook  a primary and diode  up  in  parallel  with the battery .  then check my meters
If the  voltages  are still winding down .....I hook  up another primary
I am  only  using 2 primary's   with my current setup.

As  far as I can see   all we are doing here is  making  pulses  with a JT
Then  feeding those pulses  into  other JT  coils to collect  the flyback 
It  uses  ALL of the original  JT output and  ALL  of the flyback .

The  only problem  I have had is  the  JT  drifing  out of  resonance .   If it  goes out of resonance and the  battery draw  goes up   it starts draining  the  battery .     
The  battery  seems  exert  some   force to keep  the  voltage in  a fairly narrow  band .
I am  guessing that the  battery resistance  goes up as it  nears full charge .

I hope  that this is clear enough to  understand   


gary

Hi Gary . Good going. Yes we are lighting up many allready . jeanna is the one to talk to about running more secondaries from one . she has done many experiments and has all that documented . Hazens1 is running 60 leds Fullpower with a norm,al jt . Its not uncommon to run 100's of leds from the secondary with little power drain . un noticeable current drain from th eprimary jt when you use a proper secondary many leds in parallel . I Just recently got 1300 volts from one of mine and xee2 is doing great at his version as well .Its all about the core and the frequency . Post some pictures . everyone has there own thing and as a collective we all learn from each other  and go our own way .

Gadget

[altrez]

Yeah, auto isn't for us. but it does prove the thing has working batteries.

There is a lot of undescribed stuff in (not in) the manual. pm me and tell me where you are. If you are where I was,,, fine.

jeanna

Thank you so much. I promise I will not bug you very much

-Altrez

[WilbyInebriated]

@WilbyInebriated   
I just took another look at your
beer light, thats nice. I think I'll get a couple ccfl's,
but it will have to wait a couple of weeks.
I played with a Royer Converter a couple of weeks
ago (diagram bellow) it was working good, until a
battery went of with a bang, the negative end
poped open, not sure what i did wrong, but i'm
planning to give it another try. thanks for your
reply.

mike..

thanks mike.
that's that same royer circuit i used. i got the zetex transistors they recommended, they work great. a small change in transformer windings and a couple component values and you can run it on one aa. i was using a 3.7 lithium from a cell phone in that light beer photo, which as you can imagine, runs it much brighter than the single aa setup.

the ccfl's are cool, i put a nice on/off pot on it now so i can vary the input voltage from the battery and the ccfl will light up from one end to the other as the pot is adjusted up and down. i need a bunch of 3 footers and a controller 

edit for xee:
i just checked 1.5v and a ccfl. it barely lights one end of the tube.
it has no problem with lighting a standard 8watt fluoro on 1.5v.
this is with components chosen for 4v input. pull a turn off of w2 and w3 and add a 100 turns to w1, change c2 to .15μf as per the .pdf and it might work for lighting the ccfl.