2 Attachment(s)
a little something i been playing with.
these are variation on what is known as a "Joule Thief". it is in effect a DC-DC boost converter used to light LEDs on as little as .5Vdc for Silicon Transistors or as low as .150Vdc for Germanium transistors. you got the standard Joule Thief circuits and then you have these that i have modified a bit. the standard JT circuit has the LED hooked to the emitter and collector of the transistor. while this worked it was not the most efficient way of doing things.
the first one is my own design. notice that the LED is positioned across the coil where the negative lead of the LED is hooked to the positive lead of the coil and the positive lead of the LED is hooked to the collector of the transistor. this position actually helps the circuit operate as the LED only sees the reverse voltage spikes from the collapsing magnetic field. this helps draw the reverse voltage to zero faster thus allowing the circuit to work more efficiently because the next time the transistor turns on the circuit is not fighting against any residual voltage in the coil.. with this setup and a good Bifilar Coil with a hundred or so turns wound on a ferrite doughnut core will pop out over 50Vdc at 1.5Vdc input at 30mA draw off the battery. tuned by the 50Kohm potentiometer it will allow one to run a 3Vdc LED that usually draws 20mA at 3Vdc off of as low as .5Vdc and 3mA-8mA with the 2N718 NPN silicon transistor.. a good use for all the old TV remote control batteries that won't work the remote anymore. but the cool part about this setup is that being the LED never sees full input voltage like the standard JT circuit, one can run it on upwards of 6Vdc-12Vdc and get the current draw down into the uA range. with a standard f-Cell 6Vdc lantern battery with 26000mAh capacity at 600uA draw the LED would stay lit for upwards of 43,000 hours or 4.94 years. using the higher intensity bright white LEDs this would light up a small room better than a candle for almost 5 years nonstop..
Attachment 218451
and that brings us to the second circuit.. i can't take credit for all of it as the original design was created by a guy who goes by the name "Lasersaber" on youtube. i just made a few alterations to it. the one shown is the original design as the one im playing with now will run on water. it will and can run on as low as 2uA if setup correctly. the one that im playing with now i have lit the LED with just my hands. now that is low draw. the coil on it was over 200 turns on a ferrite doughnut core of some wire that looked like a human hair. the only problem was that the LED was not really bright enough to use as a practical light source but was still cool that i could just hold a copper plate in one hand and a magnesium plate in the other and run the LED. it would run happily on tap water all night long though. if one were to use the same 26,000mAh 6Vdc battery to run the second one im playing with at 2uA draw the thing would run for (and i **** you not) 13,000,000 hours or 1,484 years.. that is why im not posting a picture of that one, yet.. i got a flashlight with one of my older circuits in it that i put the battery in it last year and the thing still reads 1.548Vdc even when using the flashlight almost every day.. the last battery didn't run down. after 3 years of use the battery started leaking, but it was still putting out 1.275Vdc.. flashlight sounds like a large mosquito when the transformer is oscillating.
what im wanting to do is setup a design for atmospheric electricity scavenging or using the telluric currents of the planet. the only problem with that is that during solar storms the entire system tends to get a bit twitchy. but i figure setting up a flashlight or emergency lantern that will run for months or years would be more practical and useful than just lighting single LED lights off of the electric currents of the planet although that would be a lot cooler. but using solar tech or even earth batteries the lighting mechanism would never need refueling, ever. and if one were to use super capacitors as storage then the thing would last several lifetimes b4 it wore out. but as usual, this is all fine and dandy in theory. got to build the darn thing and get it working first.
Attachment 218450
so does eveyone head hurt yet?