a little something i been playing with.

[Mauser 98K]

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..



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.



so does eveyone head hurt yet?

[Mauser 98K]

these are of my older design. the grey plate i got in my hand is a homemade graphite electrode for a water battery.



and this is the circuit running a small 3.5Vdc LED on a bottle of water. just ordinary tap water.

[Mauser 98K]

who can tell me what this one is running on?

[Mauser 98K]

this is my flashlight that the batteries will corrode in b4 they run down. the thing with the spring has the circuit in it and replaces one of the batteries and the bulb is replaced with the LED bulb shown in the picture.

[Mauser 98K]

and don't think that LEDs are all it can do. running a large radio with a single AA battery.. it will also run off of earth batteries for fully free energy..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPr-VbxQ2eo

[Rcmaveric]

I inductance. As the magnetic field from the coil breaks down it induces voltage.

[Mauser 98K]

something like that.. back in the old days of tubes the Jt circuit was known as a "blocking oscillator"..

[Rcmaveric]

I may not understand your lengo, but that schematic makes clear sense. The battery powers the inductor. The inductor powers the capacitor and transisotor. The capacitor and transistors work together to amplify and filter the voltage into something usable by the diode. Nifty cuircut.

Never heard of earth or water batteries.

[Mauser 98K]

earth batteries are older than the hills. the technology is several hundred years old.. water batteries are sort of a toy and gimmick for most as nobody has been able to get any real usable voltage out of them without having to add salt or vinegar. there is a water powered flashlight on the market but it does not use the water direct, it uses the water to charge internal rechargeable batteries and then you use the batteries to run the light.. the flashlight that uses that tech doesn't last very long either b4 the thing needs replacing. im trying to make a permanent solution myself.. if it were not so damp here all the time then atmospheric electricity would be a good option. it stays wet and humid here so much that everything stays shorted out.

[GhostHawk]

Personally I would have no problem spending a dime on a half a cup of vinegar once a year to make a light that needed no other power source.

Might want to look at these.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I have several of these in different variations. Essentially a solar powered lantern.

8 hours of sunlight for a full recharge. Will run the light for 14 hours.

I have 3 that got 2 days on the window ledge, then hung next to my chair for over a year. Still have 3/4's of a charge and work as soon as I push the button.

A lot of these have variable colors. That is not my thing. I just like having a light source bright enough to read the labels on the breaker box that does not require batterys.

3 of these have gone into my RV pile of useful things to have along. I still have one next to my chair. Mine all have 3 modes, low, high, strobe.

Now hook one of these into that circuit of yours. You have a self charging night light that will last forever?

[Mauser 98K]

those things are a scaled up version of a solar garden light. in fact you can add in a small switch to a garden light and use it as a solar charged electric candle.. i have done this a few times b4 i got my battery/inverter system sorted out. i still got a pile of solar garden lights here that i need to take the solar cells off of and use for a large solar charged light.

but with the circuit hooked in and last forever. with standard rechargeable batteries they would do for a few years, to get unlimited charges you would need to go for a super capacitor type battery system. with constant charging and discharging a battery wears out but a capacitor will charge/discharge happily for decades. then it all comes down to mechanical failure of the switch or accidental breakage.. i kick myself for not getting more of the shake emergency flashlights. the newer ones have a 1Farad-2Farad super capacitor in them. they were coming into the recycling center near my house in cars on a regular basis till i found out they had a super cap in them, then they stopped showing up all together. Murphy's Law i guess. the one i had went into a small hand crank radio i had where the nickel metal hydride battery was. id get about 10 minutes out of a charging. was a real small capacitor. id like to get some of the larger 6Farad or 10Farad caps, and those would run for a good long while. but the plan was to get a whole bunch of the super capacitors out of the flashlights and set up a ground current charging station in the yard that i just plug my devices into for a minute or two to charge them and then run them for several hours. when the shake lights stopped showing up that shot that idea in the ***.

[Mr_Sheesh]

You can get Super Caps through the regular electronics distributors; www.findchips.com will let you search multiple electronics distributors for most anything (you can search for "rack", "purple", what ever you want. "super capacitor" in this case probably ) Might be more expensive than through recycling centers of course, they are coming down in price last I checked though.

[jdfoxinc]

Are you speaking Greek? Yes my head hurts.

[Omega]

earth batteries are older than the hills. the technology is several hundred years old.. water batteries are sort of a toy and gimmick for most as nobody has been able to get any real usable voltage out of them without having to add salt or vinegar. there is a water powered flashlight on the market but it does not use the water direct, it uses the water to charge internal rechargeable batteries and then you use the batteries to run the light.. the flashlight that uses that tech doesn't last very long either b4 the thing needs replacing. im trying to make a permanent solution myself.. if it were not so damp here all the time then atmospheric electricity would be a good option. it stays wet and humid here so much that everything stays shorted out.

Atmospheric Electricity...that like Induced Electricity? What would you need to capture usable electricity from under hi-tension power lines? Not looking to power a house or anything, just charge a 12v battery.

[Mauser 98K]

atmospheric electricity is the ambient electric field that is always present all around us. one part is the same source where lightening comes from and the other is the electromagnetic fields that is created by the largest radio transmitter in the solar system, the sun.. there are also currents being setup in the ground by the constant bombardment of solar energy called "Telluric Currents". these are usually only in the uA (micro Amp) range power wise. i have played with them in the past and they require a lot of land space to use the ground currents. i buried a couple of stainless plates 50m apart once and got around .7Vdc at 30uA. not much to work with at all.

but for the high tension wires. if you are close enough they give off an ungodly amount of EMF. theoretically you could get some electricity with a long wire antenna placed under the lines with a series of tuned coils. it would be sort of a large crystal radio setup that would be tuned to the frequencies given off by the high voltage wires.. just better not let the power companies see you doing it though. i know if you live within a mile or less of a AM radio transmitter you can light a small LED with a crystal radio. wireless transmission of power is real, just capturing it in any quantity to do any work is the big rub.

[MaryB]

Hams use an antenna called a beverage to receive on 160 meters(just above AM broadcast band). There is a variation called beverage on ground. The longer it is the more it picks up and you could make a tuned circuit to filter it to natural frequencies. 200 feet is needed though at 1.8mhz, lower you go in frequency the longer it needs to be!

[Mauser 98K]

threw this together out of TV parts about an hour ago.. each LED is 3.2Vdc and 20mA draw. there are 16 LEDs in parallel. if running them off a normal 3Vdc battery that would come out to well over 320mA. these are drawing just a shade under 200uA. this is low enough draw to run off of water batteries or earth batteries without any difficulty..


can you say sidewalk marker lights that never need recharging or fueling? all the lights would be hooked together in parallel like the setup above and the earth battery system with circuit would be built and buried under the sidewalk.

[Bulldogger]

atmospheric electricity is the ambient electric field that is always present all around us. one part is the same source where lightening comes from and the other is the electromagnetic fields that is created by the largest radio transmitter in the solar system, the sun.. there are also currents being setup in the ground by the constant bombardment of solar energy called "Telluric Currents". these are usually only in the uA (micro Amp) range power wise. i have played with them in the past and they require a lot of land space to use the ground currents. i buried a couple of stainless plates 50m apart once and got around .7Vdc at 30uA. not much to work with at all.

but for the high tension wires. if you are close enough they give off an ungodly amount of EMF. theoretically you could get some electricity with a long wire antenna placed under the lines with a series of tuned coils. it would be sort of a large crystal radio setup that would be tuned to the frequencies given off by the high voltage wires.. just better not let the power companies see you doing it though. i know if you live within a mile or less of a AM radio transmitter you can light a small LED with a crystal radio. wireless transmission of power is real, just capturing it in any quantity to do any work is the big rub.

My understanding is that power companies are on the watch for power loss associated with inductive losses from rigs like this, since they consider it unauthorized use. I suppose they wouldn't be able to figure out the losses to charge a small battery though.

I have thought about Telluric Currents from time to time as well. This is the first time I've seen anyone really make something that can use them productively.
Very neat, thanks for sharing!

Bulldogger

[Omega]

atmospheric electricity is the ambient electric field that is always present all around us. one part is the same source where lightening comes from and the other is the electromagnetic fields that is created by the largest radio transmitter in the solar system, the sun.. there are also currents being setup in the ground by the constant bombardment of solar energy called "Telluric Currents". these are usually only in the uA (micro Amp) range power wise. i have played with them in the past and they require a lot of land space to use the ground currents. i buried a couple of stainless plates 50m apart once and got around .7Vdc at 30uA. not much to work with at all.

but for the high tension wires. if you are close enough they give off an ungodly amount of EMF. theoretically you could get some electricity with a long wire antenna placed under the lines with a series of tuned coils. it would be sort of a large crystal radio setup that would be tuned to the frequencies given off by the high voltage wires.. just better not let the power companies see you doing it though. i know if you live within a mile or less of a AM radio transmitter you can light a small LED with a crystal radio. wireless transmission of power is real, just capturing it in any quantity to do any work is the big rub.

My understanding is that power companies are on the watch for power loss associated with inductive losses from rigs like this, since they consider it unauthorized use. I suppose they wouldn't be able to figure out the losses to charge a small battery though.

I have thought about Telluric Currents from time to time as well. This is the first time I've seen anyone really make something that can use them productively.
Very neat, thanks for sharing!

Bulldogger

I purchased 8 acres with a TVA powerline running through the middle of it to hunt out of. I was rebuilding my hunting stand when I noticed I was getting "bit" by just about any metal object. At first I figured it was just static, as the lines are pretty high, but at one point I actually got an arc from the rain gutter to the ladder. I called TVA because I had never had this happen before and thought maybe that a ground wire had corroded or something. I was told no, that it was just induced electricity and there wasn't much I could do except ground anything metal. I have enough to power a fluorescent bulb held in my hand, figured if I could capture what is flying around anyway I could charge a 12v battery with it.

[desiko]

who can tell me what this one is running on?

Aluminum/air ?