Something weird with a 12 volt joule thief.

[Bradley Malone]

Hi again everyone.
I came accross something while tinkering yesterday and I for the life of me can not figure out whats happening. I wanted to see what effects could be had from a joule thief that ran on more than a AA battery. so I took the attached picture and modified the basic circuit to run 12 volts into a 3 ohm bi-filar 26awg coil. I used a 660 ohm resistor on the base, couldn't find a 1k, and instead of a 4401 I used a 3055 on a heat sink. I know the power supply has something to do with it and i'll get to that but for the sake of science...it is a "switching adapter" model-FJ-SW1205000T...it was in my junk box but I believe it is a laptop charger. it has an output of 12v 5000ma.

everything works fine and the only thing that gets hot is the coil after about 30-45 minutes. When i use it to charge up a 16milifarad cap bank to about thirty volts the blue SNAP the comes when you discharge the caps sounds like a gunshot (scared the sh&* out of my brother). it also desulfates batteries rather well, I have a 100 amp hour car battery that would not charge by any normal means...but hooked up to this thing I have got it up to 12.86 volts over a few charge and chill cycles, But the key is...it is fixing a $120 car battery...I'm cool with that.

The problem....while tinkering a hooked up different loads in place of the capacitor. one of them is a 95volt ac neon bulb. It does not light up while the circuit is running but does flash orange when I first hook up power and flashes purple bluish when I disconnect power. That is weird by itself. The craziest thing and the whole point of this post really is what happens when I disconnect the power. Here is why I said the power supply has something to do with it. I disconnected the positive from the PS and left the negative connected while I changed loads. when I hooked up the light it light up....with only the negative connected! BUT it only happens if I touch between the diode and the load (red arrow). So somehow the energy in MY BODY is lighting a 95 VAC lightbulb (not full brightness but you can definitely see it). if I connect the negative to a battery it does not do this. So it has to be something to do with the charger...But assuming that I would have to be the positive potetial and it the negative and it works even if i insulate myself from ground....so to my thinking its like a wire connected from the positive of one battery to the negative of another...nothing would happen untill the return path is made....So can one of you geniuses help a poor guy out...did I invent the human battery ....I don't understand it therefore it drives me nuts!!

[Faraday88]

I came accross something while tinkering yesterday and I for the life of me can not figure out whats happening. I wanted to see what effects could be had from a joule thief that ran on more than a AA battery. so I took the attached picture and modified the basic circuit to run 12 volts into a 3 ohm bi-filar 26awg coil. I used a 660 ohm resistor on the base, couldn't find a 1k, and instead of a 4401 I used a 3055 on a heat sink. I know the power supply has something to do with it and i'll get to that but for the sake of science...it is a "switching adapter" model-FJ-SW1205000T...it was in my junk box but I believe it is a laptop charger. it has an output of 12v 5000ma. Your schematic shows that you have wired the trigger in the Forced Trigger mode, secondly a Joule thief circuit has the Didoe connected in the ' Generator mode' (i.e between the collector and the emmitter) what surpises me all the more is that this circuit should not run in this configuration if the Transistor is NPN, because if it is than the Forced Trigger for it cannot initiate the oscillations. (since you say it is 2n3055)
everything works fine and the only thing that gets hot is the coil after about 30-45 minutes. When i use it to charge up a 16milifarad cap bank to about thirty volts the blue SNAP the comes when you discharge the caps sounds like a gunshot (scared the sh&* out of my brother). it also desulfates batteries rather well, I have a 100 amp hour car battery that would not charge by any normal means...but hooked up to this thing I have got it up to 12.86 volts over a few charge and chill cycles, But the key is...it is fixing a $120 car battery...I'm cool with that.

The problem....while tinkering a hooked up different loads in place of the capacitor. one of them is a 95volt ac neon bulb. It does not light up while the circuit is running but does flash orange when I first hook up power and flashes purple bluish when I disconnect power.This is simply the Inductive Make and break that you are manually causing with the Inductors, it is stronger when you break in an Inductive switching hence Purple Blue(Kind of Lenz Law is at play) That is weird by itself. The craziest thing and the whole point of this post really is what happens when I disconnect the power. Here is why I said the power supply has something to do with it. I disconnected the positive from the PS and left the negative connected while I changed loads. when I hooked up the light it light up....with only the negative connected! BUT it only happens if I touch between the diode and the load (red arrow). So somehow the energy in MY BODY is lighting a 95 VAC lightbulb (not full brightness but you can definitely see it). Please refer the Solid-state Oscilltor of Bedini which has resistors baised between the Collector -Base and Emmitter- base you body is providing these bias resistance to initiate the Oscillations and hence the Neon Glows! if I connect the negative to a battery it does not do this. are you saying it correct here do you mean to say Negative of the Power supply? So it has to be something to do with the charger this can happen and this how : the power supply does conducted emmission (harmonics of the fundamental frequency 50Hz, these are getting amplified and driving the Transistor...But assuming that I would have to be the positive potetial and it the negative and it works even if i insulate myself from ground....so to my thinking its like a wire connected from the positive of one battery to the negative of another...nothing would happen untill the return path is made....So can one of you geniuses help a poor guy out...did I invent the human battery ....I don't understand it therefore it drives me nuts!!Click image for larger version.

Name: big joule.jpg
Views: 3
Size: 64.9 KB
ID: 4661

[Bradley Malone]

Thanks again faraday. honestly this is my first joule thief circuit ...so I just hooked the charge stuff up the way I am used to...accross the coil. As i said it is bright blue when i discharge the caps and the only way I have ever seen that was with radiantly charged caps. I get the inductive make and break ... but don't quite understand how one is blue...even if it is more powerfull. As for the charger ...what i was saying is i can hook it to a battery with just the negative wire and nothing happens but when i hook the negative of the circuit to the negative of the laptop power supply...it does something to the circuit that allows the energy from me to jump the gap in the neon lighting it up. I have seen one wire transmission systems before I just can't imagine I stumbled on to one on accident. I will try to make a quick video later.

[Bradley Malone]

I don't understand why you say it wouldn't work with a npn. if you look at the picture you can imagine the main coil is not allowed to conduct because it is hooked to the collector and the transistor is off. but it can flow through the resistor through the trigger coil and into the base witch would turn on the transistor. but when the energy builds up in the coil it shuts the trigger coil off thus starting over...oscillation. Am I missing something?

[Bradley Malone]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eh0z...ature=youtu.be

Sorry the video quality sucks...I can take more clear pictures if anyone wants to see what is hooked where. BTW the "660" ohm resistor is a bundle of resistors in parallel found them in the box that way measured it and went with it

[Gary Hammond]

Hi Bradley,

I think what you have going on is a normal neon circuit tester function for 120vac. You have the neon bulb hooked to the positive output from the switching supply, and your body is providing the ground through the air to the other side of the neon bulb. The positive output in your switching supply is resistive, inductive, or capacitive coupled internally to the ungrounded (or "hot") side of the 120vac receptacle it's plugged into.

It's the same as holding onto one lead of a neon circuit tester and placing the other lead into each side of the outlet to find which side is "hot" and which side is grounded. Your body completes the ground through the air.

[Bradley Malone]

so...let me get this straight...you stick a neon bulb into an outlet with your hand. I am guessing your mother didn't have the same beliefs mine did about that kinda thing

I can see that being a posibility but I have the negative hooked up not the positive. i checked the polarity with a meter just to make sure the outside of the plug is negative and it is. so with that being the only thing connected from the power supply then it would have to be the ground and the electric in my body must be the positive. Unless somehow positive is coming out of the negative...witch makes no sense.

[Gary Hammond]

Hi Bradley,

so...let me get this straight...you stick a neon bulb into an outlet with your hand. I am guessing your mother didn't have the same beliefs mine did about that kinda thing .......

The neon tester is a common "old school" device. Check out this u-tube video.

Unless somehow positive is coming out of the negative...witch makes no sense.

That's entirely possible as the source is ac. Either dc output polarity could be internally coupled to the ungrounded "hot" side of the outlet. Unhook everything, unplug the switching supply, and check for continuity between the "hot" side of the power cord and the negative dc output with the power switch on. And since it's a "switching" supply, it might be inductive or capacitive coupled. It probably will not be directly (zero ohms) coupled, but any resistance up to 1 megohm would probably be enough to dimmly light the bulb.

[Bradley Malone]

I understand...But I can still picture my mother catching my doing it

That makes sense because it does light up slightly....but its 12 volts not 120 and negative not positive....so I am still confused. Sorry if i am missing something obvious. and it does sound like what your saying but those are a few major difference that I can't get past. more tinkering is necessary!

[Gary Hammond]

Hi Bradley,

Switching supplies can be quite complex. Check out this 10 page article I found on the web.

http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/artic...Supplies/327/1

[Bradley Malone]

so what your saying ...is its to damn complicated to be building it for a light bulb... lol. I figured it had something to do with the way the P/S worked that's why I checked it hooked to a batery. So I will just accept it does this because someone smarter than me somewhere said it should. Thanks again Gary!

[Bradley Malone]

well I agree on the complicated part.

OK past the neon thing and back to normal working. I have noticed that it will drive the voltage up on the battery slowly but surely and the more i did that the easier it would rise. for instance at first it started at 12.36 volts...I hooked it up, and over the 30-45 minutes that it can run before getting hot it would raise it to about 12.50 after a few charges and relaxation cycles it now sits at 12.64 and will charge up to 12.85. given that I am using about half an amp in and its charging a 100 amp hour battery doesn't seem to bad. Not going for anything spectacular at the moment just trying to get this battery to a usable state. what i have come accross though is that once it is up around 12.8 the coil heats up faster kinda like thats its limit. like I said it normally takes about 30 minutes to heat up to the point I feel it should be turned off. but if start the charging when it is close to 12.8 already it may only take ten minutes to heat up.

[Faraday88]

Sorry the video quality sucks...I can take more clear pictures if anyone wants to see what is hooked where. BTW the "660" ohm resistor is a bundle of resistors in parallel found them in the box that way measured it and went with it
Good effort Bradly, I can understand what this is ..yes try this out...take a Neon bulb hold one lead of the bulb in your hand and touch the other lead to CONDUCTING SURFACE of the body of any running transformer ( say 120V to 12 v eect) that you might have used fro your experiments.. you should see similar level of Neon bulb glowing.... this is due to the floating earth in the Power supply...
Rgds,
Faraday88.

[Bradley Malone]

well i found a way to make an adjustable joule ringer / coil oscillator....and I figured I should share it. What I did was take the bedini/cole circuit I have (only using half of it) i hooked it up to a bifilar coil. The way I am switching it to make it oscillate is I am using a magnet with its south pole stuck to the top of the core and i am using the hall/coil arrangement that causes a south on top north on bottom magnetization when the coil fires. I put the hall on the bottom of the coil so that it is forced on by the magnet (through the core) but when it fires it creates a oppsite flux from magnet thus switching the current off as soon as it gets going. One thing I noticed quickly is that you can use a strong magnet ...that allows you to vary the speed of the oscillation by pulling the hall away from the core a bit. I don't have my oscope so I can't see whats going on inside the circuit but it does what most oscillators do...charges the heck out of a capacitor. Also because of the ability to change the oscillation speed (wich also changes the input current) you can use, in my machine, 700ma and drive a battery voltage up quickly ...or you can slow it down to 200ma and do a slow charge. given that it has an output like a normal oscillator but is easily adjustable I thought I would let people know so you can try it out.

also thinking that you may even be able to use the other hall to help the permanant magnet slam flux back through when the first hall turns off. since the south pole is facing down...if i put a hall directly underneath it, it would not switch (has to be north from the back or south from the front to switch) untill the current from the first pulse would create a south on top north on bottom witch would switch the hall only for the duration that the CORE is magnetized in that way....so in essence it would be oscillating in both swings instead of a build up collapse.

[Bradley Malone]

Well the hall switching deal is working...after a little tinkering I found that instead of having the magnet stuck to the coil and the hall able to be adjusted, I taped the halls to the coil and vary the magnet distance. The circuit draws 12ma just for the halls to work...when I get the magnet into close enough range the oscillation starts, and depending on the distance from the core it can draw as little as 38ma (including 12ma for the halls) or up to about 140ma. I can't get it higher than that because the other hall on top of the coil makes a small gap between the magnet. I know raising battery voltage does not always mean your putting energy in, I will test that once its "charged", But I started at 2:00 this afternoon and its 6:25 now so in 4 hours 25 minutes the battery has slowly risen from 12.45 volts to 12.75 volts. So whatever its doing...it "seems" to be charging. Am I correct in remembering that lead acids are supposed to be charged to 15 volts? I think i remember reading a paper by JB about it but can't seem to find it.