Let There Be Light

[extreme4wheeling]

Heres an idea. Figure out how long the light bulb stays lit with one capacitor. Lets say the light-bulb stays lit for 1 second. If you want it to stay lit for 60 seconds then get 60 capacitors and charge them one at a time. Then hook up the light bulb and it should stay lit for one minute. I know its not much but it would be a good start. Or you could make a step up transformer or joule thief and run the light right off of the 1.5 volt battery without charging a capacitor.

[egn83b]

Just take the cfl apart and use the circuit

[MattBlytheTheOne]

@egn83b hi, what would you use it for?

[egn83b]

@MattBlytheTheOne You can use the CFL and put it on the camra's Capacitor leads but first remove the capacitor so get the excitation voltage to run the cfl off the camera circuit. The inners of the CFL can be used for other projects or driving a door bell transformer that you connect as many CFL's as you want to it through the transformer end which gives about 400 volts. CFL's are lite by high freqency voltage. Its really nothing special or un-ordenary from a Floresent light. Same Technology.

[MattBlytheTheOne]

@egn83b Will the CFL run just from the camera circuit without the cap in place? A standard CFL is something like 11watts I am not sure the camera circuit will sustain that for long!? Very insightful info. thanks :)

[egn83b]

@MattBlytheTheOne You are missing the point. That little bit of nothing you did was just shorting the Cap on to the light sure it will work for a tenth of a second but what do you want, a lite bulb or a flasher? Its your choice so tear that light bulb apart and it in the caps place and let their be light. This camera circuit is just a jouel theif, wonder why you can use that AA battery because it requires almost nothing to run the circuit. Run time will be short around 3 hours but free light!

[MattBlytheTheOne]

@egn83b LOL OK I will try that thanks for your input ! :P

[electricitymagnetism]

Hello Matt, please watch the video The amazing Electrinium battery.

[MattBlytheTheOne]

@electricitymagnetism I would but someone closed your account already !

[Ebdan88]

Very Good Idea....I do hope that we see alot of video's from you Brother....GOOD LUCK....:-)

[MattBlytheTheOne]

@Ebdan88 thank you : )

[jesperc20]

Cool.. but the music is very annoying :-S

[MattBlytheTheOne]

@jesperc20 thanks, I like it !

[jesperc20]

@MattBlytheTheOne I can understand that.. but in this case I think you should reconsider the music. Sometimes it's a bit dificult to hear what you are saying. Perhaps it's just too loud.

[MattBlytheTheOne]

@jesperc20 you could be right LOL

[Lollipopsucker213]

MAn oh man.

Y do such clowns play such circus crap musick in the bkground.

Cut the "beats" and get on with it !!

Oi !.

[MattBlytheTheOne]

Oi ! this aint no circus trick it is schoolboy science... if you don't get it .... JUST DANCE ;)

[blankpianist]

LOL! schoolboy science = win

[canaanav]

You're proposal needs a bit of work. Please read up on capacitance of an energy storage cell; farads and amp/hours. The simplest designs are most often, the most efficient.

[bill99959]

Here is how you do it, You need 3 camera units, increase the size of the cap, large UF rating,,,then a circuit to switch between the camera units we will call A B C, in other words the circuit starts on A then before it goes out switch to B while B is running down A is charging the when B goes down to a set point switch to C during all this the 2 unused sections are charging, this should give you constant light,should not be hard use RC time constant and switching transistors

[MattBlytheTheOne]

that would probably do it, but there are easier ways to run a lighting system. CFL bulbs require a lot of power. You can light a flourescent neon for less voltage and a fraction of the current. There are already circuits designed to run on a AA battery! I was thinking more in terms of inverting the output from the capacitor into and AC voltage...

[maglight117]

hey can you get enough step up trans formers to keep a flash bulb on for 1 minute?

[MattBlytheTheOne]

hi, it is not about step up transformers it the discharge time of the capacitor. As the cap discharges it pulls current through the trigger coil of the flash momentarily inducing approx. 5kV, ionising the gas in the flash tube and firing the flash. You would need a continuous high voltage source to run the flash continously.

[maglight117]

so an 8 capaictor circut would work

the capacitor is 15k in micro farads

[MattBlytheTheOne]

not really, eight capacitors would take much longer to charge and they would still discharge relatively quickly through the flash bulb draining the battery faster also. 8 caps in parallel would store more power but still only reach the same voltage, in series they would take an eon to charge and only reach their optimal voltage rating. Flash bulbs req. a high voltage "spike" to ionise the gas in the flash tube.

[MattBlytheTheOne]

from Wikipedia: "Today[update]'s flash units are often electronic xenon flash lamps. An electronic flash contains a tube filled with xenon gas, where electricity of high voltage is discharged to generate an electrical arc that emits a short flash of light."

[canaanav]

Convoluted. If you wanted to get 115VAC off a 1.5V batt just run a 60Hz sin generator that converts 1.5VDC to AC (1VAC @ 67% effective) then through a 115:1 transformer. Just remeber, as voltage goes up, current goes down in a system. A 500A/hour AA battery wouls only last a minute at best, especially with such a high discharge rate.

[MattBlytheTheOne]

I know of an emergency lighting system that runs from as low as 0.95v at 145mA driving an 8w flourescent light with efficiency as high as 90% these run for hours!

[Pirate88179]

@canaanav

This is not correct. I can light 400 leds from a single AA battery that was "dead" for many, many hours using a JT circuit.

Try one and see for yourself.

Bill

[MattBlytheTheOne]

@Pirate88179 OK by dead you mean no longer able to hold a charge? Then how can it light LED's unless the Joule Thief is a free energy receiver? Did you make a video?

[Pirate88179]

@MattBlytheTheOne

Yes I have over 40 videos, most of which deal with the joule thief circuit experiments. By "dead" I mean down to the level that most electronics devices will not run from them. (cameras, phones, flashlights, etc) I collect "dead" batteries from my neighbors and then can use the joule thief to run them all the way down to .2 volts. Most batteries are considered dead at about 1.1 volts.  These would normally be tossed away.

Bill

[MattBlytheTheOne]

@Pirate88179 hey Bill watch my other video about recharging disposable batteries /watch?v=UDwMxISYojM :)

[HaydenPK]

hey, what camera did you use? was it a boots one? cos that's what i'm using

[MattBlytheTheOne]

yeah boots, i think! could have been kodak :)

[youtuubbguy66]

I thought about this idea yesterday. If it takes 3 second to have a single charge which last aprox. 1 second. By using 3 of these circuits, you could theorically light the buld until the batteries are depleted. Also, it is of my believe that by sending the output of these circuits into a toroid coil, we could have a stable current output. I would like to have some feedback on this thought I propose here. Is it possible to achieve such result in this manner?

[MattBlytheTheOne]

well theoretically you would need each capacitor discharging one ofter the other, one lighting the light while the other two charged. I don't think the batteries would last very long, it would be very effcient. I like your ideas tho to provide a steady output current :)

[youtuubbguy66]

I was more thinking of creating a big enough EMF in the toroid coil to substain the charge needed to light the bulb. Discharge the capacitors from each circuit into the toroid coil to keep the EMF slighty above (enough to keep it stable) the requested amount. I have not yet started to experiment with electronics and to be honest, I am kinda scared of it. I am attracted by high voltage at high freqency and not really knowing what I'm doing is scaring me for good reasons I think :)

[MattBlytheTheOne]

Sounds like good ideas, maybe you could give yourself an education and start your own research....I don't think you need to be scared of it but it does pay to have awareness especially around high voltage for obvious reasons.

[youtuubbguy66]

Obvious reason? :) That is one of the reason why I have not much information about the dangers of high voltage.. When I read texts about high voltage, this sentence always comes up with no explanation whatsoever...it's too obvious I guess :D

[MattBlytheTheOne]

well you said it yourself, high voltage is potentially (pun intended) dangerous especially if it is carrying high current. There are special instances but generalising, if it is HV don't touch it or even go near it without switching the power OFF first.

[youtuubbguy66]

But tell me if I have this right... High voltage is dangerous because it arc easely. This by itself is not dangerous. What is dangerous is when enough current is allow to pass through this arc especially when the frequency is too low. When playing aroung high voltage, always keep one hand in your pocket :) .. this from what I understand is to prevent electricity from passing through your body.

[MattBlytheTheOne]

HV is dangerous if the current passes through your body. If a voltage source is high enough voltage it can jump to a lower potential by way of an arc (effectively conducting through air), if this "lower potential" is you it can be dangerous! Unprotected arcs can also damage the eyes (arc welding) and start fires! One hand in your pocket does not protect you from electric shocks, it does however reduce the risk of the current passing directly through your heart.

[MattBlytheTheOne]

the best way to protect yourself from HV is NOT to play around with it !!

[youtuubbguy66]

Having a hand in your pocket is causing the path of least resistance to be unavailable (arm to arm path)..is that correct?

[MattBlytheTheOne]

NO! This does NOT protect you from being the path of least resistance. This reduces the risk of conducting the current from arm to arm ONLY. You would be better off wearing a thick pair of rubber gloves and using properly insulated test equipment, and making sure the HV source was switched OFF and DISCHARGED before even going near it.

[MattBlytheTheOne]

the camera flash circuit is dangerous because when you discharge the capacitor it pulls current through the flash trigger coil which in turn ramps the output voltage momentarily to a whopping 5kV at around 55W of power! All from a harmless little AAA battery!

[SuperFinGuy]

Such powerful technology hidden in a disposable camera!

[Drevtoobe]

The big "shocker" is that I assume that your CFL is supposed to work with 220 VAC 50 Hz mains power and you hooked up a high voltage DC capacitor source and it worked!

Loved the music, I'm totally in a trance.

[skierplaterandy]

ive got a way to do what you are asking. it doesnt need a flash unit at all. what you DO need are some basic electronic components tho. just search joule theif in google. and it wil come up with a curcuit to light an led from a AA battery. what you need to do is modify it so the led goes from the top of the transistor to a capacitor to ground. the capacitor will have around 100-200 volts and it SHOULD work continually to light the bulb

[MattBlytheTheOne]

thanks I have heard of the "joule thief" could you send me the modified circuit diagram? there are a lot of "shoulds" between designing something and getting it to work efficiently :)

[skierplaterandy]

ok ill try to draw one up. pm me your e-mail so i can send u a pic.

[skierplaterandy]

your alligator clips are fucking dangerous in this setup.... haha!

i got some with a rubber insulation that goes over the end of the clip. you can let as much of the clip hang out as you want then you can hold onto he clip itself and not get shocked because its insulated :) u should get some.

[MattBlytheTheOne]

good idea! rubber gloves would be better... :)

[skierplaterandy]

nononono go with the clips man. or safer: both. if you just use gloves you can short it out. also on curcuit boards there tends to be alot of pointy leads, thin gloves are easy to pierse, thick gloves are horrible for tiny work.

[MattBlytheTheOne]

great advice! I have some insulated leads and clips I just wanted to make the video in my enthusiasm :) ideally you would house the thing in a connection box out of harms way but I wanted to show what was going on...

[skierplaterandy]

haha, if you had insulated ones why would u risk shock with non insulated ones? haha.... if they are colored and insulated its easy to see whats going on.

[MattBlytheTheOne]

the thing that really amazes me is that we can generate a "shockable" size voltage from a seamingly harmless little 1.5v household AAA battery! that's the point...

[youtuubbguy66]

I personally think that this point is too often forgotten. How much energy could you grab during a 8 hour day just from waves of energy going on everwhere around your house? Certainly enough to light your house for when you come back from work. And I'm not talking about super market light buld here ;)

[MattBlytheTheOne]

great ideas, it is not just in and around the house it is in the atmosphere EVERYWHERE!

[Kcy101]

LOL, interesting, Nice music too, chemical brothers ' out of control"

[MattBlytheTheOne]

thanks mate :)

[bjhorton2005]

VERY interesting video.

[edsucksfredrocks]

That's awesome. I took apart one of those crappy disposable cameras right after I took a picture with the flash on. Do you know how to handle a fully charged electrolytic capacitor?

Or do you recommend just letting it sit for a few months until all the voltage goes away?

[MattBlytheTheOne]

the voltage will not "go away" lol the best way to discharge the energy is to short circuit the contacts with a screw driver for example... only don't touch the contacts yourself and don't look at the arc :) it's only a small capacitor but it will still let you know it is there!

[edsucksfredrocks]

I just got the info somewhere else on the internet. I found the same info there. Oh, also What do you mean by "arc?"

[MattBlytheTheOne]

"arc" meaning sparks they are actually electrical energy arcing from one terminal to the other and being sent out away from the terminals as charged particles and electrons. Powerful arcs contain so much energy they can damage the eyes so dont look at them especially not close up!

[willict311]

how did you do this whith out explosions

[MattBlytheTheOne]

hi, do you mean sparks? the important thing is NOT to touch the ends of the leads together when the capacitor is charged! The light bulb will not explode it is designed to run at 240v AC - the capacitor will charge to 330v which the light bulb can handle.

[willict311]

ok i love your videos can we keep in touch?

[MattBlytheTheOne]

of course! no problem :) thanks

[nathanalaneller]

can you connect several together in sequence and fire them off one by one like a revolver gun?

I've bin trying to do that with my camera flash guns.

my own littl toy idea. :)

[MattBlytheTheOne]

I dont get it? several camera flash circuits in sequence? what for... ? it only generates high voltage... ??

[MattBlytheTheOne]

oh you mean for a toy! it could be done but you would need to design your own circuit, try charging a bank of capacitors and discharging them through the flash one by one via a relay? I don't think it would be very 'cool for kids' though!!

[nathanalaneller]

they have a nerf dart gun that does pretty much the same thing, with glow in the dark darts

[MattBlytheTheOne]

tracers! ...at least you see them coming?

[AlaskanAssassin87]

Another note: I haven't actually done the math, but I'm pretty sure you're going to need more than a 1.5v battery to run a television. I just got a camcorder but don't seem to be intelligent enough to figure out how to get it to pull the video from the miniDV to Windows Movie Maker... Maybe after I figure this out I'll work on powering a TV from a battery...

[MattBlytheTheOne]

depends how much power you can get from the battery, in any case I don't think it will run for long! miniDV eh is it 'firewire' connection? intelligent people get one with a HDD or a SD/SDHC memory card lol

[AlaskanAssassin87]

Ya, I got an older model from ebay. I'll figure it out yet....

[AlaskanAssassin87]

Very nice. I've got more than my share of parts laying around and don't want to just through them away... hmmm... :D

[MattBlytheTheOne]

thanks, if you cannot find a use for them give them away as christmas presents! hehe have fun... :)

[LoneOarman]

Most similar devices, they remove the transformer circut from the bulb. Even if the oscillator were constant, the transformer may not be large enough to keep the bulb going. Check out the video for the "joule theif" circuit, might be a way to boost the transformer circuit.

That isle of wright guy cursed me out and deleted my comments, but payback's a bitc...

All I told him, was that the sea wall is to prevent land/beach errosion and he went off on me. I also told him to get a life.

[MattBlytheTheOne]

thanks mike, he did the same to me when I made positive comments about the video lol

what about if I tap some of the voltage across the cap and feed that into a 555 inverter to give a steady 110-230v AC? Would there be enough current?

[MattBlytheTheOne]

the joule thief seems ok for stepping up the voltage to run an LED for example...I am talking about an 8 to 11watt light bulb here!

[LoneOarman]

I was thinking of keeping the bulb lit, capacitance (joules).

[MattBlytheTheOne]

somehow I don't think voltage is going to be a problem ;)

[LoneOarman]

Matt, the camera ready light, I'd assume just means sufficient to flash the bulb. Have you found some way to bi-pass and keep the oscillator going? I'd also remove the bulb's ballast circuit, just more load.

[MattBlytheTheOne]

the LED is just an indicator, the cap is rated at 330v which is fully charged, you could uprate the cap I suppose? which would gain higher voltage. That's why I was thinking draw off say 10v and convert it to AC as a way of maintaining charge in the capacitor... the trigger coil circuitry creates a HV spike (3 to 5kV) to ionise the gas in the tube prior to energising, the component values can be chosen for the specific bulb, thanks :)

[MattBlytheTheOne]

the only limit is the battery life which is why I wanted to charge it in circuit

this guy charged a whole bank of capacitors

/watch?v=TgNayY-kZno

[dolla130shine]

very interesting video but I find the music a little loud. Only because the "Good Music" can be distracting, lol...

[MattBlytheTheOne]

for the sake of the video it might be better without music but I try to make it inspiring for all kinds of people not just the "technically minded", good point, thanks! glad you enjoyed it :)

[callmewilson]

Cool. Their clever little devices capacitors! You mentioned speeding up the capacitor charge time, I'm not sure what the mah rating on alkaline AAA/AA batteries are but would using a high energy 3V lithium battery (aka CR123A) with a 1.5v step down device inbetween work as the burst of output energy is quite sharp. I think CR123A have 1000mah capacity. I've seen a fridge/microwave bulb run from a CR2032 coin cell before via a capacitor, battery died fast though.

[MattBlytheTheOne]

obviously the higher the mah(milliamp/hours) the better, I have 1500mah 1.2v NiMH AAs in my digital camera. I still think we need a way to charge the battery in circuit, draw off some of the output power and convert it to AC. Maybe using the Flash circuit trigger to initially ionise the bulb? That way keeping the capacitor at least partially charged indefinitely...?

[MattBlytheTheOne]

when the trigger is applied the collapsing charge from the capcitor induces a 3 to 5kV pulse in the trigger coil which is used to ionise the gas in the flash tube. Apparently the power is a much as 55 Watts momentarily! Who'd have thought you could get so much power from a AAA battery?

[MattBlytheTheOne]

...and it only draws a tiny amount of current since the circuit can achieve this over and over again without killing the battery!

[MattBlytheTheOne]

see the circuit diags in the description :)

[callmewilson]

Very cool video mate, another yet again superb project from you. Capacitors are cool. Would using a high energy lithium battery help maybe a CR123A 3V with a small step down device to half it to 1.5v. The CR123A calls have about 1000mah in capacity, the shock is greater then a 9v pp3 alkaline. If you want to keep the bulb lit would a higher mah rating work?

[MattBlytheTheOne]

thanks mate :) I don't suppose it would need a step down! not sure what the components are rated at but they could probably handle 3v

[MattBlytheTheOne]

I would love to see inside one of those CR123A batteries! My next project maybe ;)

[MattBlytheTheOne]

the capacitor charge time is not mah dependant, mah (milliamp hours) is just the measure of how long it takes the battery to discharge with respect to the current being drawn ie. 1000mah = 100mA for 10 hours = 10mA for 100 hours = 1000mA for 1 hours. The cap charge time has to do with the components used in the circuit ie. the coils and the tuned oscillations... if we did not require the full 330v capacitor rating obviously it would less time to charge!

[MattBlytheTheOne]

if we only required 5v to 15v for the 555 Inverter input then that would reduce the capacitor charge time significantly :)