Kubikop's 555 timer pulsed Joule Thief light

[kavouromana]

Very Good job my friend.

Is it possible to give the scematics and the component list ????

I am a little bit newbie :p and i dont know what to use for the timer and the joule thief circuits

[dieselwarriordotcom]

Very nice! I suggest you also investigate the Picaxe chips, there a bunch of fun, are inexpensive and have a wide range of PWM options too!

[KyleCarrington]

You ever play around with constant current limitation Lid?

[ElectricJunta]

60 cycles per second is the worst possible choice

because it effects your health some how. Not just neon tube light but the 60 cycles in your wall wires, reek havoc on your health, probably done on purpose. I mean look what they're lining your canned food cans with.

[coolelectronicdude]

dosnt a 60 htz light buld actually go on and off 120 times a second? since one sign wave is a complete cycle and light bulbs dont have polarity? when u say 125 cycles does that mean the light turns on and off 250 times? im just curious if what im thinking is right... not downing you just want to understand

[Texmurphy51]

Why not just use smaller wattage bulbs? You only saving energy because the lamp is putting out less light. You do realize that that little circuit at the bottom of a CFL is an oscilator that runs the lamp on 28Khz or so.

[gushhnet]

Is that a linear voltage regulator? you're wasting power as heat and there is no need to regulate batteries... stop using BJTs and get into mosfets if you want efficiency.

by the way "joule thief" is just an inverter circuit...

why call it joule thief when it's got a real name?, would you call transistors "thingies" if someone else did?

dc-dc converters (buck, boost, etc)...

[faackoof]

does this shorten the life of the bulb?

[thelightguy1]

Very wonderful concept! This could lead to future development. I have to attempt this, I want to try with a 12v power supply as you did, then slowly increase the limit. Great job.

[powermaks]

@thelightguy1 this won't save power, (to my knowing and logic, its using MORE power because of all the extra regulators, transistors IC's etc etc etc.) and all this does is run the bulb (or any other load) at half power read up on how PWM (pulse width modulation) works.

[Pirate88179]

Excellent work again! Keep it up, I am learning a lot from your videos.

Bill

[Lidmotor]

Bill---Thanks, This is fun way to learn something. I get a big kick out of a project when I connect the power to a mess of wires and parts the thing comes to life.

[Drevtoobe]

You and Paul are really having fun! lol Paul has this interesting high frequency oscillation going.

I don't know if the the CFL can be made to flash like a neon in a Bedini circuit when the charging battery is not connected. If the power transistor can sustain 100 volts across the collector to emitter when it is off, then it would not be damaged when the CFL fires.

[Drevtoobe]

Whoops I meant when the coil fires the CFL. Think of a stripped-down basic solid-state Bedini. You just use the largest number of turns winding on the toroid as the energizing coil and ignore the other windings. It's possible that the CFL will fire with a very narrow on cycle, much narrower than you have right now. The width of the on pulse will determine how much 1/2Li-squared energy is in the coil to discharge through the CFL to make a burn.

[Drevtoobe]

If that did work, then there would be no juice left over to go into a charging battery, the coil would "extinguish" itself as it discharged through the CFL. Think of pulling an elastic band until is is very tight and then letting go. That's what you are doing to the coil while the transistor is on and you are charging up the coil with current. You let go of the elastic band and you get high velocity, you switch off the transistor and you get high voltage from the coil.

[Drevtoobe]

If that worked with an NPN transistor, then using a MOSFET would in theory make it a little bit more efficient because you don't have any base current any more.

Just for fun, going back to the elastic band, when the coil is switched on, at the beginning the current through it rises like a linear ramp. That is like pulling on the elastic with increasing tension. Obviously the more tension on the elastic band, the more wallop it has when you release it.

[Drevtoobe]

Try putting your dry fingers across a standard small 12-volt relay coil. Switch the relay on and then switch it off, you will feel the wallop across your fingers when it switches off.

Just don't zap the cute little robot head and his benevolent gaze, he is now part of the family. :)

[Drevtoobe]

I have a suggestion for you, you may have to be brave for step 2. Try putting a 1 megaohm resistor in series with a 100 Kohm resistor across the CFL and see if everything still works about the same. Then put your scope across the 100 K resistor and check the waveform. It should show you roughly 1/10th the voltage across the CFL, I think the true CFL voltage will be about 100 volts. It would be cool to see what's happening. If your scope max in volts is >150V, try a direct reading.

[Lidmotor]

Actually I have thought quite a bit about what you said about the CFL voltage being at 100 volts. I may have to try this test on the scope to see if it is true but I have to be really careful that I don't hurt anything. I only have one scope and it's really old.

[Drevtoobe]

Hey Lidmotor, I would hate to see anything happen to your scope and don't do anything that you are not comfortable with. It occurred to me a much safer way to see what's going on with the CFL would be simply to put a 1-ohm resistor in series with it and then look at the current flow with your scope. You may have noticed a few people are using big white 1-ohm 10-watt resistors for that purpose. I read that the CFL fires at about 100 volts, so you don't necessarily need to see the voltage.

[Lidmotor]

OK ---I'll be careful. The 1 ohm 10m watt ballast resistor is a good idea. I can get one easily .

[binarumah]

hi lidmotor,

in the previous replication of aromaz cfl project, did your transistor get very hot??

[Lidmotor]

binarumah----Yes the transistor got hot if you drove the circuit hard (1 amp or more) to get bright light.. A heat sink was a must. If the circuit was run at low light /low power then it ran cool.

[kubikop]

HI Rusty

Im glad that it ported to your circuit well I think that this would work with all lighting, a second pulse needs to be introduced though to get the coil into resonance Im going to run mine at 250Hz waves with 1.5MHz in between because the maths works out nice.

Also at the end of each 60-100Hz pulse you get a ring out that goes negative that you can use to charge your battery from a secondary point. Ill do a video and upload it when I get chance.

Are you using the the CMOS 555? 10uA!

[Lidmotor]

Paul---I'm using a standard 555 in the video. I bought a CMOS 555 today and will redo the circuit tomorrow using it . That should drop the current draw even more. As I write this the circuit is running into it's second day non- stop on the 2 pair of AAs that I use in the other test. The meter shows a 30Ma draw with dim light on a 6watt bulb. The 13 watt kept going out on this low an amp draw so I change it out to a smaller watt bulb that stays on all the time. This pulsed circuit does charge

[marthale7]

I wonder if the charging is as good at this lower on time... Interesting...

[dodoshlodo]

i think the charging would be less, there would be less HV pulses hitting the battery. I dont think the 555 timer would help with charging but its a great idea for lighting.

Great work Lidmotor! Id love to see more light, even if it means more amp draw.

[Lidmotor]

dodoshlodo--- What I have seen so far is (after 15hrs. of non-stop running) is that the charging is less. Totol energy consumption----bottom line ----is about the same or MORE. Hummm. More tuning needs to be done. I may do a video of what the light looks like at 300 Ma . It gets alot brighter.

[dodoshlodo]

have u tried running it on 12V, i wonder how low u could get the amp draw down with good light.

I will be replicating this circuit soon (basic Slayer), I think it has good lighting applications, i just hope its more efficient than the CFL oscillator with ign. coil.

Just need to get my hands on some big toroids!

[kubikop]

You could use the ring at the end of the Square at 60Hz.

[Lidmotor]

Mart--- After running this for 15 hr straight it seems that the energy being recovered is indeed less and the energy being used is about the same. Veerrrryyy interesting. This could be a tuning issue or just too many cooks in the kitchen trying to get the job done.

[AlienNRG]

You and Kubikop are an inspiration. You have 5 stars and my most sincere respect.

[GBluer]

Great Idea Lidmotor & Kubikop

[Lidmotor]

GBluer------Your 2" toroid circuit works great on this!!