Joulethief SEC exciter and variants

[jonnydavro]

@Dr Stiffler and Slayer.I would love to do those tests for you but i don't think i can achieve the benchmark you ask for and my lab is very and i mean very basic.The 2 component circuit runs at 35mA AT 1.5V,68mA AT 3V and in the video it was running on 12v at 128mA .The neon is lit at 1.5v but not blazing and nice and bright on 3v with both sides lit.The current draw can be adjusted by moving the base tray in relation to the output tray but you don't have the control of a 15-3 with the adjustable LB but quite interesting i thought that you can do this with just 2 components.I am going to experiment with winding my own trigger transformer and see if i can get a high voltage output for a lower input.Thanks for posting Dr.regards jonny

[morpher44]

wirelessly

As a sidenote morpher,i would like to ask you a favour.Could you try your joulethief and ignition coil setup with some trays or towers and see if you can light some leds wirelessly as i don't have a coil to replicate your setup yet as i am thinking high voltage/frequency is a must for this.I will also have a look at your led throwies idea but can't view the website with my computer as it won't accept the quicktime pluggin but i think i know what you mean.Many thanks. jonny.

yes i've done that. But by wirelessly ... I would qualify that this
appears to be very much an inductive pick-up sort of phenomenon.

The little "detector" I used, different from an Avramenko plug
was just a little neon bulb with one lead connected to a
loop of wire made out of a clip lead wire arranged in a loop --
and the other neon lead wired to a straight clip lead.
I'm sure the Avramenko plug with LED approach would show results too.
Hold these nearby the so called "metal tray" or in my case
metal capacitor cylinder attached to the HOT lead of the
ignition coil, and the neon glows nicely. Neon is very
sensitive. Interestingly, if you take the straight lead
and approach the loop, all is fine ... until you intersect
the PLANE of the loop. As soon as you do, it doesn't matter
how close you are to the resonating source, the NEON goes out.
Great fun!

This occurs with Joule Thief driving the ignition coil,
or the Aramoz circuit driving the ignition coil.
Any sort of chopper circuit to the ignition coil is acceptable.
The cylinder, with hand-wound foil capacitor around it,
emits a HUGE/STRONG field ... easily received by
nearby masses. The oscilliscope probes, when brought
nearby, show a STRONG sine wave form -- with
amplitude varying with distance.

Tesla seemed to think this was NOT exactly inverse-square-law,
but may actually be more a power-loss due to local heating of the environment
-- when air is used. I think you would need
some pretty precise measurements to correlate with
or disprove the inverse-square-law hypothesis.

With the Aramoz circuit, my igniotion coil gets DAMN hot ...
With Joule Thief ... not hot at all. I'm guessing it may
be due to the 3 2n3055 transistors hooked in parallel
in the Aramoz case. They may be slightly different
phases -- and fight each other a bit -- producing heat
both at the coil and on the transistors themselves.
In the JT cause I only have one transitor powering the coils.

[Vortex]

jonnydavro, Holy Smokes. This is BIG.
(at least I think so...But I am not qualified to make a judgment )
This is like cooking with gas instead of firewood.

You stated: "with both sides lit" .. To clarify, did you mean both sides
of the neon bulb lit up?
I see the neon light up in the the video, but can not tell if one side or both
sides of it are lit. Which is it, one or both?

[retrod]

Great job Jonny Davro I wonder if the effect would be enhanced by filling the trays with salt water Now I need to find a trigger xfmer and try this simple circuit for myself, that neon looked really bright.

Dave

[jonnydavro]

@vortex.HI RandyBoth sides of the neon light.I mention this as it shows i have AC and when you use an avramenko plug,only one side lights.This is the same as with a sec 15-3 which is what i am using for comparison and this simple circuit produces the same effects which is good and shows there may be more than one way to skin a cat.Regards jonny
@Retrod.Hi Dave The Neon is bright and i hope you try this.The trigger transformer specs i used can be viewed here so you may be able to find something similar closer to you or you may even be able to make your own
Trigger Transformers : Trigger Transformers : Maplin
How to build your own trigger coil!
It is an interesting idea to add salt water to the trays.i will try it and see what happens.regards jonny.

[morpher44]

aluminum trays

I know that others in the past have tried to put their circuits in aluminum
trays as a make shift Faraday Cage. But as you can see here, the AC voltage
can arrive to such a tray wirelessly ... and go right through it ... to the inside.
Local inductive effects like this are quite strong ... and can go directly
through the metal masses to the other side. In fact, charges want
to deposit themselves on the INSIDE of the surface --
ala Van de Graaff.

The whole Faraday Cage concept needs a re-think with
respect to these sorts of experiments.

[CosmicFarmer]

I should have made a movie but I was able to tune a SEC with a glass of water. Set it near the circuit does change its... isness. I was thinking what the body changes when near the circuit, and water entered my mind. I'll shut up and make a video :-D

So yeah saltwater would change something I am sure.

[retrod]

@vortex.HI RandyBoth sides of the neon light.I mention this as it shows i have AC and when you use an avramenko plug,only one side lights.This is the same as with a sec 15-3 which is what i am using for comparison and this simple circuit produces the same effects which is good and shows there may be more than one way to skin a cat.Regards jonny
@Retrod.Hi Dave The Neon is bright and i hope you try this.The trigger transformer specs i used can be viewed here so you may be able to find something similar closer to you or you may even be able to make your own
Trigger Transformers : Trigger Transformers : Maplin
How to build your own trigger coil!
It is an interesting idea to add salt water to the trays.i will try it and see what happens.regards jonny.

Hi Jonny,
I was able to reproduce your circuit using an ignition coil in place of the trigger coil. The production value of the video is horrible but here it is:
YouTube - Replication of Jonny Davros One transistor with trigger coil oscillator
I have not tried filling the pie plates I used with salt water, I believe these would leak, lol!

Dave

[jonnydavro]

Nice work Dave .I found that the position of the trays makes a difference to the outputs on each.Mine worked best with the output tray on the left,base tray in middle and negative to right.The neons are all really bright and i have now put another tray in series with the positive and that lights a neon too.There is nowhere on my circuit which does not have hv although i can only light a flourescent on the output tray but leds work wirelessly of all the trays.Thanks for trying this Dave.regards jonny

[retrod]

Nice work Dave .I found that the position of the trays makes a difference to the outputs on each.Mine worked best with the output tray on the left,base tray in middle and negative to right.The neons are all really bright and i have now put another tray in series with the positive and that lights a neon too.There is nowhere on my circuit which does not have hv although i can only light a flourescent on the output tray but leds work wirelessly of all the trays.Thanks for trying this Dave.regards jonny

Thanks Jonny, it was fun to work with even though I recieved a few shocks along the way . I have a feeling the ignition coils physical size is lowering the frequency range of the oscillator. Perhaps best to stay with a smaller trigger coil for higher frequency effects. By coincidence my trays (pie plates) were arranged in the sequence you describe. Thanks again for bringing this simple circuit configuration to our attention.
Dave

[Lidmotor]

Working on replication

@Jonny & Dave
I worked on this yesterday just the way you did Dave-- by using a car ignition coil. For some reason I could not get it to oscillate unless I made a Darlington pair out of two MPSA06 transistors, then it ran fine. I got shocked pretty good several times just like you did. I'll try again today with the pans arranged differently and with just one transistor. A small trigger coil, like what you are using Jonny, is probably the correct way to get this right. The ignition coil is overkill but it did work.

Lidmotor

[slayer007]

@Jonny & Dave
I worked on this yesterday just the way you did Dave-- by using a car ignition coil. For some reason I could not get it to oscillate unless I made a Darlington pair out of two MPSA06 transistors, then it ran fine. I got shocked pretty good several times just like you did. I'll try again today with the pans arranged differently and with just one transistor. A small trigger coil, like what you are using Jonny, is probably the correct way to get this right. The ignition coil is overkill but it did work.

Lidmotor

I also tried it with an ignition coil it worked great.

But I still needed the 1M resistor across the base and collector to get it to work.

Like Lidmotor said I think it would work better with the trigger transformer Jonny is using.

[Lidmotor]

Still using Darlinton to get effect

@All
I worked with this again yesterday and still can't get it to run on just one transistor. I need to get the right trigger coil I guess. My ignition coil does run very well by using the two MPSA06s in a darlinton pair arrangement. I played with it for hours and finally replaced the output pie tin with Dr. Stiffler's "S Gate". Check the "High voltage from thin air" thread to see what it looks like if you don't already know. I got some very interesting effects like off the SEC circuit. I tried my SEC towers and DID NOT get very good results though. I think that my ignition coil arrangement runs at way too low a frequency and the tower coils don't like it.

Lidmotor

[jonnydavro]

@Lidmotor and Slayer.Thanks for spending a bit of time on this,i know you both have lots of other things you must want to do but you may be right and have to downsize on the coil but the fact that you got it to oscillate by making a darlington is interesting and what this thread is all about,thats a new variant.Nice.
The small trigger transformer i use goes into oscillation with one transistor very easily.Using an mpsa06,you just have to touch the base tray and it goes into oscillation and if not i just touch the base tray with a positive jumper wire and of she goes.You can even replace the base tray with just a croc lead.
There are no shocks either which is a bonus as ignition coils have a real nasty bite.If you can find one of these trigger transformers,radio shack should have them, i think you will get it going on just the one tranny.Many thanks.Regards jonny.

[CosmicFarmer]

I made a trifilar Joule Theif. A + B are 14 winds #24 ga. The recovery C wind was 100 turns of spider silk red wire from 3 radio shack spool magnetwire.

I have noticed with a LED in the oscillator I can only sense pressures of 10 volts on my C wind but with the LED removed I could feel voltages of 50 with my hand meter. In trifilar JT's with a load on a smaller longer recovery winding, it seems beneficial to have an open instead of a LED, or possibly more LED's then one.

Hooked it up to a SEC. I can turn on the tuning light about 4 foot from a room incandescent bulb to solar panel to JT to SEC, but excitation is weak.

When the LED was in its place as the right load, I could light it up from the light I gathered about 5 feet away.

Did not seem to matter if I put the SEC as the load off the C coil or as the LED in the JT circuit in relation to distance from light to where the SEC would begin operating.

I think I might need to wind more winds and use a larger toroid.
Thanks!