Not quite the "exact same". Your cap has both terminals on one side, as does mine of that style (mine are 1 F though.) Larskro's cap has one terminal on each end, I think.

I don't know if what he's showing is the same "capacitor recovery" effect I showed with the "TKBloomer" circuit, where the supercap's voltage is seen to be rising, while the LED is lit, even though no power is being supplied externally.

I believe it is the same.  I think both leads are on the same side.  Otherwise, why would the connections seen in this photo (sorry for the poor quality) show connections off to one side?  If the leads were on opposite sides then they would be located in the center no?  The only wire I see here on the other side goes to one of the leds.

Of course, I could be wrong...it does happen.

Bill

PS  Even if the leads are on opposite sides of the cap, the specs that Groundloop gave for the cap match mine exactly.  You and I and many others can light 2 leds using a simple basic JT circuit running off that supercap for many, many hours.

Maybe. I have a couple of one-Farad 5.5V caps in that same format, but with a green sleeve instead of black. I can't recall seeing them float up in charge recovery while powering a load in any circuit I've tried them on, though. I suppose I should see if they will do that in the TKBloomer circuit like the 10F cap does.

Maybe the rotor/reedswitch loop thing serves to slow down the action so that pulse amplitude can build. That might be the answer to Farmhand's question about why not make the whole thing solid-state with no moving parts.

The 1000 uF cap, resistor and LED video you mention is just  a response to the dim LED, microamp current setups. I hate using resistors in these circuits because they just waste power. But it does show that you can get pretty long runtimes just from trickling straight DC through a superbright type LED. I changed the resistor from 22k to 47k; this gives a dimmer initial light but longer total runtime ... if "running" seriously just means making a detectable glow in the LED.

Here is a clip showing the wires soldered directly to the metal case. The connection tab appears to be unused and covered in red ink - positve connection?

Hoppy,

Thank you for the image. In this image I can see the flat spot of the LEDs
are going to minus in the circuit, so I think I got my circuit drawing correct
as far as the LED orientation goes.

GL.

This shot does not show the thin wire I mentioned in my previous post. However, it does appear that the wires are not soldered to the cap / battery case.

Edit: Forgot to say that the wires are soldered to the RHS tag bent at right angles. It looks like a battery to me.

Hi Groundloop,

I did some google search for  the  term "nano crystal multilayer capacitor"  and found some links from which this can be figured out,  see this  quote "The goal here is primary particle sizes under 10 nm."  from this link:

http://www.netzsch-grinding.com/en/industries-applications/nano-applications/ceramic-multilayer-capacitors-mlcc.html?tx_solr

or this link here: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1551-2916.2009.02979.x/abstract    and

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1551-2916.2010.04232.x/abstract 

The important material used in such ceramic capacitor is Barium Titanate, BaTiO₃ which may be responsible for temperature change  either as a cause or a response (action - reaction) for a change in excitation. Provided of course that we are not facing a fake setup, I give the benefit of doubt till attempted replications show failures.

Gyula

Gyula,

Thank you for the information. So he uses a normal X7R type capacitor, then.

GL.

Here's my take on the schematic. I think this may be the same as Groundloop's, except I'm not sure what the mystery object is. I'm pretty sure whatever it is it has its terminals one on each flat face.


ETA: I'm wondering if a little reed relay (containing its own reed switch and actuating coil) would be a suitable substitute for the motor/magnet/reedswitch arrangement. Since I have some reed relays but I don't have the little motor or any good separate reed switches... anyone have any thoughts on that?

That little motor is just a coil, right? I mean it's not commutated internally or anything, is it? Just a coil and an armature containing a magnet or something, designed to work as an AC generator in the waterpowered application?

In those two pix you can see the feature that makes me think it's a battery instead of a capacitor. Every capacitor of that type I've seen is a fat short cylinder. But this thing has that "accordion bellows" type of structure where it could be two disc batteries stacked together. It's not a cylinder, it has that circumferential valley.  I've never seen a capacitor like that but I have seen batteries that looked like that. The terminals would be on opposite faces.
I can't tell where the soldering is, but it does look like some wires come together at the side away from the camera.

I think you might be right.  Notice the same style of concave radial edge on the batteries on the right side of this photo.  Even though they have yellow wrapping on them, that same "bellows" or concave edge can be seen clearly.  I did not notice that...good catch.

Bill