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Author Topic: Joule Thief 101  (Read 926722 times)

MileHigh

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Re: Joule Thief 101
« Reply #345 on: February 19, 2016, 03:46:03 PM »
Brad:

Quote
Because MH,the pot was turned right down to it's lowest resistance,so it would make no difference to which side the scope probe was on.

Great, so you hacked the Joule Thief to get it to run at even lower voltages.  So you pull a bait and switch for the 100th time to force a square peg into a round hole to make your "point."

You are like some combination of a bull in a china shop and a "stream of consciousness" experimenter where everything is fluid and things change back and forth and you jump in and out of different ideas and statements and ultimately leave a jumbled mess of a trail of discongruent ideas that all add up to a convoluted mess but in your head it's all normal and "other people are the ones that have the problem."

You are not talking about one Joule Thief circuit, you are talking about five different Joule Thief circuits at the same time.

MileHigh

MileHigh

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Re: Joule Thief 101
« Reply #346 on: February 19, 2016, 03:56:50 PM »
Brad:

Quote
More rubbish  MH-->what do you think a JT circuit is designed to do-->thats right,run at low voltages,and be able to light an LED. We are looking at the operation of the JT circuit running at the voltages we want them to run at-->not MH's fully charged battery voltage.

We are back to where you agreed to do what I requested of you:  Describe how a standard Joule Thief circuit works.  Standard Joule Thief, standard circuit, standard running voltage, no bait and switch, no stream of consciousness.  Keep your mind focused on a single task.

Now are you capable of doing that or not?

MileHigh

MileHigh

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Re: Joule Thief 101
« Reply #347 on: February 19, 2016, 04:49:44 PM »
Brad:

Here, I undertook to do a fairly complete annotation of Magluvin's scope capture that I requested.  That is an example of the WORK and the thinking and analyzing that is REQUIRED if you are going to understand how a circuit works.

Now, when you look at Magluvin's scope capture for the "rundown to 360 mv" capture, the full compliment of WORK has to be done to understand it.  I am assuming that he did not change the circuit when he took that capture.  He simply observed how the Joule Thief switched over to a completely different operating mode at the lower voltage.  I have not analyzed that and I have no intention of analyzing it.

The reason I am emphasizing the "WORK" angle is because this was your "explanation" for how your "Cool Joule" feedback oscillator circuit worked:  "Miller effect."

Your explanation for your "Cool Joule" circuit's operation is a joke.

Now, if you want to describe how a standard Joule Thief circuit works I am all ears.

MileHigh

sm0ky2

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Re: Joule Thief 101
« Reply #348 on: February 19, 2016, 07:24:06 PM »
Why should an experimenter have to "hunt" for resonance and find some "special delicate balance" if you have been pitching it all this time?  If I strike a bell it resonates.  What kind of "special" or "remarkable" results should Magluvin and others get if they "strike resonance?"  What are they supposed to see?

"why" is more of a philosophical question. I could blame it on some not willing to read what was presented to them, others on their lack of equipment, while others still, because they missed some pertinent piece of information or data that induces unknown factors into their circuit. I did my best to describe each of these details from my own perspective, as well as from (my interpretation of) others perspectives whom also understand these principals, as have been presented.

Consider this:  Place a clamp + weight onto one side of your bell. Notice how this changes the resonance.
The waveform is destroyed.
you might only get a plink, or a ding.

Now, place other weights clamped to other places around the bell, and notice how this changes, not only the resonant frequency of the bell, but its ability to resonate.

Quote
If Magluvin or anyone else succeeds in achieving something remarkable with a Joule Thief in "resonance" and explains what is actually taking place instead of just observing something, I will be happy to admit that I was wrong and acknowledge that something special is taking place due to the resonance.

On the other hand, if all that Magluvin or others can get is mushy wobbly scope traces that are difficult to explain and don't clearly show "resonance" and yield unremarkable power-in to LED-illumination-out results (or any other metric you want to define), what are YOU going to do?

MileHigh

I, unlike you, do not depend on the ability of others to succeed or fail in particular experiments, to formulate an already proven theory.
 especially when the parameters of any single experiment have not even been defined.

what I will do, is offer the best help I can to walk them through making their particular JT, better.
 locating and reducing the destructive interference in the system,
bringing resonances in the circuit closer to "in phase", so as to aid in constructive interference.

What I have a hard time understanding, MH:
is why you are so adamantly against such attempts to improve efficiency in this manner.
this is not a matter of me "proving" anything to you, this was proven 200 ago.
when it comes down to it, this is simple signal processing....

sm0ky2

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Re: Joule Thief 101
« Reply #349 on: February 19, 2016, 07:30:48 PM »
  I have not analyzed that and I have no intention of analyzing it.

MileHigh

yes, this seems to be your general viewpoint here.

Do you even "own" a Joule thief?

sm0ky2

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Re: Joule Thief 101
« Reply #350 on: February 19, 2016, 07:33:40 PM »
Brad:

Great, so you hacked the Joule Thief
MileHigh

what does that even MEAN?

MileHigh

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Re: Joule Thief 101
« Reply #351 on: February 19, 2016, 11:00:18 PM »
Smoky2:

Don't make me laugh with all of the "cards" you are playing.  What you can't do is even describe a Joule Thief resonant mode beyond "fiddle with a pot and look for a sine wave."  Wow.  No kidding the "parameters haven't been defined."

Quote
What I have a hard time understanding, MH: is why you are so adamantly against such attempts to improve efficiency in this manner."

This must be about the 20th time that you have tried to play straw man with me and attempt to claim I said things that I didn't say.  It makes your argument beyond weak and you are too weak to ever have acknowledged that you are doing it.

Quote
this is simple signal processing

I will just repeat what I have said before, throwing around "big electronics words" that don't really mean anything tangible with respect to the humble Joule Thief does not add to the discussion at all.

You are left with saying this from what I can surmise:  "Trust me, if you can fiddle with a Joule Thief and find some kind of resonance I can't really define then you will get some kind of better efficiency that I can't really define."

You are making a lot of vague unproven claims about a Joule Thief.  Do you have a scope and a multimeter and a camera?  Why don't YOU demonstrate a Joule Thief in "resonance" instead of preaching about it?  I am not making any claims beyond what Magluvin has already shown and can be seen in many clips on YouTube and in many web links.  You are making claims that right now you can't deliver on.

So you entered this thread preaching "resonance 'magic'" and Brad entered this thread saying, "Oh, it's an RLC resonant circuit" and at this point what we can clearly see is that it's a device that energizes an inductor and then discharges that inductor through an LED where the operating frequency is based on two timing events; an L/R type energizing cycle and an L/R type discharge cycle though an LED.  "Resonance" and "RLC resonant circuit" have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with a normal Joule Thief.

And why not get it right and discuss the reality of the Joule Thief?  Why do I do it?  Well, did you see the magic "resonant" flash light?  The "resonance magic" is quickly going away and it's apparent that it's just another "resonance con."  The "cult of resonance" on the free energy forums is always there and the tangible results are never there.  Why not actually evaluate a circuit with less than five components properly.  Why not?

MileHigh

Magluvin

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Re: Joule Thief 101
« Reply #352 on: February 20, 2016, 12:39:19 AM »
"why" is more of a philosophical question. I could blame it on some not willing to read what was presented to them, others on their lack of equipment, while others still, because they missed some pertinent piece of information or data that induces unknown factors into their circuit. I did my best to describe each of these details from my own perspective, as well as from (my interpretation of) others perspectives whom also understand these principals, as have been presented.

Consider this:  Place a clamp + weight onto one side of your bell. Notice how this changes the resonance.
The waveform is destroyed.
you might only get a plink, or a ding.

Now, place other weights clamped to other places around the bell, and notice how this changes, not only the resonant frequency of the bell, but its ability to resonate.

I, unlike you, do not depend on the ability of others to succeed or fail in particular experiments, to formulate an already proven theory.
 especially when the parameters of any single experiment have not even been defined.

what I will do, is offer the best help I can to walk them through making their particular JT, better.
 locating and reducing the destructive interference in the system,
bringing resonances in the circuit closer to "in phase", so as to aid in constructive interference.

What I have a hard time understanding, MH:
is why you are so adamantly against such attempts to improve efficiency in this manner.
this is not a matter of me "proving" anything to you, this was proven 200 ago.
when it comes down to it, this is simple signal processing....

"what I will do, is offer the best help I can to walk them through making their particular JT, better.
 locating and reducing the destructive interference in the system,
bringing resonances in the circuit closer to "in phase", so as to aid in constructive interference."

I can accept those terms. ;)


"What I have a hard time understanding, MH:
is why you are so adamantly against such attempts to improve efficiency in this manner."

I have been trying to be social with mh lately. I used to feel the need to hammer the same thoughts that you have written above to him many times before. Im afraid we cant fix that. So I just stay off that battlefield because it takes toooo much time and thread space to just end up with what we see today. Its not only the constant insistence that an 'idea'(s) will not work, but topping it all off with degrading insults doesnt fare well with me either. I have written a few reply posts in the last couple weeks that once I reread and thought about it, I just deleted them instead of falling in a never ending dual that doesnt account for much but a couple of hot heads.. >:( >:(     ;D


Below is a scope shot that I produced last night. The battery was near fresh at 1.44v when I started. When I finally got to this point I let it set over night. At lunch today the batter showed a solid 1.46v.  But that could be due to many odd things. But it was nice to see.  Seems like a nice clean sine to me.

Here I had reverted back to my original transformer because the choke coil prewound with 2 windings wouldnt show a clean sine before it dies out. The only way I could come close to a sine with either transformer was to add the shorted winding. The original was better at it with these low inputs.

There isnt much range in which I can produce the clean sine before dying out. So I figure the best way around that is to up the input voltage. Will be doing that tonight. Got some various larger npn transistors to work with if the 3904 blows on me.

I need to get some pots with plastic casings and control shafts. The 100k Im using at the moment is the standard metal casing with split aluminum shaft that if I touch it it offsets tuning at these near 1mhz freq, even with a big rubber pipe end cap, if I touch the rubber the effect is still there.

Also, I did a check on the circuit without the led and it still operates. ;) Not exactly the same freq. but still the same other than without the led there is no clamping of the spike.

Mags

Magluvin

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Re: Joule Thief 101
« Reply #353 on: February 20, 2016, 12:46:18 AM »
Brad:

Here, I undertook to do a fairly complete annotation of Magluvin's scope capture that I requested.  That is an example of the WORK and the thinking and analyzing that is REQUIRED if you are going to understand how a circuit works.

Now, when you look at Magluvin's scope capture for the "rundown to 360 mv" capture, the full compliment of WORK has to be done to understand it.  I am assuming that he did not change the circuit when he took that capture.  He simply observed how the Joule Thief switched over to a completely different operating mode at the lower voltage.  I have not analyzed that and I have no intention of analyzing it.

The reason I am emphasizing the "WORK" angle is because this was your "explanation" for how your "Cool Joule" feedback oscillator circuit worked:  "Miller effect."

Your explanation for your "Cool Joule" circuit's operation is a joke.

Now, if you want to describe how a standard Joule Thief circuit works I am all ears.

MileHigh

The scope shot of the test points was with a fresher battery. Just noticed that I had the menu on with that shot as I was checking to see if the blue or yellow traces were inverted, and they were not. Happened to me before so I checked

Mags

hoptoad

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Re: Joule Thief 101
« Reply #354 on: February 20, 2016, 02:17:38 AM »
snip....
You are not talking about one Joule Thief circuit, you are talking about five different Joule Thief circuits at the same time.
MileHigh
So you finally acknowledge there is more than one type of JT circuit.

tinman

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Re: Joule Thief 101
« Reply #355 on: February 20, 2016, 02:20:14 AM »
Brad:

We are back to where you agreed to do what I requested of you:  Describe how a standard Joule Thief circuit works.  Standard Joule Thief, standard circuit, standard running voltage, no bait and switch, no stream of consciousness.  Keep your mind focused on a single task.

Now are you capable of doing that or not?

MileHigh

What is a joule thief.

A joule thief is a minimalist Armstrong[1] self-oscillating voltage booster that is small, low-cost, and easy to build, typically used for driving light loads.

It can use nearly all of the energy in a single-cell electric battery, even far below the voltage where other circuits consider the battery fully discharged (or "dead"); hence the name, which suggests the notion that the circuit is stealing energy or "joules" from the source. The term is a pun on the expression "jewel thief": one who steals jewelry or gemstones.

The circuit is a variant of the blocking oscillator that forms an unregulated voltage boost converter. The output voltage is increased at the expense of higher current draw on the input, but the integrated (average) current of the output is lowered and brightness of a luminescence decreased.

The name "Joule Thief" was coined by Clive Mitchell[3][4] and given to his variant of Kaparnik's circuit which consisted of a single cell, a single BC549 NPN transistor, a coil with two windings, a single resistor (typically 1000 ohms), and a single white LED. Clive originally named the circuit "Vampire Torch", because it sucked the last remnants of life from a battery.

At lower supply voltages a different mode of operation takes over: the gain of a transistor is not linear with VCE. At low supply voltages (typically 0.75 V and below) the transistor requires a larger base current to maintain saturation as the collector current increases. Hence, when it reaches a critical collector current, the base drive available becomes insufficient and the transistor starts to pinch off and the previously described positive feedback action occurs turning it hard off.

I dont know what planet your on MH,but a JT circuit is designed to drain the remaining energy from batteries that would otherwise be considered dead. So,i will only be describing how the (your) JT circuit works during the operation at voltages we would see when draining the last remaining energy from a dead battery--not MH's new battery blocking oscillator.

But we can take a poll if you like MH,and if more people here agree that they want to use a JT just to light an LED on a  healthy/charged battery,rather than be able to drain the life out of all there dead batteries,then we will go your way MH,and you lead the way in making the new single 1.5 volt battery cell torch.


Brad

MileHigh

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Re: Joule Thief 101
« Reply #356 on: February 20, 2016, 02:23:00 AM »
Magluvin:

Quote
"What I have a hard time understanding, MH:
is why you are so adamantly against such attempts to improve efficiency in this manner."

I have been trying to be social with mh lately. I used to feel the need to hammer the same thoughts that you have written above to him many times before. Im afraid we cant fix that. So I just stay off that battlefield because it takes toooo much time and thread space to just end up with what we see today. Its not only the constant insistence that an 'idea'(s) will not work, but topping it all off with degrading insults doesnt fare well with me either. I have written a few reply posts in the last couple weeks that once I reread and thought about it, I just deleted them instead of falling in a never ending dual that doesnt account for much but a couple of hot heads..

We will take a reality check on this one.  You will not find a single statement by me saying that I am against improving the efficiency of a Joule Thief.  So why are you agreeing with him?  Of course between the lines in Smoky1's statement is that "Smoky1 is attempting to bring increased efficiency to the Joule Thief by preaching that "resonance" will make a Joule Thief more efficient so if you challenge Smoky1 then you are 'against such attempts to improve efficiency.'"  But Smoky1 has only talk to offer that you have seen many times before so why would you agree with him before he has shown any evidence that his pitch is real?

Don't do the "degrading insults" play.  If you read me carefully I never take a first step in that direction, never.  Tinman and I are "fighting" over how a Joule Thief works.  If he says something nasty I might respond, but I am never the initial aggressor.  If his behaviour shows some attributes that are not conducive to an orderly understanding of how a circuit works and he is all over the map and it gets frustrating, I will call him out.  Your own record on "degrading insults" is one of the worst on this forum and I assume that you have thought long and hard about that as well as thinking about the whole raison d'être for this forum which had you doing some soul searching about how much time to invest in "the search."  I commend you for that.  Your one-time tag-team "partner in crime" is getting serious push-back on EF for his horrible behaviour and people are openly expressing how unacceptable it is.  I only wish other people on this forum challenged you and your tag-team partner when it was absolutely horrible around here.  It's the one time that the people on EF have outshone the people on OU and demonstrated some backbone and character.  Again, don't put the "degrading insults" label on me because it is not true.  It's just another cynical card to play.

The gist of it is this:  People have to get past the back-slapping and mutual stroking when discussing simple circuits in fake imaginary terms that actually don't make sense in real life.  That's is what was happening about the Joule Thief.  I made my case and got push-back, and then I pushed-back.  There is nothing wrong with that.

So you got a nearly 1 MHz sine wave on your scope display.  What next?  That's the hard part and I wish you luck.  What you want and need to do is figure it out just like I annotated your scope shot for the regular Joule Thief.  You have to do that to see where it is going to lead you.  Will it be a dead end or "improved efficiency through resonance?"

MileHigh

tinman

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Re: Joule Thief 101
« Reply #357 on: February 20, 2016, 02:37:38 AM »
 author=MileHigh link=topic=8341.msg474813#msg474813 date=1455896984]


Quote
Brad:
The reason I am emphasizing the "WORK" angle is because this was your "explanation" for how your "Cool Joule" feedback oscillator circuit worked:  "Miller effect."

Your explanation for your "Cool Joule" circuit's operation is a joke.

A Joke--really ::)
I just explained as to how it was able to still oscillate with no inductive coupling between L1 and L2--not the whole operation process.
Let me guess--you are full bottles on it,even though you probably have never looked into it's operation?-->do tell.


Brad


MileHigh

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Re: Joule Thief 101
« Reply #358 on: February 20, 2016, 02:45:59 AM »
Brad:

Quote
I dont know what planet your on MH,but a JT circuit is designed to drain the remaining energy from batteries that would otherwise be considered dead. So,i will only be describing how the (your) JT circuit works during the operation at voltages we would see when draining the last remaining energy from a dead battery--not MH's new battery blocking oscillator.

It's just a question of not being all over the map.  The Joule Thief has two operating modes.  The first one is defined and it's operation is understood.  It is not in any way, shape or form an "RLC oscillator" like you stated, you were dead wrong.

Do you agree with my description of how a standard Joule Thief operates or not?  If you disagree then please do your explanation for how it operates like you said it would.

The Joule Thief obviously changes the way it works at low voltages and it has not been properly explained by anybody at all.  Don't you dare try to pull off another bait and switch and say, "When I sad RLC oscillator I meant at low voltages" or "I have been talking about this mode of operation the whole time."  I am truly sick and tired of your bait and switch bullshit.

You want to tackle the low-voltage operation where the standard digital switching mode with nice clean energizing and discharge cycles breaks down and the way the transistor works and presumably the way the feedback system works completely changes into some new mode of operation?  If yes then go for it.

MileHigh

tinman

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Re: Joule Thief 101
« Reply #359 on: February 20, 2016, 02:54:44 AM »
Magluvin:

We will take a reality check on this one.  You will not find a single statement by me saying that I am against improving the efficiency of a Joule Thief.  So why are you agreeing with him?  Of course between the lines in Smoky1's statement is that "Smoky1 is attempting to bring increased efficiency to the Joule Thief by preaching that "resonance" will make a Joule Thief more efficient so if you challenge Smoky1 then you are 'against such attempts to improve efficiency.'"  But Smoky1 has only talk to offer that you have seen many times before so why would you agree with him before he has shown any evidence that his pitch is real?

Don't do the "degrading insults" play.  If you read me carefully I never take a first step in that direction, never.   If he says something nasty I might respond, but I am never the initial aggressor.  If his behaviour shows some attributes that are not conducive to an orderly understanding of how a circuit works and he is all over the map and it gets frustrating, I will call him out.  Your own record on "degrading insults" is one of the worst on this forum and I assume that you have thought long and hard about that as well as thinking about the whole raison d'être for this forum which had you doing some soul searching about how much time to invest in "the search."  I commend you for that.  Your one-time tag-team "partner in crime" is getting serious push-back on EF for his horrible behaviour and people are openly expressing how unacceptable it is.  I only wish other people on this forum challenged you and your tag-team partner when it was absolutely horrible around here.  It's the one time that the people on EF have outshone the people on OU and demonstrated some backbone and character.  Again, don't put the "degrading insults" label on me because it is not true.  It's just another cynical card to play.

The gist of it is this:  People have to get past the back-slapping and mutual stroking when discussing simple circuits in fake imaginary terms that actually don't make sense in real life.  That's is what was happening about the Joule Thief.  I made my case and got push-back, and then I pushed-back.  There is nothing wrong with that.

So you got a nearly 1 MHz sine wave on your scope display.  What next?  That's the hard part and I wish you luck.  What you want and need to do is figure it out just like I annotated your scope shot for the regular Joule Thief.  You have to do that to see where it is going to lead you.  Will it be a dead end or "improved efficiency through resonance?"

MileHigh

 
Quote
Tinman and I are "fighting" over how a Joule Thief works.

It would seem to me,it's more of an argument as to the JT is suppose to do,and what we want it to do. You want it to be used at voltages where you have a standard blocking oscillator operation,were as!i believe! the rest of us wish to use it to drain nearly dead batteries all the way down.  This is what the JT is used for mostly MH,so why should we be looking at how it operates at higher voltage supplies?.


Brad