Steven,
This is an embarrassing question to admit here but why is the solar
collector arrangement necessary to prove that the Stiffler circuit is
truly self powered?
The circuit produces more energy of one kind - photons of light, or
lumens - than is input in the form of electricity. That is what is meant
by apples-to-oranges ... but that does not mean it can be easily
"self-powered". In fact it is not self-powered in the sense that it can
be disconnected from everything *unless* the light can be converted back
to electricity.
Is a battery still being used to manage a specific function in the
current Stiffler layout?
A battery is used for startup in the latest video (9).
Stay tuned for the dramatic cliffhanger ending to that video, where the
question was asked- "what happens when the battery is disconnected?"
R. Stiffler is no Ted Turner (thankfully) but he does "know drama"...
and you would have to be a fool to think that the has not already done
so and written the final chapter to this season of "Law & Disorder". As
mentioned in an earlier post, there seems to be a problem with the LEDs
burning out rapidly, and that has been a source of delay -- but that is
an engineering problem which can be solved, eventually by the
manufacturer, if the demand is there. Which of course it will be.
These things were designed to be run at 3.5 volts DC; and then when at
the (equivalent) of 80 times that much voltage, of course there is a
high failure rate.
Again - one hint of what is going on is found in the phenomena known to
only specialists, called the "Voltage Controlled Negative Resistance"
diode (VCNR) -- which is a type of diode or LED behavior observed in
metal–insulator–metal (MIM) structures, but admittedly is NOT to be
found in the known specs for this particular diode.
Could be - no one thought about looking for it before now...
Jones
