Home Sign Up!

Browse Community Submit

All Art Craft Food Games Green Home Kids Life Music Offbeat Outdoors Pets Photo Ride Science Tech

Low-Power Wireless Charging

by gripen40k on February 1, 2010 Table of Contents Low-Power Wireless Charging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Intro: Low-Power Wireless Charging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Step 1: Theory of Operation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Step 2: Needed Parts and Equipment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Step 3: Coils and Oscillator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Step 4: Slave Pickup and CW Generator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Step 5: Putting it All Together (And Caveats) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Step 6: References and Links . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Related Instructables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Comments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 2 2 3 4 6 6 7 7 8

http://www.instructables.com/id/Low-Power-Wireless-Charging/

Author:gripen40k
Electrical engineering student, currently working in the video processing silicon industry.

Intro: Low-Power Wireless Charging

Hi and welcome to my first instructable! I'm going to show you how to make your own low-power wireless charging circuits that will let you pass electricity through the air (or any other non-metallic medium) over short distances. This is suitable for wireless battery and capacitor charging and powering of very small un-buffered circuits (such as a single LED). Please make sure to check out the last page as there are tons of references and other sources I managed to gleam from the internet and other instructables. Also note that I spent a GREAT deal of time experimenting and researching to get this right. I'm an electrical engineer, and even still it took quite a while to get my head around some of the technical challenges. As such this is for experienced hobbyists only, unfortunately it's not easy to do although I tried to make it as simple as possible. It doesn't take a lot of skill, just a lot of tinkering to get it to work right. Now there shouldn't be current patents on any of this (Tesla, Colpitts, Cockcroft, and Walton all made this stuff yeaaaaars ago), but I would look into it first if you wish to sell anything using this design. If you want the circuit then just skip ahead to step 2 and ignore the theory part :).

Image Notes 1. Smaller secondary coil, primary coil underneath picture frame 2. 2x 1.5F ultra-caps from Cooper-Bussmann used to store energy from slave coil 3. Fancy circuit and part of a larger project (most of which isn't covered here)

Step 1: Theory of Operation

The short story: this is a Cockcroft-Walton generator hanging off a resonant transformer . If you don't mind wasting a couple minutes with detailed theory then charge ahead intrepid reader! Otherwise skip to the next step. The long story, well, it's not much longer. Take a coil, make it resonate at a particular frequency using a capacitor, then place it near a similarly tuned coil and use the oscillating magnetic field of the first to cause the second to resonate. Use a clever AC to DC converter and voila, you have a method of wireless energy transfer. After some sleuthing on the internet, I went about devising the first part, an oscillator. Various homebrew methods have been used (see: Wireless Power Instructable ) but weren't very good or just temporary solutions. I used the suggestion on wikipedia of using a Colpitts oscillator . This is a decent solution because it's dead simple to build and, most importantly, it's a current oscillator and not a voltage oscillator. As current through an inductor is what generates the magnetic field, this is what will drive both coils. The second part is fairly easy to understand, that being the two coils. Although they don't have to be the same physical size, they do need to resonate at the same frequency. The combination of number of turns and diameter determine the inductance, and some capacitors were added to obtain the correct oscillating frequency. It gets tricky when you get into the details however (and they get very, very detailed, so I won't put the majority down here) as you need to select the diameter of wire to go with the amount of current going through your coil, which will determine the amount of resistance in the coil, which will impact the viability of your oscillator. To make it somewhat easy, go with 24AWG enamled magnet wire. You now get to pick a some-what arbitrary frequency for your circuit. This I decided to go with 80KHz, it happened to be a nice middle ground between easiness and efficiency. Then you pick a capacitor value that's commonly available, I picked 150nF. This took a while to select because you need to get an inductance that is within the realm of being hand made. Using the equation: frequency = 1/( 2 * pi * sqrt(inductance * capacitance / 2) ) (from Colpitts oscillator ) we use the capacitor value to try to get the inductance in and around 20uH to 70uH. Air-core inductors around those values are easy to make. I used a value of 53uH. From here you need to use this handy inductor calculator to try to figure out what diameter and number of turns are needed. I used values of ~22 turns at 6cm diameter, with an arbitrary length around 4-5x the wire thickness for the secondary, and ~13 turns at ~15cm diameter for the primary. These values will be your STARTING POINT ONLY. You have to experiment to get it right (covered in the next couple steps). Note that you are using the same inductance and capacitance for both the resonating coils, this is so it's easy to tune. Don't go crazy with different inductances and capacitances or else you won't get it to work. OK, the last part of this picture is the AC to DC converter. This is what will shape the received AC into something we can use to charge a capacitor or a battery at a usable voltage. I used a CW generator here to great effect; it allowed me to tune the slave coil to produce exactly the right voltage without going over the charging voltage. I determined (through experimentation) that a two stage generator would be enough, and that will generally be fine when trying to generate ~5V. For the

http://www.instructables.com/id/Low-Power-Wireless-Charging/

capacitors I arbitrarily chose 2.2uF caps, and for the diodes I chose a nice Schottky diode array with a very low 0.38V forward voltage drop. The P/N is BAS40TW-TP, however these are VERY small parts so you will probably have to order individual schottky diodes for this one. Just use ones with a low voltage drop AND a low reverse leakage current. OK! Enough of this long-winded theory and background info, let's get to the actual good stuff!

Image Notes 1. Colpitts oscillator 2. Tuned resonant circuit to 20KHz (53uH inductor and two 150nF capacitors) 3. Slave coil tuned to the master 4. Two stage Cockcroft-Walton generator.

Image Notes 1. Primary (Master) coil 2. Any 5V source will do, try to get one that can source 500mA-ish 3. These, along with the coil, determine the operating frequency. Remember, caps in series divide the total capacitance (so 75nF).

Image Notes 1. Secondary (Slave) coil 2. The caps we use to change the frequency 3. CW Generator, capacitors are fairly arbitrary in value.

Step 2: Needed Parts and Equipment

I hate to let a lot of people down, but an oscilloscope is absolutely needed here. Without it you won't be able to tune your horrible handmade inductor and the circuits won't match. These things are really finicky, even if you went with the relatively large bandwidth that my values provided. If you have access to one, then great! That, a soldering iron, some wire cutters, and pliers are all the tools you need. As for materials, you will need a few different parts, but nothing too fancy. Master coil/oscillator: 24AWG enameled magnet wire Prototyping board 2 150nF capacitors 2 10K Ohm resistors 1 100Ohm resistor 1 100nF capacitor A bunch of 2N2222 transistors (I used 3, you can use more or less depending on availability) 5V regulator and DC jack to plug it into the oscillator Slave coil/CW generator: More wire Another prototyping board 2 150nF caps 4 2.2uF caps 4 low forward-voltage drop schottky diodes (search digikey for ones with Vf<400mV@1A and Ir<1mA@20V) Note that technically any schottky diode will work here, so if you want to just build it without much efficiency then feel free to use whatever you wish / can get your hands on.

http://www.instructables.com/id/Low-Power-Wireless-Charging/

Image Notes 1. Simple pliers and cutters 2. Solder and 24AWG enamled wire 3. The star of the show, my oscilloscope (20MHz Gould from god-knows-when) 4. Soldering iron

Step 3: Coils and Oscillator

Ok, so what we will do here is build the oscillator first and then the coil. Using the oscilloscope, we will tune the primary coil until it resonates at the desired frequency. The oscillator is pretty simple and was tested both in simulations and in a practical circuit. I derived it from the one here on wikipedia, however values had to be changed and more BJTs (transistors) were added after I discovered that max current transfer improved. Rough schematic and pictures are below. Note to add more BJTs just connect them in 'parallel' to the one in the schematic, pin-to-pin. The primary coil started as ~18 turns at ~15cm diameter, then I removed turns based on the final shape/diameter. If you look at the picture of the jig you see how I easily made the coils to a certain size. Just cut out some holes in a cardboard box and use pens on an angle to wrap the wire around. In the other picture of the completed circuit/coil, I forced the coil into a roughly rectangular shape, so the inductance changed. Simply make the coil with a few extra turns and then connect that up to the oscillator (directly, solder it without cables or any other wires). Place the 'scope probes across the coil and check the wave period. Remove coils until the period matches what you want (in my case, it was 12.5us). By remove coils I mean physically remove a turn by cutting the wire and re-soldering the end. Excess wire will lead to more inductance and you won't get the right value. After you are finished with the primary coil you'll do essentially the same thing for the secondary coil. Just unsolder the primary and repeat. However when making the coil you are welcome to change the diameter and number of turns. I used my hand for the second one and started with ~30 turns, to make it smaller and easier to fit in things. Once completed you can wrap the coils, although this is risky as you will change the inductance significantly so you'll have to do a considerable amount of trial and error to get it right. The inductance changes because you are forcing the wires closer together. Now onto the slave pickup and CW generator!

http://www.instructables.com/id/Low-Power-Wireless-Charging/

Image Notes 1. Primary (Master) coil 2. Any 5V source will do, try to get one that can source 500mA-ish 3. These, along with the coil, determine the operating frequency. Remember, caps in series divide the total capacitance (so 75nF).

Image Notes 1. Here I tested the frequency of oscillation while the coil was still on the jig to make it a bit easier to work with.

Image Notes 1. You can 'fray' the coil to lower the inductance and increase the frequency, but you should really just remove a turn.

Image Notes 1. Primary coil completed 2. Secondary coil completed and wrapped in electrical tape to protect it

http://www.instructables.com/id/Low-Power-Wireless-Charging/

Step 4: Slave Pickup and CW Generator

Ah, almost done! This step consists of adding 2 capacitors in parallel to the slave coil and connecting that up to a ladder of schottky diodes and capacitors. Note that in the pictures below, you are looking at my heavily modified original PCB. Because of the simplicity here, this can be made on some protoboard or even deadbug style. The schematic and pictures really say it all, simply connect the secondary coil to the capacitors and then connect that up to the diode ladder. The 'bottom' line of the coil is selected as the ground and the top of the ladder is the output, in my case it was a bit under 5V. The next step is simply putting it all together with some sort of storage element.

Image Notes 1. Secondary (Slave) coil 2. The caps we use to change the frequency 3. CW Generator, capacitors are fairly arbitrary in value.

Image Notes 1. Coil and caps 2. Verrrrry small and hacked together CW generator 3. Switching boost converter and LDO for the rest of the circuit (not covered here)

Step 5: Putting it All Together (And Caveats)

Great, now we have the primary coil and oscillator, a secondary coil, and a CW generator. Of course the purpose of this instructable is that there isn't any 'hooking up'! If you power the oscillator and have the secondary coil inside/on/around the primary coil, you will notice that a fairly decent voltage is generated on the secondary coil. Although usually just over half the voltage on the primary, the CW generator takes that AC voltage and conveniently produces a clean 5V. Ideally this can be used to charge a large capacitor bank like I did, or a low power 5V circuit. Now for the caveats. This first one being that you can't really use this for any high current applications, such as driving motors or a bunch of LEDs. Charging is a different matter of course and will work perfectly ok for that. When you try to pull too much current out of this circuit the voltage will start dropping considerably. For instance when you connect a fully depleted capacitor bank to it the voltage across the secondary is considerably reduced. If you take a look at the primary during this time you will also see that the frequency and amplitude of the wave is considerably different. This frequency shifting is what prevents you from using high current loads. I'm sure there are better oscillators and other measures that can be taken to improve the voltage regulation, but this works as a preliminary model. The second caveat is that you can't put ANY metal in between the primary and secondary, particularly iron based metals (steel, stainless or otherwise). Even placing the oscillating circuit inside the primary effects the performance, creating drop-out zones on the upper surface of the picture frame that prevent charging when the secondary is placed in certain spots. The third caveat is that the distance between the primary and secondary coil must be kept to a minimum. This isn't WiTricity , it can't power anything over a distance of even 20cm. Working around these limitations is quite easy though. My method was to use the circuit to charge a large capacitor bank (3F @ 5V) and then use that bank to power a switching regulator (to keep a constant 5V even when the capacitor voltage drops) and LDO so I have both 5V and 3.3V to work with. It takes about a full night to charge the capacitors, and I can get a considerable amount of run time with proper power saving attention to the rest of my circuit. Up next? Well maybe a larger, more robust version to trickle charge a car battery, or a nicer looking version to charge a cell phone battery. Maybe some experimentation in flat-wrapped coils or other methods. Feel free to expand upon my methods and improve this tech, and heck, take my idea and integrate it into some of your existing projects. Just as long as you promise to make an instructable or something out of it, I'm interested to see what people will do with this! Also make sure to respect my creative-commons by-sa license ;). Happy Hacking, -Devin

http://www.instructables.com/id/Low-Power-Wireless-Charging/

Image Notes 1. LED magic! Note that there isn't any CW generator here, the LED is just placed across the coil. In theory the LED should be twice as bright if a full wave rectifier is used 2. Not connected in this picture but can be to store power 3. Primary coil housed underneath picture frame

Image Notes 1. LED running entirely from the slave coil. Much brighter than this picture insinuates, stupid 'scope is too bright. 2. 'Scope showing the voltage across the primary coil.

Step 6: References and Links

K, first off, links to people who have come before me! Instructables user robotkid249 : wireless power transmission over short distances Instructables user puffin_juice : I need your help. IPT Robert Coup and Monique Ryan (U of Auckland): Inductively coupled universal battery charger Now for links from wikipedia (all accessed on or around Dec '09): Wireless Energy Transfer Resonant Energy Transfer Colpitts Oscillator Resonant Transformer Cockcroft-Walton Generator WiTricity Point-to-Point Construction Schottky Diode Stripboard Secondary Coil: LC circuit resonance Other links from around the web: Inductor Calculator Colpitts Oscillator Common capacitor values Wireless power links (just fyi): Neat RGB LED project, similar setup to this one Using large capacitors and small inductors instead Quick-and-dirty method for high power output using a CFL bulb. I'll reserve this space below for anyone that uses this in one of their projects, just let me know!

Related Instructables

I need your help. IPT (Inductive Power Transfer) by puffin_juice

Wireless Power by halo456456

A simple mechanical resonance demonstrator by 5Volt

How To Build A Wireless Power Spark Gap Tesla by robotkid249 Coil (SGTC) by Xellers

Wireless Power Using UMK8 by eshoretechnologies

http://www.instructables.com/id/Low-Power-Wireless-Charging/

Comments
50 comments Add Comment view all 125 comments

kcedgerton says:

Jun 22, 2011. 10:15 PM REPLY For tuning the coils to the correct frequency couldn't you use variable caps? That seems like it would make the tuning process much easier.

gripen40k says:

Jun 24, 2011. 9:54 AM REPLY Yeah for sure! I didn't use them because I didn't have any on hand. If you use them you'll probably have to put them in parallel with normal caps, and still do some course tuning with the coil. After wrapping the coil having the tunning caps would certainly help. Jun 2, 2011. 5:47 AM REPLY

dniarchos says:
Can I have a lay-out of the secondary circuit complete. If I understand the description you are suggesting two pathways for the secondary - Just use the two capacitors and the 4-diodes to get V(sec in mV) X (1.41X1.41X1.41X1.41)

in step three you provide an applification with a transitor ( +-5V supply) and you get the voltage from the ground-node between capacitors The primary resonates at 50 KHz How do I find the resonance of the secondary? Send info also, with drawings to hitemag@ims.demokritos.gr

gripen40k says:

Jun 11, 2011. 8:40 PM REPLY Hi there, the secondary circuit schematic is in the pictures, there really isn't much else to it. If you have a coil and the two capacitors there will be an AC voltage being output, the rest is just to take that AC and give us usable DC voltage. The secondary and primary coils will resonate at the same frequency.

endolith says:
Could you use a simple square-wave oscillator driving a half-bridge like in a resonant SMPS?

Apr 22, 2011. 7:09 AM REPLY

gripen40k says:

Apr 26, 2011. 9:10 AM REPLY Yep, as long as the majority of the energy in the oscillations is in the right frequency. The coils and caps act as a bandgap filter, if your oscillator has the majority of it's energy in that gap it should work well regardless of what the wave looks like. That being said, remember that square waves contain a lot of extra energy in the high frequencies because of the rough edges. Sine waves are much nicer for this application, so as long as the output is sine-ish, you should be good. Using square waves would just mean lots of wasted power in the primary side.

endolith says:
I think it would waste *less* energy.

Apr 26, 2011. 10:28 AM REPLY

1. Switching transistors wastes less energy, since they have to act like a resistor at half-on instead of a full-on or full-off switch. 2. The input impedance of the resonant coil looks like a short circuit at resonance, and an open circuit at all other frequencies, so if the fundamental frequency of the square wave is at resonance, it will act just like the sine wave case, but the high frequency components of the square wave will see no load. It will bandpass filter the energy by blocking high frequencies, not by shunting them.

gripen40k says:

Apr 26, 2011. 8:13 PM REPLY The first point is right, my oscillator isn't very efficient and could improve it by using something like a 555 with the output connected to a mosfet. That way the frequency can be (more or less) fine tuned, and the power mosfet can handle a s#it-load more voltage/current. In the links at the end I included one from a university project that did just that. However they are using the ringing caused by the square wave to transfer power, and not the fundamental frequency itself. Give it a read to learn about their method. I'm not sure if I agree with the second point. My circuit is causing a current oscillation primarily, the voltage oscillations are caused by the current. Or to put it more correctly, the current is being forced in the circuit, voltage does whatever it wants. When you switch to a square voltage oscillation I'm not sure it works as easily as described, since the load on the secondary is causing all sorts of complicated 3rd order effects :). Meh, doesn't matter, both the method you describe and the method I've worked out achieve the same end, and both will be surprisingly inefficient when implemented, haha.

endolith says:
This Robert Coup link is really useful, thanks for pointing it out! A transistor can't "force" current through a high resistance. It's not a current source.

Apr 27, 2011. 7:47 AM REPLY

"The resonant network filters the higher harmonic currents. Thus, essentially only sinusoidal current is allowed to flow through the resonant network even though a square wave voltage (Vd) is applied to the resonant network." Yes, both will be inefficient, I'm just trying to learn the most efficient way to do it.

http://www.instructables.com/id/Low-Power-Wireless-Charging/

endolith says:
Wouldn't it be more efficient to just use more turns in the secondary and a normal full-wave rectifier?

Apr 22, 2011. 6:56 AM REPLY

gripen40k says:
How would that be more efficient?

Apr 26, 2011. 9:04 AM REPLY

My secondary does actually have more turns but it has the same inductance (since it's a smaller diameter). Even if the voltage is stepped up from primary to secondary, the voltage increase isn't that much. With the CW gen, you can get a much more substantial voltage increase with a couple more parts.

endolith says:

Apr 26, 2011. 10:16 AM REPLY Well multipliers aren't very efficient because of all the diodes and leaky caps, and don't get up to voltage immediately, (which I think would manifest as poor regulation?) If you double the number of turns in the secondary, it doesn't double the output voltage? It's different for resonant transformers?

gripen40k says:

Apr 26, 2011. 8:03 PM REPLY For normal, efficient transformers that's usually the case, but on this guy simply doubling the number of turns doesn't net a doubling of the voltage. I think I have 3x the turns, in a smaller radius, but I still don't get 5V on the output. Although there's obviously some inefficiencies unrelated to the number of turns in my setup ;) Also you are right, this circuit has really poor regulation. That's ok as long as you don't suck down too much current, or charge a super cap like I did. It works excellently for charging large caps because it will deliver the max current possible in all situations.

abhishek79shrivastava says:

Apr 1, 2011. 11:49 AM REPLY can any one tell me i made a wireless mobile charger but the current is very low which is 5mamp but a required 500 mamp to charge. what should i do for increase the current at that level??? plz help me

robotkid249 says:
Use a IRF510 Mosfet and fuse the two currents to amplify the output.

Apr 13, 2011. 7:40 PM REPLY

Zettu says:

Apr 10, 2011. 9:32 PM REPLY hello, i am using a small colpitts oscillator with 3x 2n2222 transistors in parallel,, that is power by a 5volt regulator from a 12volt adapter, the first colpitts oscillator is running two 150pf , 500v 5% tolerant caps and the emitter resistor is 2x resistors in series (15ohm & 42ohm) both metal oxide and probably 2watt the voltage divider is composed of two 10k ohm 1/4watt resistors to base the small coil her in this first oscillator is for frequency, it is 22 awg wire rapped around a screw driver 8 times diameter of which is about 1/4 of an inch, this first osc. is about 10.10Mhz it can fluctuate on a breadboard between 8 to 22Mhz after i soldered everything to a pcb it was 10.10mhz, wire off collector goes to base of a 2n3055 transistor which has a coil to collector, and a cap of 20pf 100v 5% tol. is attached from collector to emitter,, and the second cap is same, the coil is 26awg 21ft 1/8in diameter for circle and perimeter/pi for rectangle,,, shape of coil is irrelevant as long as slave coil that receives power wirelessly is same length as master coil. i used 30awg at 21ft. 3/4in.,, now this second osc. has +12volt from a voltage reg at 1A to top of coil while other end is on collector in parallel like i said before,, second 20pf cap is between collector and emitter like i said,, and between emitter and ground is a variable resistor i made from multiple resistors all metal oxide 2watt i find between 50~100hom tuned with a dip switch due to other variable resistors burning out, thus the 2 watts,, the voltage generator on the slave coil becomes no longer needed, but u do need to match the caps to the master coil 2x 20pf in series but parallel with slave coil, and a full-wave bridge rectifier with whatever diode u can find on market with least about of voltage drop,,, i have a few models transferring 9 volts nicely that can be reduced to 5v with smd voltage regulators, i am making proto-type for my phone,, and when i'm done i will make my first ever instructable,, amps draw test is still underway having trouble measuring it, but it should be good enough to charge a phone,, i have also been monitoring the temp on 2n3055 as it will heat up as 4 amps is being amplified from 1A powersupple reg, not sure if its supposed to do that,, i have been experimenting for last 4 months and made a bunch of advances. um calculated value of both master and slave coil is 24.8311890115uH according to calculations and measurement,,, Hope this Helps,, :)

gripen40k says:

Apr 13, 2011. 7:13 PM REPLY Oh wow. That comment is very hard to read. Could you make a diagram, even in MS paint, and then upload that? I think that would help a lot.

abhishek79shrivastava says:

Mar 28, 2011. 11:00 AM REPLY hello zettu may u give me full detail (circuit dia.,calculation, formula etc) of this project. What is the value of capaciton in primary coil and secondary coil , what is no of turns and what is wire gauge of primary coil and secondary. what is the operating voltage and current and power and what is the operating frequency. plz mail me this details abhishek79shrivastava@gmail.com

Zettu says:

Dec 30, 2010. 2:55 PM REPLY hello, i endeavored to build this type of circuit with similar components except that my coil is 50.6635801 uH and for the two caps i used 100nF which basically comes out to be around 100Khz for oscillation,,, anyways i was wondering, shouldn't the coil or L1 be between the collector of the transistor and the ground of the circuit ? in order for the frequency to go through the coil, im having trouble getting any oscillation with your correction schematic, i copied most specs except for the caps and coil exactly to the schematics specifications,, the inductor calculator was a big help in building the coils,,, but was wondering about placement of the coil<

http://www.instructables.com/id/Low-Power-Wireless-Charging/

abhishek79shrivastava says:

Mar 28, 2011. 10:58 AM REPLY hello zettu may u give me full detail (circuit dia.,calculation, formula etc) of this project. What is the value of capaciton in primary coil and secondary coil , what is no of turns and what is wire gauge of primary coil and secondary. what is the operating voltage and current and power and what is the operating frequency. plz mail me this details abhishek79shrivastava@gmail.com

gripen40k says:

Jan 2, 2011. 5:26 PM REPLY Hi Zettu, I must warn you that these oscillators can be really picky with the values used and modifying the value of coil or caps can put the oscillator outside of the stable operating region. So to start, the coil as shown is exactly where it should be. Remember that the current in that transistor goes from top to bottom, with a tiny bit coming in through the side there (in other words, current from collector to emitter, with a bit coming through the base, see wikipedia ). The current has to go through the inductor at the top. Now for fixing the finicky nature of you oscillator. If you see the wikipedia link of the original oscillator you'll notice that the values for all the primary parts are different. There are two things you could try that right off the bat might help. You could change the 100R resistor to different values (50R? 1k?) and you can try dropping in another transistor in parallel (I briefly mentioned this in the article, I ended up with 3 on my circuit). Both of these should change the saturation behaviour of the circuit, and might make yours start working. Also double check that the 5V supply is rated for at least 500mA (I never bothered checking how much current is being drawn, I doubt it's more than a ~200mA though). If you have it you can try using a 6V supply as well. Good luck!

Zettu says:

Jan 3, 2011. 10:39 AM REPLY thanks for advice i was able to get two coils to resonate pretty well, with the circuit you showed it took a few days, and a lot of math, but i found the math doesn't always hold true,, i have a device that will show me the frequency of an oscillation in hz, but i don't have an oscilloscope,, if i had a scope things might be more efficient, but to the point, the out put with a bridge rectifier is about 2.6v and will illuminate but not fully, so i am happy i am making progress, i really need to jump online and order some schottky diodes to get a bit more voltage out of it, and the idea about parallel transistors i like this idea, i need to make another trip to radioshack,, theoretically more transistors should up the current, which would also help,, i am still trying to get used to transistor osculations,, i realized the coil would pretty much short the circuit if i put it between collector and emitter,, thank god for breadboards,, :) ill update you guys on how it goes,,, thanks again for the ideas,, Mar 2, 2011. 7:15 AM REPLY

fpg says:
hi bro,

If i were to change to value of inductor and capacitor. would i need to adjust the resistor values around the BJT to compensate it? Thanks :)

gripen40k says:

Mar 3, 2011. 7:04 PM REPLY Possibly, but if you are only changing them by a bit then it should be good. The original schematic called for drastically different values, I just messed with them a bit until it started working :)

fpg says:
oh ok...

Mar 4, 2011. 2:23 AM REPLY

cause I'm using a 18AWG enamelled copper wire.. However, i could not obtain any form of sin wave off the oscilloscope.

sypher says:
this can be used to charge a cell phone, or anything on that level right? If so, can you build me one? PM me for the trade value... This is pretty kewl BTW...

Oct 5, 2010. 10:19 AM REPLY

gripen40k says:

Oct 7, 2010. 5:24 AM REPLY Yep, you could certainly use it inside of a cellphone, as long as you reduce the size of the coil. And no, I'm not going to build you one. If you really want wireless charging but can't/won't make this, you should check out the powermat.

.Unknown. says:

Aug 30, 2010. 6:25 AM REPLY With the oscilloscope, how would you measure power from the oscillator, and power from the slave coil? The 'R' value on the slave circuit is pretty obvious ( I think) but I don't know where 'R' comes in on the primary coil.

gripen40k says:

Sep 2, 2010. 5:22 AM REPLY There isn't any easy way to measure power of either the master or slave coils themselves. You can however measure the current from the power supply on the oscillator and the current going into whatever device you are powering on the slave output. That way you can compare the current and voltage outputs to get power (power = current*voltage) going into the system and power coming out of the system. Of course you could do this with a standard multimeter.

http://www.instructables.com/id/Low-Power-Wireless-Charging/

.Unknown. says:
Ok, thanks

Sep 2, 2010. 6:06 AM REPLY

macman11 says:
i'm wondering-- could you use any thing more than 5v with this same circuit?

Aug 18, 2010. 9:00 PM REPLY

gripen40k says:

Aug 19, 2010. 4:43 AM REPLY Why yes you can! You can increase it to either 6V or 9V, I can't remember :P After that voltage (I'm leaning toward 6V) the transistor becomes completely saturated and any increase in voltage will not increase the amount of current through the coil. To do that you need to redesign the circuit, either by adding more transistors or something similar. I'm not sure myself, so you'll have to check it out :)

.Unknown. says:

Aug 29, 2010. 3:59 AM REPLY Using that CW generator you gave, I somehow got ~490V on my multimeter (almost too much for it to measure). Is that supposed to happen? And if I were to connect an LED across the multimeter terminals, it just flashes, but doesn't blow up like what would happen if you put it across the terminals of a capacitor from a camera.

gripen40k says:

Aug 29, 2010. 7:43 AM REPLY Well something tells me that you aren't actually getting 490V out of the secondary coil :). It's AC out of the coil so remember to set the multimeter to that, even still, it shouldn't read 490V. I don't understand what you mean by 'it flashes'. Do you mean it flashes once and then doesn't turn on? Or do you mean that it flashes continuously. If it does either you probably have set up the circuit wrong. Technically when the circuit is working correctly the LED will flash, but at many kHz so you can't see the flashing.

.Unknown. says:

Aug 30, 2010. 3:10 AM REPLY Hm...well, the multimeter was set to DC....are you saying that the output of the CW generator is AC? To clear up what I said, I meant that it just gives a single, bright pulse of light, when connected to the output of the CW generator. The current through the LED, however, (though possibly high enough to do *some* damage to the LED) is not high enough to blow it up...like it does when you connect the LED to a camera flash's main capacitor (~400V?) p.s; I'm not too familar on the AC measuring feature on a digital multimeter...I assume it measures the voltage at the peak of the AC wave, regardless of the frequency...but then there's something about RMS...and when I connect DC to the terminals (no damage done, right?) it shows double the actual DC voltage.

gripen40k says:

Aug 30, 2010. 5:03 AM REPLY Opps, I misread your previous post, I thought you were talking about the output from the oscillator! The output from the CW generator should be DC, but in your case it may not be, I'm not entirely sure. I'm a bit confused at how your LED is doing what it's doing. Are you using the correct capacitors for the CW generator? What happens when you remove the CW generator and simply measure the RMS (root mean squared) AC signal across the secondary coil? Just turn your multimeter to AC and measure the voltage, it should be approximately the same voltage as what's on your primary coil. It sounds to me like you aren't using an oscilloscope, which would make it exceedingly difficult to match the coils and the two circuits. That may be your main problem.

.Unknown. says:
(removed by author or community request)

Aug 20, 2010. 6:06 PM

gripen40k says:

Aug 23, 2010. 10:40 AM REPLY Hmm, well the oscillator circuit is fairly simple so if something isn't working then it's probably a bad part or your coil is too far off from the right inductance. If it's inductance isn't reasonably close I think the oscillator wouldn't work very well. Are you using the right resistors? Can you swap out transistors? Using a square wave would work but the ringing near the edges would be pronounced and it wouldn't be as efficient. Otherwise it would work, so try it out if you've completely given up on the colpitts. Good luck :)

.Unknown. says:

Aug 27, 2010. 6:34 PM REPLY Sorry I accidentally removed my post. Is there any other way to get more current to the coil? I've got 4 transistors in 'parallel', and 12V going in...

gripen40k says:

Aug 29, 2010. 7:38 AM REPLY I'm not sure if there is or not. I mean sure there is bound to be a way to increase the current to the coil, but you may have to re-design the circuit some. If you had an oscilloscope you could see for sure if the extra transistors and increased voltage are actually generating more current through the coil. Feb 10, 2010. 6:59 AM REPLY

freeh18 says:
i have done something similar, on my own 5 leds are easy going

http://www.instructables.com/id/Low-Power-Wireless-Charging/

.Unknown. says:
So...could I please get the schematics to this thing? Or at least where you based it all on.

Aug 20, 2010. 5:51 AM REPLY

reeloo says:
i want learn your tech. plz show us detail schemetic.. have a good time

Jul 5, 2010. 5:59 AM REPLY

gripen40k says:

Feb 10, 2010. 8:08 AM REPLY Cool stuff! I assume it's a very similar setup to what I have done, except you put just LEDs across the secondary coil/caps. What did you use for your oscillator? Have you tried many frequencies?

freeh18 says:

Feb 10, 2010. 10:42 AM REPLY i used a XR2206 to create a 95kHz sine wave and an amplifier to increase the output power ive set my capacitors in series to the primary coil (with this setting i got more power) i tried some frequencies. the result was that with a higher frequence, the transfered power also gets higher. but the function generator i used to test my circuit had max. 100kHz

gripen40k says:

Feb 11, 2010. 5:01 AM REPLY Ah neat! I had thought about using a function generator as there are lots of good ones out there, but I wanted to make this as easy as possible (for the benefit of myself and others who want to do this). About the capacitors, if you look at my schematic they are not really in parallel or series because of the design of the oscillator. And the higher the resonanting frequency the higher the Q factor . It's a complicated parameter, but essentially it's related the the bandwidth, the lower the bandwidth the more power that can be transfered without significant loss (more selectivity). For this setup: Q= 2*pi* freq * inductance / (inductor resistance @ freq) Take a look at the U of Aukland link at the end there. They use a square wave and the ringing caused by sharp edges to drive their main coil, and apparently it works really well.

.Unknown. says:

Sep 3, 2010. 6:03 PM REPLY When you're talking about how frequncy affects the q factor and bandwidth, affecting efficiency, is the change noticeable? (rise in current/voltage in secondary) or is it more efficient as in more power in the primary gets more power in the secondary over time (if that makes sense?)

gripen40k says:

Sep 8, 2010. 6:16 AM REPLY Yeah, if you put the coils right next to each other you will need a substantial increase in efficiency to make any noticeable change in voltage or current regulation. However at a distance the effects are amplified. You can think of it as the available power in the secondary coil, there will be more of it if the efficiency is high.

sal.afzal says:

Aug 11, 2010. 4:11 PM REPLY When you mention to connect the Oscillator probes across the coil... u mean to connect the probes across the coil and ground right??? I dont get anything if i connect the probe across just the coil =(

gripen40k says:

Aug 15, 2010. 8:29 AM REPLY Once you have the oscillator plugged in and running you'll be able to see a voltage swing across the coil. In reality the driving force is a current swing but since the coil has a tiny bit of resistance you'll see the current swing as a voltage. So no, I mean connect them across the coil and not to ground. If you can't get a voltage across the coil but you can get a voltage swing from one end of the coil to 'ground' on the supply, then something is very, very odd with your circuit :S

view all 125 comments

http://www.instructables.com/id/Low-Power-Wireless-Charging/