Ronnie, when you get back to the point you were in that video, I'll bet if you set half throttle, then adjust the input power to the system between 11 and 14 volts, you'll see the pulse amplitude vary.  I'm guessing Stan considered this "no big deal" or "good enough for government".

I'm actually wondering if the second TIP120 (Q5) might have been originally designed to be a three-pin voltage regulator IC (something like an LM317), but for whatever reason Stan couldn't source enough parts and just went with a transistor (TIP120).

Matt there is no 14 volts, Stan's regulated power supply only outputs 5 10 and 12 volts. J gets its voltage from the regulated power supply from the GMS Unit.

There is certainly battery voltage if this thing was running his buggy.  And if the battery voltage was low, like during and shortly after starting the engine, you won't have 12 volts powering the VAC.  And once the engine is running, the alternator will be outputting between 13.8 and 14.4 volts typically.

Quote from Matt Watts on December 27th, 2016, 08:16 AM

There is certainly battery voltage if this thing was running his buggy.  And if the battery voltage was low, like during and shortly after starting the engine, you won't have 12 volts powering the VAC.  And once the engine is running, the alternator will be outputting between 13.8 and 14.4 volts typically.

although this is true,  I'm having the feeling your thinking to hard,

did you ground the PS as Andy stated? did it help the Sig.

i do not get that noise on my Sig as you can see in that update video i posted a while back.

??

~Russ

sure there is battery voltage going to the + side of the primary, but the j voltage has a low limit and a high limit that is adjustable. Example I can set the low limit not to ever go under 2 volts and the upper voltage not to go over 11 volts. Ther is a switch that switches from battery voltage to J voltage on the + side

Well guys, this is the schematic for what I have bread-boarded and tested.  Seems to work fine best I can tell.

Let me know what you think.  If all are happy with it, I'll design the board to match.

Matt i saw the op apms are not used.we must offset the gnd ref higher than 0.thats the hard part..

Quote from adys15 on December 28th, 2016, 11:07 PM

Matt i saw the op apms are not used.we must offset the gnd ref higher than 0.thats the hard part..

R12 & R13 can be tweaked to set the operating range as needed.  Guessing 2 to 10 volts is appropriate.  Keep in mind this is completely subjective based on the 10 ohm primary of the VIC.

Does the 2N3055 carry more power than the TIP120? @ Q4 & Q5

Is the 2N3055 a can?

What's the purpose of C6?

Quote from haxar on December 29th, 2016, 01:37 AM

Does the 2N3055 carry more power than the TIP120? @ Q4 & Q5

Yes, Q5 carries only a few milliamps, Q4 carries all the rest.

Quote from haxar on December 29th, 2016, 01:37 AM

Is the 2N3055 a can?

Correct.  A TO-3 case.

Quote from haxar on December 29th, 2016, 01:37 AM

What's the purpose of C6?

Just a filter cap.  In normal driving conditions when you are on and off the throttle, C6 would smooth those transients.  For this fixed test board, it doesn't do much, but it doesn't hurt anything to be there either.

Matt
Why you use inverter beetwen PLL and Vic driver?
Stan dont use it.
andy

Quote from andy on December 29th, 2016, 03:41 AM

Why you use inverter beetwen PLL and Vic driver?
Stan dont use it.

Stan's driver circuit expects an inverted signal.  The optical-coupler puts it back to normal.  With no illumination on the LED, the output of the driver is in a low state instead of energized.  Could my addition of an inverting optical-coupler be a problem with a gated signal or pulses not at 50% duty cycle...?

Could be.  We may need Ronnie to weigh-in on that.

Most everyone has assumed the gate time is an off condition on the primary, but as you can see, that's not how Stan's circuit is configured.  For this driver board build, it will be the responsibility of the input signal generator to create the proper waveforms.  My goal is to make sure those waveforms go through the same components Stan used with some form of isolation so we don't blow things up while testing and tuning.  So if you want an energized gate time instead of an off time, you'll have to make your signal that way--the schematic I'm proposing won't do that automatically.

very colorful Matt...

add an optional resistor across the primary as well...  and when we get to the PCB we can make that some pin stand off's so that its easy to add / remove a tuning resistor.

i will set this up and test it asap so you can get on with the PCB if everyone else agrees.

everyone, dont forget, we want an extremely basic way drive and adjust voltage. thats it. its the simple of simple, later we can add more of the fun stuff, but for now. we want to make a simple " hand"  tuning card...

Matt, did you try it with your phone app?

nice work!

~Russ

oh and add a fuse across the input leads?

~Russ

Quote from ~Russ on December 29th, 2016, 08:12 AM

add an optional resistor across the primary as well...  and when we get to the PCB we can make that some pin stand off's so that its easy to add / remove a tuning resistor.

i will set this up and test it asap so you can get on with the PCB if everyone else agrees.

Russ, if you will, find a 20 watt 10 ohm resistor as a dummy load for the VIC, then find values for R12 & R13 that limit the pulse swing across that resistor to 2 volts on the low-side and 10 volts on the high-side.  Whatever values you find, I'll cross check and update the schematic.

Quote from ~Russ on December 29th, 2016, 08:12 AM

Matt, did you try it with your phone app?

I need to find one of those mini 3.5mm stereo plugs and try it.  Should be able to find the proper resistor to make the LED in the optical-coupler work correctly.  If it needs a booster amp, I may have to add an LM358 or something.


Kind of having a bad day today, so I'm not sure I'll get to anything or not.  Getting old sucks.

Okay guys,

I built-out the complete driver, voltage control, PLL and feedback circuits.  Everything seems rock solid, best I can tell.  Granted, this is more circuitry than I had intended to build, but I wanted to see how the whole thing behaves as a unit.  From what I can see so far, it's quite an impressive design.

For the feedback I used one of my current sense transformers and just put one of the lamp leads through it.  This provides plenty of signal to the Op-Amp that tells the PLL whether it is in-phase or not.  If I was using an actual VIC that has some resonant characteristics, the PLL would track towards the resonant frequency as it should do.  With just a resistive load as I have for testing, the PLL stays locked to the frequency set by the VCO which is adjustable with the 100K pot.  What I'll probably do is connect my VIC and try some various capacitors to see if it hunts down and locks on the resonant frequency of the tank circuit.

The scope shot I'm posting here is directly across the output of the driver where the VIC primary would be connected.  As you can see, the leading edge has a nice spike that will make the VIC ring at its resonant frequency, which should be detectible from the pickup coil feedback.

So I'm curious...

Any of you guys that are way ahead of me and have done all this already, can you concur this is the proper operation of Stan's circuits?

Looks good to me Matt.

Quote from Matt Watts on December 30th, 2016, 02:10 AM

I built-out the complete driver, voltage control, PLL and feedback circuits.  Everything seems rock solid, best I can tell.  Granted, this is more circuitry than I had intended to build, but I wanted to see how the whole thing behaves as a unit.  From what I can see so far, it's quite an impressive design.

The water molecules are like PNP transistors. Impressive design.

They sure are haxar,

Ronnie
Can you continue explaining about last two question which you promised, please?
andy

I'm at work right now and don't have time to get into it right now

OK Ronnie
I will wait.

Quote from haxar on December 30th, 2016, 04:09 AM

The water molecules are like PNP transistors. Impressive design.

Quote from gpssonar on December 30th, 2016, 04:54 AM

They sure are haxar,

Is that to say if you provide the proper negative bias they will conduct, short themselves out and explode into gas?

Quote from gpssonar on December 30th, 2016, 02:42 AM

Looks good to me Matt.

Then in your opinion, is there really anything else needed to properly drive the VIC outside of an automobile?  Is what I have prototyped enough to do the job?  Or do we still need gating via the inhibit input of the PLL?

Quote from Matt Watts on December 27th, 2016, 08:16 AM

There is certainly battery voltage if this thing was running his buggy.  And if the battery voltage was low, like during and shortly after starting the engine, you won't have 12 volts powering the VAC.  And once the engine is running, the alternator will be outputting between 13.8 and 14.4 volts typically.

a second battery with an isolator could solve that problem too.