Let’s have a bit of fun.
So, I’ve got 300 volts on the outputs
here. Got a 400 volt um capacitor, so
hopefully it shouldn’t blow up.
Let’s charge it up.
Okay, it’s nicely charged.
That made quite a bit pop.
So, we’re back looking at high voltage.
So, I’m still playing with these LED
filaments. I salvaged these from these
Philips bulbs that were going wrong.
Pretty much all of them failed. So, it
has been quite some time since the last
video. What’s been going on? Well, I’ve
been spending time packaging up the
ESP32 Rainbow that’s now in transit over
to Mouser and should be being shipped
out soon. I’ve got a new project on the
Boil with PCB Way. They’re currently
assembling it. Hopefully that will
arrive soon. It’s another minimalist
ESP32 S3 board. So, looking forward to
that arriving and we’ll do a great video
on that and talk through it. It’s going
to be a fun project. But back to the
main video. So, I’ve been playing with
the one of these high voltage boards and
I’m getting the LEDs to light up and it
does work reasonably well. So, we’re
getting currently around 93 volts out.
So if we turn this up
and increase the voltage,
you can see our filaments do get
brighter. Now there’s a bit of flashing
coming quite soon. So if I turn this up
more, there’s a certain point where the
system seems to become unstable. So if
you are epileptic or affected by
flashing lights, probably look away now.
So you can see we’re um getting some
quite bad flashing. It doesn’t always
show up on the camera. Depends on the
camera frame rate. But um this is
flashing quite badly. Now as we increase
the voltage, the um the appearance of
the flashing does decrease, but you can
see the camera is definitely picking it
up. Now if I switch over to the
oscilloscope, then you can see our
problem quite clearly. So if you look at
the oscilloscope, we’re currently on um
what are we on 10 volts per division? So
we have 10 20 about 22 or 23 volts of um
of ripple. So not ideal and that’s why
we’re seeing this um this flashing going
on. I do think maybe um some capacitors
on the output. So I have got these um
400 volt 150 microfarad capacitors. So,
let’s just try sticking one of these
across the um the output voltage. Just
make sure we get it the right way round.
Don’t want to blow up a capacitor in our
hands.
So, if anything, it’s actually got
worse. Um I can see on the oscilloscope
it is smoothing it out quite a bit, but
I’m still seeing around um 10 volts of
ripple. So, not ideal. I could add a lot
more capacitors. to have a whole bag of
these but um feels slightly unnecessary.
Now one thing I have been wondering is
the uh the current is pretty low so it’s
not sort of not drawing much current. I
have read that these boards can be quite
unstable on low current. So if we just
um turn the voltage up even more
try and get a reasonable current flowing
through. Um so that’s 100 milliamps now.
20.
So I can see on the oscilloscope we’re
still getting around um it’s now just
under 20 volts of ripple. So it’s not
really ideal. And you can see on the
camera it’s really picking up that
ripple quite badly. Um to the human eye
it kind of looks okay.
So what I’m going to do is I’m going to
test out this board. I’ve got these
quite chunky
um resistors. So, I’m going to try
wiring these up and see how the board
performs when it’s got a decent load on
it. So, give me one moment. I’ll do that
now. Okay. So, I’ve got these two
resistors in series. So, that’s um
200R. So, that’ll be 400 ohms in series.
So, let’s plug this in and see how well
this works.
So, we got 200 milliamps at 80 volts.
And if you look at the oscilloscope,
we have a ripple of around
well, it’s around
2 volts, but it’s jumping around quite a
bit.
So, let’s ramp up the voltage.
So, we’re going up. Let’s go up to 100
volts.
Well, our port’s really going a bit nuts
now. So,
let’s get up to 100.
It’s 100 volts. And we’ve got well, it’s
like 20 volts peak to peak. What is
that? 40 volts peak to peak. Yeah, 35
volts peak to peak according to the
oscilloscope ripple. So that’s not
great. Um let’s see how far we can go
up. Not sure when my power supply will
stop providing um voltage,
but we should be able to get up quite
high voltage.
So let’s see 150.
There’s lots of interesting sounds
coming out of the um device. Let me see
if you can hear that. I’ll move the
microphone a bit closer.
Interesting sounds.
So, it’s quite interesting sounds coming
out of this. Um, does sound like it’s
about to go pop. Let’s see if we can get
to 200.
Okay, 200. We’ve maxed out our um
voltmeter, which goes to 200. Um, these
are actually getting quite warm. Oh, and
our power supply has decided to stop
providing power. Um, but there was quite
a high ripple on that. So, I think um my
conclusion is possibly I can’t really
use these modules for powering my LEDs.
They’re not really going to work. So,
what I’ve done is I’ve ordered some
alternatives.
So, I have this thing here. Looks a bit
more old school. It’s all surface mount
components. Well, let’s try plugging
this in and see how well this works.
We’ll try it with the LEDs first. Why
not see what happens? So, I’ve wired our
new board up. Um, it’s currently only on
78 volts. So, let’s uh let’s ramp the
voltage up. And I’m recording on the
oscilloscope what’s happening as well.
So, if we go up. So, I’m looking on the
oscilloscope.
This is actually working really nicely.
So, up to 100 volts. Um, the only kind
of slight downside with this board is it
is pretty limited on current output. So,
that’s me turned it up to the maximum.
We’re getting about 0.06 amps, but the
LEDs are pretty bright. Got 102 volts
and we’ve got almost no ripple. So,
let’s turn this really down. So yeah, I
mean, we’re getting about
half a volt of ripple on the output. So
that’s pretty impressive.
So I think for testing LEDs or certainly
these high voltage ones anyway feels
like this board might be a slightly
safer alternative
to uh to this board which seems to have
a lot of ripple and also makes
interesting sounds when you turn the
voltage up and draw high current. So
this is working quite nicely. I’m quite
pleased with these boards. Um yeah,
great. So what should I do with these
LEDs then? Um, I do have a project on
the boil, so keep an eye out for that.
Um, stay tuned. Thanks for watching.
So, bit of bonus content. Um, I’ve got
this plugged in. Uh, coming into this,
we’ve got our 23 24 volts. Um, on the
output, there are actually three
outputs. So, in the middle one, if we go
from there to there, this is what I’ve
been using. got 383 volts. I’ve turned
this up to number 11. If we look at
these two, we’ve got 404 volts. So, our
total available voltage
787
volts.
I think that definitely qualifies as
high voltage. I’m going to turn this off
now, but let’s think what we could do
with