How does this snake oil really work?

[dannyf]

But again, what you're seeing in my video is what is really happening.

I don't think people are disputing that.

No snake oil.

That's not so clear. What you are observing is fairly mundane - you have constructed an oscillator, nothing more and nothing less. Certainly no bending the laws of physics here, and not even close.

The fact that you don't realize that is a little bit disappointing.

[dannyf]

These may not be burning 20mA each,

They would be consuming far less than 20ma.

I think the 'load' of the circuit is limited by the permeability, and the inductive value, of the core set.

[/quote]

A core has no inductance. A coil does.

[gregallenwarner]

Perhaps someone here would like to take the time to replicate this thing and publish their own, either validating or damning, results. Perhaps not.

The burden of proof lies with the one making the extraordinary claim. Prove your "findings". Then, people will give you the respect you so desperately want.

[ManOfStone]

Seems all the comments on that video have been deleted.

I find it sad when people take knowledge as a personal affront.
Sure it can be embarrassing when when your ideas are proven incorrect in the public eye, but a lesson is a lesson and you should take what positives from it you can.

Actually, it's a newly posted video, and no one has taken the time to comment.
Comments aren't disabled, they're by approval. And, looking at many of the comments found here, I feel fairly justified in that decision.
I don't disallow comments that disagree or may seek to disprove. But I will disallow ignorance, pointless inlfammation and abuse.
Trolls have spoiled for you that previously wide open avenue. Sorry.




OK. More measurements are in order before anyone here will consider this analysis to be complete when it comes to claim.



Alright. The crowd has spoken. Mundane it is, then.
Feel more than free to move on to torching the next house.

[scasagrande]

Never claimed I was breaking physical law, just bending it. Ya?

Yes, I used the term quantum vacuum and the term free energy - both loaded with buzz.

The first one I used because I find it a succinct term to describe the 'force of nature' that handles EM inductive dynamic in the universe. I'm sure you have a pet term of your own. Feel free to substitute it if it makes you feel better. It's the thing that causes the negative polarity snap/spike to occur.

As someone having a MSc in Physics, specifically having spent my time in graduate school on quantum computing, I died a little reading this. Don't just throw around terms that have an actual meaning. Vacuum energy can been see experimentally through things like the Casimir effect and has NOTHING to do with anything you are doing here.

[EEVblog]

You've all been down this road with so many fake devices with hidden batteries that you're psychologically prepared only to see fakeness in anything else offered down the road.

No one is saying it's fake.
We are saying you have no idea how to do basic engineering measurements nor learn basic engineering theory to understand what is happening here.

[coppice]

At the instant you connect a voltage source to an inductor, its resistance is nearly infinite, and drops over time as the current ramps up and energy is stored in the magnetic field. This is basic Intro to Electronics 101.

Er, no. Its impedance is nearly infinite. Its resistance doesn't change. Try not to be so sloppy when responding to a believer. It sustains them.

[EEVblog]

These may not be burning 20mA each, and I do plan to meter that and will volunteer to post that quantification, but I'm pretty sure that they also aren't pulling a fraction of a mA each.

So you know admit they aren't running at 20mA, congrats, you are on your way to learning.
Even at 1mA each, that's still 37mW total @ 1.6V, well within the capability of your measured AA battery life time.
Even at 2mA each the ballpark calc is still very close to your claimed number of hours.
BTW, 1-2mA is a very common design current for LED's in low power circuits, they are more than bright enough.

[dannyf]

Mundane it is, then.

You may find that description offensive but it is precisely what it is - a mundane oscillator. You can even simulate it on paper, without actually building it, to see how it works.

[gregallenwarner]

At the instant you connect a voltage source to an inductor, its resistance is nearly infinite, and drops over time as the current ramps up and energy is stored in the magnetic field. This is basic Intro to Electronics 101.

Er, no. Its impedance is nearly infinite. Its resistance doesn't change. Try not to be so sloppy when responding to a believer. It sustains them.

K, I'll try and be more careful. I was specifically saying "resistance" in response to his use of the term "resistance", but you're right, it's impedance.

[EEVblog]

BTW, I don't see in the schematic where the LED's are connected?

[EEVblog]

BTW, I don't see in the schematic where the LED's are connected?

Ok, I see in the video they are across the coil.

[IanB]

K, I'll try and be more careful. I was specifically saying "resistance" in response to his use of the term "resistance", but you're right, it's impedance.

Not sure. I rather think it's semantics...

[Yago]

Seems all the comments on that video have been deleted.

I find it sad when people take knowledge as a personal affront.
Sure it can be embarrassing when when your ideas are proven incorrect in the public eye, but a lesson is a lesson and you should take what positives from it you can.

In most cases, not all, but in most cases, a clear indicator that someone is full of is when they refuse to engage in dialog, or flat out disallow it, such as disabling YouTube comments. It takes a disciplined mind to wholeheartedly accept critique, and engage in dialog. Flat out refusal is indicative of an immature mind.

Indeed Greg.
Thing is, the guy "Stone", clearly likes electronics, and has certainly landed at the right forum to learn from the best (not me!).
He could improve his lighting circuits, and help to stop the spread of "free energy" bullshit that has effectively lied to him.
He could help stop being done to others what has been done to him (that sounded something like a "fart of god"!:P).

Swallow your pride Stone, it does you no good, it is preventing you from learning from these very intelligent and nice people here (again I am just about nice sometimes... my intelligence is still in question:P)

[BravoV]

Apart from J-FET, MOS-FET and etc, now we have this around this forum, YA-FET


 ... (Y)et (A)nother - (F)ree (E)nergy (T)hread .... 

[MrZwing]

That's like saying that you are well known and respected in the young earth creationism community.
You could be the worlds best young earth creationist researcher, but the fact is you are still wrong.

Agree!

Well.... this thread exploded in an unanticipated way.
though I am learning a bit more about LED's, inductors and other tasty thing's so not complaining.

And I'm glad I recognised a circuit for once, even though it's a basic one it's a start but I did mistake the inductor for a coil beginner mistake I guess. 

and a bit honoured to see Dave in here avid watcher of his channel, probably as the rest in here. 

/MrZwing

[EEVblog]

- “So the battery simply isn't the thing that is powering the LEDs. Okay, so what is?”
The collapsing (yes, induced) field inside the core set.   ; ]

This is all about spending a very small amount of forward voltage from the battery on establishing a field inside the cores and turning the battery off as soon as it is established. As the field decays to zero, starting up that oscillation, polarity snaps in the other direction for a brief instant (very high voltage spike, as they say).

The circuit capitalizes on that snap in the opposite polarity - the one that mainstream academia teach us to filter, attenuate, dissipate, insulate or otherwise ground out, citing it as a dangerous and/or destructive to the physical materials used in the making of the circuit's components (which it very well is in most cases).

All I'm trying to show is the assymetric/offset nature of the oscillation. Spend a little (postive polarity) going in, put lots of stuff in the way that can harness lots (negative polarity) coming out.

Congratulations, you've just admitted the energy comes from the changing magnetic field.
Now, where do you think that energy came from for that?
(HINT: You have this thing called a battery, that just so happens to have the total energy capability required, which also just happens to drain to zero in the time you can ballpark calculate is required for the LEDs, fancy that)
 

[dannyf]

Here is a quick simulation.

The blue trace is for current going through the led.

Very low duty cycle -> long battery life. It relies on your eyes to work.

[dannyf]

Essentially, you have something that's not what you think it is, and it is precisely what you think it is not.

That tells a lot about the OP.

[tom66]

This is all about spending a very small amount of forward voltage from the battery on establishing a field inside the cores and turning the battery off as soon as it is established. As the field decays to zero, starting up that oscillation, polarity snaps in the other direction for a brief instant (very high voltage spike, as they say).

The circuit capitalizes on that snap in the opposite polarity - the one that mainstream academia teach us to filter, attenuate, dissipate, insulate or otherwise ground out, citing it as a dangerous and/or destructive to the physical materials used in the making of the circuit's components (which it very well is in most cases).

OK. This irks me. All you have described is the operation of a boost converter. That's not novel or new. Energy is stored in the coil in the form of a magnetic field when the switch is on. When the switch turns off, the field collapses and a higher voltage is developed across the coil. That spike that "mainstream academia" tells you to dissipate is fundamental to the operation of a boost converter - which is all this is! You'd get the same effect connecting LEDs across a relay coil (in reverse bias) - when the coil is switched off the coil will induce a voltage across the LEDs making them glow.

[gregallenwarner]

Thing is, the guy "Stone", clearly likes electronics, and has certainly landed at the right forum to learn from the best (not me!).
He could improve his lighting circuits, and help to stop the spread of "free energy" bullshit that has effectively lied to him.
He could help stop being done to others what has been done to him (that sounded something like a "fart of god"!:P).

Swallow your pride Stone, it does you no good, it is preventing you from learning from these very intelligent and nice people here (again I am just about nice sometimes... my intelligence is still in question:P)

My most optimistic hope for this thread is that the reader, in this case, the guy who made the DC booster circuit, will learn not to come into a situation thinking they're absolutely right, and everybody else is wrong. That doesn't help anybody. I've learned that the most productive mentality is to consider, "How can I possibly be wrong in my assumptions, and does anybody (who might possibly be smarter than me) have any valid points to bring up, and how do those points challenge my assumptions?"

At the end of the day, you are free to reject others' critiques and criticisms, but only after you've carefully evaluated them and weighed them against the evidence and historical research. But if in the end you change your mind, then be grateful for the positive experience you've had benefiting from others' expertise! It's never shameful to be proven wrong! All real scientists will tell you that they hope to be proven wrong! That's how advancements are made!

Apart from J-FET, MOS-FET and etc, now we have this around this forum, YA-FET


 ... (Y)et (A)nother - (F)ree (E)nergy (T)hread .... 

I've also observed that the only truly perpetual thing about perpetual energy machines is that the number of wacko's trying to achieve perpetual energy will perpetually continue indefinitely!

[Yago]

I know Greg, me being a soft arse as us "poms" say.

The guy cannot run away screaming hate when encouragement was there for him to take up.

[Galenbo]

They are using a joule thief which is powered by itself once it starts up (that is, the oscillator power is supplied by the transformer.) This will mean it can oscillate down to ~0.3V.

Thank you for learning me something today. I looked it up on wikipedia.
I knew about buck/boost, this is a nice variant of it.

[Dragonfly]

As I was reading through this thread I was thinking that there was something familiar about this circuit.  Then I remembered that Alan posted a video last month showing a simple relaxation oscillator that was used to charge/discharge an inductor to light an LED using a "spent" battery.  It looks to me like Mr. Stone's circuit does basically the same thing.  Here's Alan's video if you missed it:

[con-f-use]

This was very entertaining. Reminds me when I discovered, I could switch a transistor by touching the base. I seriously thought, I was creating current out of nothing. I had broken conservation of energy! I was so proud of myself. Then I thought for a while, and realized it must have been due to different ground potentials. Very disappointing. I was eleven then.