Ashton Forbes Over Unity Challenge

[EEVblog]

This guy has challenged EE's with a large audience to sign an NDA and test his over unity product 
https://x.com/JustXAshton/status/1799175085061747022

He is making big waves on Twitter about this, and he seems to have a very large audience of followers who will attack anyone on Twitter who doesn't take him seriously. But I can find no other info on his company, or any info on the product at all.
Myself and Mehdi have weighed in, and Mehdi is actually considering giving this guy some oxygen.
https://x.com/ElectroBOOMGuy/status/1799519422819778919

He claims he'll make a video in few weeks showing input and output powers:
https://x.com/JustXAshton/status/1799808842747764973
But even though he hasn't done that already, he'll take your money if oyu sign an NDA:
https://x.com/JustXAshton/status/1799129725375295648

He literally claims perpetual energy, plug it in, get it started, unplug it and it'll run forever 
https://x.com/JustXAshton/status/1799131644856819753

Apparently he's famous as some sort of HM370 conspiricy guy?
https://www.youtube.com/@JustXAshton/videos

And from what several people have said on Twitter, he's not the brain behind this tech and is just doing it as a business opportunity and has been scammed by some free energy nutter who desinged and built it?

He's totally non-genuine as he has taken my non-interest as evidence that his device worked, and has called me an embaressment to the EE community for not taking him up on his "challenge" 

[EEVblog]

LOL
Yep, confirmed, doesn't have any technical info at all.

[langwadt]

they have to extract as much money as possible from gullible suckers before it is shown to not work, word salad and conspiracy theories are just part of the scam

[EEVblog]

they have to extract as much money as possible from gullible suckers before it is shown to not work, word salad and conspiracy theories are just part of the scam

Indeed.

[EEVblog]

Poor guy got scammed.
But I have no doubt he's a true believer.

I've asked him if it's powering his Twitter computer unplugged, and if not, why not 

[Nominal Animal]

My bet is the setup compares active power initially drawn from mains to reactive power within the demonstration system.
(We already know that as usual, this too must initially be connected to mains, or it won't work.  I'd guess there are some LED cob lights to represent the "power output", with measurement devices set up to measure their reactive power instead of active power; with the LED light claiming some fantastic power rating.  It's exactly the kind of setup that could convince otherwise skeptical people, especially if using name-brand measurement devices like Flukes.)

I'll just leave this here, in case I turn out to be right.  In case I turn out to be wrong, the embarrassment will teach me to avoid making such bets in the future. 

[ArdWar]

This government suppression narrative is just mind bogglingly stupid for me. Sure there are govs who want the current energy trade balance to stay as is. But for every one running surplus trade there would be approximately equal amount who run deficit who will kill to do the opposite.

China for one will undoubtedly be the first one to scale it up into gazillion watt to power their industry while getting off their massive external oil/coal dependency if this is possible. And they are certainly not one who plays nice and fair to anyone.

As a note this is not "it hasn't happened yet so it must be impossible" fallacy, but an observation that for everyone who don't want it to happen there's also someone who want it to actually happen. In this case  practically equally powerful entities.

[EEVblog]

Can't wait 

[EEVblog]

Someone told him it works 

[Circlotron]

Maybe it's a heat pump with a COP of 5 feeding heat to a 40% efficient Stirling engine that drives the heat pump compressor and has a bit left over to drive a generator. 

[Ranayna]

This government suppression narrative is just mind bogglingly stupid for me. Sure there are govs who want the current energy trade balance to stay as is. But for every one running surplus trade there would be approximately equal amount who run deficit who will kill to do the opposite.

I noticed that sentence as well So small and looking like an afterthought, but it very much isn't.

This gets the conspiracy nuts right by their balls. Those types gobble up most of the stuff if there is even a hint that this might be suppressed by "Big Oil", "Big Solar" or "The Government". Just as long as an apparently big player has some constructed reason to suppress it, it gives this thing a percieced legitimacy.

[racemaniac]

I love how he thinks these kind of devices are not regulated.

If it really is over unity, shouldn't power increase exponentially, and this is thus a bomb, which i'm pretty sure is regulated everywhere that you shouldn't build bombs XD.

[Haenk]

Hmm
He "saw a video", but nobody else is allowed to see it? Why would he need to watch a video, when he has several "devices" at hand?
Why would he need to convince convict buyers, when the claimed properties of the "devices" will make them sell on their own?

Can we place bets on how this guys pulls his offer to examine the "device", because $reasons?

[EEVblog]

He has literally never used one yet

So as I now understand it, some mysterious over-unity guy has shown him a video of his contraption "working", he's absolutely convinced it's over-unity and perpetual motion because the guy told him that someone has used one for years without plugging it in, so he went and formed a company to promote it and issued this video challenge to EE Youtubers to come and debunk it and he doesn't even have one yet nor used one, he's just comissioned the guy to build him one. Wow.

[ArdWar]

I'm convinced that his very roundabout wishy washy claims are a way for him to make those ridiculous claims while allowing him some plausible deniability when the gig eventually get busted. That way he can claim that he was duped by some 3rd party and he was their victim instead of him actuallly being responsible for all this BS. Standard stuff among shady dealers.

[Haenk]

Since this has moving parts, this seems like the rotary device made by some italian(?) guy. Or - next level - by some indian guy on Youtube.
Either way, why taking the risk showing to someone with expertise to debunk it? Isn't it more convinient to sell it to stoopidly rich people with a lack of knowledge of basic physics principles?
I'll google around for that italian(?) guy...

Update: My mind did not trick me:

https://www.popsci.com/science/article/2012-10/andrea-rossis-black-box/

Well, enough of digging in the crap; Forbes and Rossi at least visit and discuss on the same forums, so obviously Rossi is still at it, a decade later.

[Bud]

The guy reads text off his computer screen, never looks in the camera. And what is the deal with the supposedly billion dollar company using gmail ? And collecting personal data. Next step will be asking for your credit card data.

[coppercone2]

the closest i ever got to over unity is sitting down after work. sometimes you almost think that it was worth it

also knives, and good leather shoes. you really can get your moneys worth from them. like how does it keep on working for so long doing so much?

[joeqsmith]

the closest i ever got to over unity is sitting down after work. sometimes you almost think that it was worth it

[joeqsmith]

I wonder what made you post about this particular one? 

I know someone who followed this stuff and was always showing me some new scam.  My perspective was the tricks varied but the stories seemed to follow a theme.  Most were tied to religion and/or astronomy.   The more successful ones build large systems.  They always came up with some buzz term to describe their scam.  Often the term may actually by used in physics.   Zero point energy for example.   

From the endless supply of scams,  my favorites were from Peter Lindemann & John Bedini.  Purely from an entertainment value,  I liked their story about WWII and the discovery of the Lockridge generator:

http://www.rexresearch.com/LockridgeDevice/LockridgeDevice.html

http://perpetualmotionreality.com/

wayback:
https://web.archive.org/web/20201022053921/http://free-energy.ws/index.php

Another classic was Andrea Rossi's E-Cat:
https://newenergytimes.com/v2/sr/RossiECat/Pied-Piper-of-Bologna-Andrea-Rossis-E-Cat-ColdFusion-Fraud.htm

Sterling Allan ran a large site and would interview the scammers.  Eventually he was arrested for pedophilia which put a stop to it.
https://overunity.com/15347/sterling-allan-explains-his-recent-resignations/45/
Looks like he is still around preaching religious topics.  I assume their beliefs make them an easy target, which is why I often would see the scammers using it:

https://www.iindcoming.org/about

He has a YT channel, but it doesn't appear to have any of his interviews with the other scammers.  I really like the thumbnail for this one.  Says it all:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=it00pHqN7lk

Hunting around a bit, you can find a few articles but not the podcasts.   
https://coldfusionnow.org/defkalion-gwere-not-selling-products-we-sell-technology/

[Ranayna]

Rossi made it even into german media.
Most articles were very sceptical, but oh boy... the comment sections were a hoot

So many people apparently wanted to believe him.

[joeqsmith]

Rossi made it even into german media.
Most articles were very sceptical, but oh boy... the comment sections were a hoot

So many people apparently wanted to believe him.

I seem to recall that a group from  NASA even went to see a demonstration.  There was some deal about him setting up in Florida.  Someone who was following him turned them over to the government for use of radioactive materials which they claimed to have used but then denied once the government got involved?   

This site provides milestones of the con:
https://newenergytimes.com/v2/sr/RossiECat/Chronology-and-Dramatis-Personae-in-Andrea-Rossis-Confidence-Game.shtml

[Gyro]

You'll be able to hear it since it does have moving parts

Wow, it really is over unity!

[SiliconWizard]

"Aether tech"?

Yet another one with this aether bullshit? 

[schmitt trigger]

The only common trait in perpetual motion machines, is the perpetual gullibility of people.