On Oct 22, 2007, at 1:21 AM, William Beaty wrote:
On Sat, 20 Oct 2007, Stephen A. Lawrence wrote:
William Beaty wrote:
I totally missed any announcement that self-acting or "closed-loop"
operation was achieved.
WHOA slow down, that's not what was said.
That's exactly what was said.
That was certainly said by Jones Beene, but not by Ron Stiffler.
Or at least strongly implied... and then
if we made the wrong conclusions, he didn't correct us.
If you will notice there is no mention of closing the loop or self
running in the video. In fact, it appears what has likely happened
is the pan potential has been made to float, providing a capacitive
or conductive power supply linkage to the breadboard through the
breadboard ground plane, the closed path to the power supply "ground"
being supplied by the clip or hand. In other words the red clip is
ground, the black wire to the pan is the power lead. The power is
supplied through the pan via a black wire. This distinction is
semantic only, not functional. Since the supplied power is AC, this
is no different from attaching the red clip to the power supply and
using the capacitive link between the pan and ground as ground (even
if the pan is not actually grounded by wire, but rather by capacitive
linkage to ground.) You can see about an inch of what appears to be
the power supply lead at the bottom right of the screen. It goes
under the pan. The fact the black lead is power and the red lead is
ground does seem a bit odd, but it is consistent with what is
actually said on the tape.
*Complete* documentation including a full circuit diagram and parts
info should be supplied. Ron did in fact say it was his intent to do
so. My feeling is that dialog that has been spent focusing on
critics and criticism is just a diversion and waste of time. It
delays getting to the important facts, the specs. Emotional content
dialog merely increases the thickness of an unnecessary "cloak of
complexity", verbal smoke that stifles progress in understanding the
circuit. Unfortunately it is just this kind of smoke screen that is
used by scammers to divert attention from technical details, so it
would benefit Ron Stiffler to resolve this quickly.
The videos appear to increasingly maximize tantalization and minimize
information. Providing specs should take less time than that already
spent unfruitfully dwelling on criticism and emotional content. A
withdrawal to a private list, away from general scrutiny, at this
late date in the process without providing good specs, which should
take little time, would not be a good sign. It would be inconsistent
with the stated desire to achieve the widest possible replication.
Here again is the dialog from the video (note my comments regarding
the black wire under the aluminum pan):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdJm9QCVJHY
Quoted material below is from the narrator on the video, assumed to
be Ron Stiffler.
"Sometimes a good ground really makes all the difference in the
world. There's my big fat ground lead hooked to that one little wire
on that coil. Eight beautiful white LEDs."
(Hand grabs insulated alligator clip and removes it, showing LED go
out.)
"Let's see if I'm a good ground too."
(Hand comes back into picture without clip, touches lead, the LED
glows dimly.)
"I'll be dared. Not too bad, right?"
(Repeats touch, no touch. Note little black wire at bottom right of
screen, going under pan, moving side to side a bit.)
"Fire up eight LEDs."
(Repeats touch, no touch.)
"That takes a lot of power doesn't it?"
(Lifts up breadboard with left hand to show no battery. Note what
appears to be a small black wire, going under the right half front of
the aluminum pan, shaking back and forth just prior to and after the
lifting of the board. )
"I still don't have that pink bunny under here either."
(Rotates breadboard. Places board back on pan. Wire at bottom right
of screen moves side to side some more in the process. Hooks
alligator clip back to coil lead.)
"Well, we'll put the ground back on it and be satisfied with it.
Lookn' better all the time. Maybe I'll light my house next week."
Horace Heffner
http://www.mtaonline.net/~hheffner/
