Hi Jones,
Glad to see that someone has Ron's ear!
It certainly seems a remarkable circuit that can drive several LEDs to
reasonable brightness with power apparently drawn through the resistance
of ones body and fingers (video #7) without feeling a tingle! I doubt
if Bill would be willing to let either the primary or the secondary of
his tesla coil LED drive pass through his fingers. And yes I am aware
of the skin effect - where if the frequency is high enough it stays on
the surface and can't be felt. But we are either talking pretty high
voltages (which should be noticed as little sparks!) or pretty high
currents (which should certainly be felt!).
I'd like to suggest some experiments that should be done while the unit
is producing its anomalous output. If a pie dish lid matching the lower
one is clipped with crocodile clips on the top (with a hole to see if
the LEDs are shining) then we have a pretty good Faraday cage with a
single wire entering it. Assuming the aluminum is 0.1mm thick then this
should become an effective shield for frequencies >0.5MHz. (See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skin_depth). Lower frequencies would get
through but one hopes they are not so common as AM and above. If lower
frequencies are suspected then one should use a metal box with thicker
walls (iron is ~5 times better than aluminum). 50Hz would still get
through easily but it would be very difficult to couple any significant
power from it.
So with single wire entering a Faraday cage, all you should need to do
is measure what is going on with that wire - ie what voltage is on it
with respect to the Faraday cage, and what current is passing through it
into the Faraday cage. Once this is measured and known, it should be
possible (assuming conventional physics!) to synthesize that voltage
with a small electronic oscillator or something and the LED circuitry
inside should not be able to tell the difference - It should then work
anywhere you wish to take it regardless of ground connection or not.
The first thing I would like to do would be to clip an oscilloscope
probe between the "earth" lead going into the Faraday cage and the cage
itself. Try it both ways around (ie earth to "earth" and probe to cage,
and earth to cage and probe to "earth"). If power is entering by this
wire, this should immediately reveal it.
Another next thing I would like to do would be to try adding capacitors
between the Faraday cage and the "earth" wire going in, in an attempt to
bypass any HF going in, to ground. One could even try a "feedthrough"
capacitor to do the job properly. The value of capacitance (together
with a low value series resistance) that halved the apparent brightness
should indicate the frequency of a possible power source.
Another thing I would like to do would be to try adding different values
of series resistance in the "earth" wire - to see what apparent source
impedance the possible external might supply have. We have seen that
Ron's finger/body resistance has a strong effect - suggesting a source
impedance of hundreds of Kohms.
Simultaneous measurement of the current through such a series
resistance, together with the voltage between the "earth" wire and the
Faraday cage (ie using a dual trace cro) should allow a reasonable
estimate to be made of any power entering through this path. This could
then be compared with the power deduced from the brightness of the LEDs
and an over/under unity factor determined!
Jones Beene wrote:
Let me add some new information from DrS:
Last night he took a Luxton light meter and singled
out one LED and took a measurement. He recorded the
reading and then took that same LED from the circuit
and placed a 1K series resistor to it and connected it
to a variable DC supply. He adjusted until the Luxton
read the same, and then recorded the current. Current
was 23.2mA.
So what is wrong with this? Do any vorts think this
was an inaccurate way to measure (and then to
guesstimate) the power being dissipated in the circuit
when operating?
Seems good enough to me!
Now remember he can drive many LEDs with this
circuit--
the actual limit is unknown, as the more he adds, the
more it seems to "want" BUT catch-22 this is tedious
to do, since matching voltage drop per diode is
necessary. There is too much variation otherwise- to
hold a resonance. He had 1000 LEDs from the initial
shipment and has been able to match 150 of them close
enough to be powered by the circuit (two banks of 75
in series).
I don't understand why you should have to "match" components that are
wired in series! It is also seems strange that they vary significantly
in voltage drop. How does he match them - with a multimeter, or by
trying them in the circuit to see if the light up?
Incidentally, looking at Ron's web pages, it seems that he was involved
with the Advanced Technology Group or ATGroup. I wonder if you remember
the "Eternal Light" and the BIPEG that led us a merry dance sometime
late 1999? You could ask him what became of that "Eternal Light". Did
it re-incarnate as "Cold Electricity"!?
J.
