Is joule thief circuit gets overunity?

[TinselKoala]

Noise analysis on Board 80.

I now use the pdf file so as not to occupy too much screen space.  Note slide 2, 3 and 4 in particular.  They showed probes shorted, no Input Voltage and just enough Input Voltage to light the LED.

What is the source of the Noise?  Noise is present even when there is NO Input Power?

Shall put equipment to different parts of the house.  Use microwave as Faraday cage?

AARRGHH!
Slide 2 "probes shorted".... but you are displaying the channels at different voltage settings !!! You have bandwidth limiting set for one channel ! And once again your zero baselines are not on horizontal graticule markers. This test should be repeated with both channels set at the minimum V/div setting, BWL off, to get a baseline noise level for each channel, in addition to the noise seen when set in the measurement mode.

Yes, noise is present _always_ and to exclude it completely you will need more than a microwave oven "Faraday Cage". The openings needed for instrument probes or power supply cords will leak more energy than you would probably believe.

If you insist on showing scope shots from your inaccurate, imprecise and noisy Atten scopes, I insist that you set the trace baselines properly, or I will just stop looking at them altogether.

[TinselKoala]

You have no idea how annoying it is for me to see that you STILL ARE NOT PLACING YOUR BASELINES DIRECTLY ON A HORIZONTAL GRATICULE LINE.

What part of this do you not understand, Lawrence? If I want to see what voltage levels your traces are ACTUALLY indicating, rather than simply looking at the numbers in boxes, I  must carefully see just how much offset from a reference line you have snuck in there, and then count divisions and add or subtract that little bit of imprecision in your adjustment EVERY TIME, when it would be a matter of an instant for you to set these important references accurately and properly to make it easier to interpret the voltage levels.

You will note that in all my videos showing scope shots, I always... ALWAYS.... indicate somehow where the zero baseline is and I ALWAYS try my best, parallax permitting, to place these references on a graticule line. I am using analog equipment that does not give me "numbers in boxes" so it would be nearly impossible to read an accurate voltage level if I did not do this. This is BASIC oscilloscope usage we are talking about here. Those colored lines have meaning, and scopes are hard enough to read as it is without you making it harder by "random" setting of the channel baselines.

Note especially the Trace 2 in the shot above. The eye sees where the horizontal graticule line is and wants to compare the scope trace with this line... but the real baseline is a bit below the graticule marker. This results in an optical illusion of sorts, where the eye thinks the trace is more negative than it really is. If the baseline was right on the graticule line like it should be, it would be immediately evident to the eye that this trace is quite symmetrical about the true zero line, as an inductive ring signature generally is.  The positioning of the channel baselines is Important and Has Effects on the Visual Interpretation of the traces, so please PLEASE stop setting these things randomly, or with the deliberate bias shown in the trace above.

[Void]

Noise analysis on Board 80.

I now use the pdf file so as not to occupy too much screen space.  Note slide 2, 3 and 4 in particular.  They showed probes shorted, no Input Voltage and just enough Input Voltage to light the LED.

What is the source of the Noise?  Noise is present even when there is NO Input Power?

Shall put equipment to different parts of the house.  Use microwave as Faraday cage?

Hi Lawrence. Thanks for conducting those tests. The reason that I asked you to show the scope traces with the power turned off or disconnected, is because it is hard to interpret your scope input current traces without knowing what in those traces is actually due to external electrical noise getting into your circuit and probes. From the scope screen shot you posted where the power was turned off, I still see much of the same noise/pulses that we have been seeing in your recent input current scope shots. This seems to indicate that these pulses are coming from an external electrical noise source. Switching power supplies for electronics equipment such as laptops and desktop computers, and all sorts of other electronics equipment which use switching power supplies or which have internal digital circuitry, can generate noise pulses like that. Do you have a laptop or computer or other electronic equipment with external adaptor type AC plug-in switching power supplies operating anywhere near where you are doing your scope measurements? Laptops and computers and also their power supplies can certainly make electrical noise pulses like that, as wel as some other electronic equipment.  Not to worry though. When you send me your boards for testing I will be able to tell what is going on with your circuits and how much external electrical noise was a factor in your scope screen shots that you have been posting.

By the way, if you set the switch on your oscilloscope probe to x1, you also need to set the corresponding scope channel's  probe setting to x1 as well in your scope's channel settings menu, to match your scope probe switch setting. This makes the volts per division setting on your scope display match correctly for a x1 probe switch setting. If you have your scope probe switch set to x1, but you don't have your scope's channel setting also set to x1 (for example if it is set to x10 in the scope channel's probe setting), then your scope will display 20mV/div (and will also use this incorrect setting for voltage magnitude determination) when it should actually be displaying 2mV/div and determining voltage magnitudes based on 2mV/div. Could you have been doing this in your measurements? I am wondering why the current in many of your scope screen shots shows as being set to 20mV/div when at very low input voltages it seems to me that you would probably have to set to 2mV/div for the current measurements?

[ltseung888]

Lawrence, it is entirely possible that your DC power supply is contributing to the noise in your signal.

@TK,

It is unlikely to be the DC Power supply.  I took the Atten to the living room - far away from any seen electrical appliances.  The spikes are still there - with NO power supply.

When I simply shorted the probe or connect a 1 or a 100 ohm resistor across, the spikes disappeared.  It appears that the spikes are a property of the Boards.

[TinselKoala]

Lawrence, Void's comment about sources of noise in the environment is important. "Noise" represents power, wasted and radiated power that is all around us at all times, except in very carefully designed and built "Faraday cages" or screen rooms. I think I've shown that the JT circuit we are using makes a great receiver for this kind of power in the environment, and if there is a lot of it, it can even light up the LED brilliantly with no battery or external power supply to the board. Your boards, with their loose layout and long wire lengths and other build features, will probably be even more susceptible to environmental pickup. Your latest post above seems to be showing that the board is picking up enough power from the environment to oscillate a little bit, or at least to amplify the oscillations it is detecting. (Also note that some of this power can be coming in thru common instrument and power supply ground leads.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73XRA1qaPYM

I think it would be very interesting to "scan" your local environment with a good RF spectrum analyzer. Even a simple Tri-Field Meter could give you some idea of your RF, electric and magnetic field environment.

Picking up and using wasted power from the environment is a great and good thing. If you can light an LED brilliantly off of the "electrosmog", that is nearly as good as a real "forever light", in my opinion. Even though the electrosmog is mostly man-made and is wasted power from conventional sources, this is very close to the "harnessing the wheelworks of Nature" that Tesla dreamed of doing. Now if you could only tune into some ambient power that _wasn't_ already man-made, that would be the big prize, the true Divine Wind (rather than the divine "passing of wind" that we've accomplished so far in this thread.)