Is joule thief circuit gets overunity?

[Void]

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.

Hi Lawrence. It is also possible that electrical noise from your scope's internal power supply is the source of the noise pulses, but your Atten scopes are made by Siglent, and your Atten scopes are very similar to my Siglent scope and I don't seem to have a problem with picking up noise pulses from my scope's internal power supply, so I am not sure what is causing those pulses that you are showing on your channel 2 trace with no power applied to your circuit. Unless the model of scopes you are using have a different power supply type/arrangement than my scope has. Or you may be picking up electrical noise into your scope from your AC power outlet when you plug in your scope, but I don't really know what is causing those apparent noise pulses that are showing in your scope trace with no power applied to your board. Does your other scope show the exact same sort of pulses with no power applied to your board? Do you have access to a different make of scope that you can do a comparison test with, with no power applied to the board?

[Void]

I have attached a scope shot showing the voltage (yellow trace) and current (blue trace) input traces with my super cap now at 368mV. You can see that the current waveform still looks about the same overall, but electrical noise is now starting to be a significant factor, as the current waveform is getting down very close to the noise level. As you can see though, my joule thief circuit doesn't seem to have the kind of noise pulses on the current waveform that Lawrence shows in his input current scope shots for his boards, even at this very low input voltage. The LED is glowing fairly dimly now, and the circuit will stop oscillating when the input voltage drops a bit further. It seems my joule thief circuit as it is now will oscillate down to about 0.36V or so. The frequency measurements shown in the scope shots are not correct. The frequency measurement routines in the scope do not seem to work very well unless it is a fairly simple and clean waveform. The actual oscillation frequency is around 323kHz at this input voltage.

[ltseung888]

 

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.)

@TK,

That is a very interesting video.   Your JT picked up enough energy to light up the LED brightly.  I believe that in Zhou's shop, the "noise" seemed to be much more.  The shop is in the midst of over a thousand electronics shops.
*** I shall do the tests on Board 118 and 119 at home first and then take them to Zhou's Shop and repeat.  If the "noise" is indeed much higher, we may have a possible explanation of the "extra energy".

In Hong Kong, there is no escape from "electrosmog".  I am not familiar with "scan" techniques.  There was a story about a person in Hong Kong who powered his home with such "electrosmog" energy.  He was then hired by the Hong Kong Electric Company and the secret was never disclosed.

I would not rule out the possibility that the Zhou Boards happen to pick up such "electrosmog" energy.  This is still a form of "bring-in" or "lead-out" energy from the environment.

I shall let all the testers know about your video.  More research needs to be done in this area.

[Void]

I would not rule out the possibility that the Zhou Boards happen to pick up such "electrosmog" energy.  This is still a form of "bring-in" or "lead-out" energy from the environment.

Hi Lawrence. Well, I think it is probably not really anything too unusual going on there. A joule thief circuit contains a transistor, and a small signal transistor of this type acts as a sensitive amplifier, and with enough induced voltage in the circuit from external electrical noise pickup from electrical equipment through wiring or from radiated electromagnetic signals (it doesn't take that much), the sensitive transistor can be activated enough to amplify the noise signal and oscillate a bit. The coil windings on the toroid as well as wiring on your boards will act like antennas which can pick up any surrounding electromagnetic fields and convert that to an electrical voltage. The toroid windings can probably convert even very weak electromagnetic fields to a measurable voltage signal, much like a sensitive radio receiver with a transistor amplifier stage to boost the signal a bit.

[ltseung888]

Hi Lawrence. It is also possible that electrical noise from your scope's internal power supply is the source of the noise pulses, but your Atten scopes are made by Siglent, and your Atten scopes are very similar to my Siglent scope and I don't seem to have a problem with picking up noise pulses from my scope's internal power supply, so I am not sure what is causing those pulses that you are showing on your channel 2 trace with no power applied to your circuit. Unless the model of scopes you are using have a different power supply type/arrangement than my scope has. Or you may be picking up electrical noise into your scope from your AC power outlet when you plug in your scope, but I don't really know what is causing those apparent noise pulses that are showing in your scope trace with no power applied to your board. Does your other scope show the exact same sort of pulses with no power applied to your board? Do you have access to a different make of scope that you can do a comparison test with, with no power applied to the board?

See TK's Video.  His JT (based on my circuit diagram) lighted brightly with no power supply.  He attributed this to the board picking up "electrosmog" energy.  This explanation makes sense.....