Claimed OU circuit of Rosemary Ainslie

[MileHigh]

Hi Fuzzy,

I avoided the whole "grounding" debate.  As far as any type of electronic lab equipment goes it is reasonable to assume that each piece of equipment has it's own isolation transformer as part of it's power supply.  Therefore any equipment ground that you access (scope, signal generator, multimeter, etc) is almost certainly floating relative to your AC mains neutral or the third prong ground plug.

If you connect the grounds of different pieces of equipment together they are all now linked to form a common equipment ground reference, and that is all still floating and has nothing whatsoever to do with the AC mains neutral or the third prong ground.

TK made a big point about the two ground channels of a scope not necessarily being separate.  I am not sure but I would assume only the cheapest of the cheap scopes are like that.  In a normal scope, it is reasonable to assume that each channel's input amplifier is being powered by it's own separate isolation transformer.  The outputs from each input amplifier to go to the display drive electronics must also be differential.  I just think that it is reasonable to assume this is the case for almost all scopes, and it is perfectly reasonable to check this with a multimeter before you start seriously playing around with your scope lest you create a short circuit somewhere if in fact your two scope channel grounds are common.

In contrast, I get the feeling that USB scopes do not have separate and independent grounds for the two channels, they are ganged together.  This is to reduce cost.

This statement is half true .... are not the oscilloscope "probe" grounds internally connected (bonded) inside the oscilloscope to the ground on the oscilloscopes 115 Volt power connector
?

I posted your question to emphasize the point.  Absolutely not, it makes no sense for your scope channel ground to have any relation whatsoever with your AC mains neutral or third prong plug ground.

I am talking to you from my knowledge base, I have no specifics to offer you.  Any bonding would simply be crazy.

In my 25+ years of working in the electronics industry, working in development labs on the bench, or later in just talking shop with the engineers, for all practical intents and purposes the issue of grounding and worrying about grounding has NEVER come up.

Among the enthusiasts in places like this web site there is a whole cult of mystery associated with grounds and grounding.  People connect an earth ground to their CFL or LED circuit and see the lights get brighter and they think that "power is coming from the ground."  This is all complete nonsense, what they are really doing is changing the impedance of their circuit so that they are getting more power from the BATTERY.

I urge anybody working on this circuit to simply work with their batteries or power supplies and completely forget about the grounding issue because it is a non issue.  It just another distraction that will lead you away from the task at hand.

I will repeat my suggestion:  Everybody, especially Aaron, try to test the circuit as per Rosemary's white paper and look for COP 17.  After that, do whatever oscillation mode testing you want to do.  This is the logical way to go about this project.  Start with something simple and digestable and master that, then move on to the more complicated stuff.

Turn this whole thread around from a theater of the absurd to something simple and manageable.

This whole Aaron deal where he thinks that he has discovered fee energy producing microwatts of power is just a smoke screen because you are working at the limits of your instrumentation, and that includes the DSO, especially considering Aaron's rat's nest of wires.

And for what it's worth, even though I expressed major concerns about digital multimeters, in certain cases, like this case where you are trying to get the average voltage across the shunt waveform, it may indeed be workable.  Certainly a digital multimeter has a freak-out when it tries to measure high voltage spikes and the display goes crazy.  However, even though the shunt waveform has sharp spikes, they are in a very regular stream and the amplitude is not too high.  It just might be the case that the multimeter will do a half decent case in determining the DC average - or not.  Don't forget that I said "might."  What happens is that you have regular sampling done by the multimeter passing through some kind of algorithm being run by the mircocontroller.  No one is privy to the algorithms, those are likely to be trade secrets.  However, there is a decent chance that you set up a "pseudo Monte Carlo method" sampling of the waveform.  Look it up if you are curious.  If that is indeed happening, then there is a very good chance that the DC average displayed by the multimeter is at least accurate for the average current flow direction.  This might be hit and miss - you change manufacturer or model of multimeter and you have potentially different A/D sampling technology and a different algorithm.

Going back to the current Ainsley circuit drama, several people including myself think that a simple capacitor test would resolve the issue of which way the minuscule power is flowing in Aaron's setup once and for all.  Presumably Aaron is stewing in his juices (Hi Aaron!) and will eventually come round and do this ridiculously easy and definitive test.

I can only hope and pray that after that is put to bed that everybody tries to set up and make measurements on the standard Ainsley setup as per her white paper.  Measure electrical power in and thermal power out.  At least then we can fight about something that is relevant to the claim.  Don't be surprised if everyone measures a COP less than unity, and that will put this whole project to bed for good.

The sooner that is done the better for Aaron, because then he can do new and much more interesting things with his four channel DSO for the rest of the month.

MileHigh

[MileHigh]

Aaron:

This is my second talking point relative to your latest rant.  You were so high and mighty in that rant that you merit being cut down to size - again.

Again, you are on the fast track to becoming the laughing stock of the free energy world - especially by suggesting the use of a volt meter across a shunt! lol Go tell that to any professional that actually knows what they're talking about and they will simply laugh in your face.

I saw that you said that you have been playing with electronics now for 10 years - TEN YEARS.

What the fvck do you think the multimeter is doing when you put it in current measurement mode, Aaron?

Answer:  It's measuring the voltage across its internal shunt.  You are just unfvcking believable sometimes.

Go tell that to any professional that actually knows what they're talking about and they will simply laugh in your face.

Go to the blackboard and write that out 1000 times.


Rosemary:

But I'm not sure about Poynt. He is uncompromising in his claim that we're not pointing to anything new. Yet he posts that his own simulator - which presumably is designed with algorithms that conform to classical analysis - actually gives results that defy classical prediction. Yet, by his own admission he has said that he's 'satisfied that the programme cannot give an overunity result' or words to that effect. If so, then why is he now stating that he can run a circuit on his simulator at a 27% on (I think it was) duty cycle without any input from the battery? Self oscillation with a consistent measurable voltage across the resistor presumably also dissipating energy - but with no requirement for a supply source once the oscillation has been triggered. That's got to be strange. Especially as such an effect would go to the gullet of classical theory.

This is where all of the flowers in the room wilt Rosemary.  Myself and .99 feel the same sentiment and our faces are long and dejected and we stare down uncomfortably at the floor.

I don't know how many times we tried to get across the point to you that inductors and capacitors are energy storage devices.  Amazing huh?  You can disconnect the supply battery and then the circuit still shows activity because there is still energy available in the circuit by virtue of the fact that there may be charged capacitors and inductors with current flowing through them at the instant that you disconnect the battery power source.

Rosemary, it's time to take a "humble" pill and realize in no uncertain terms that you are in no position whatsoever to make any kind of call with respect to what "classical theory" says can and cannot be done.  You would be better off simply taking a back seat an listening in these cases.

MileHigh

[poynt99]

I'll interject here a bit MH, just a few points.

We haven't always agreed, and this is probably one more such instance.

In my experience, test equipment designed with a 3-prong plug, of which all modern ones are, does indeed have the probe (or connector) ground electrically connected to earth ground. Of course earth ground is also tied to the neutral back at the distribution transformer.

So in many cases it is necessary to utilize a true isolation transformer whilst working on equipment so that one doesn't accidentally short something to earth ground. The internal power supply transformer secondary will be connected to this earth ground also at some point, so it does not provide isolation in this respect.

About the DC voltage meter....you are giving these meter manf. folks too much credit  . Very few if any of them use computer algorithms for computing average voltage (digital scopes etc. are exceptions). It's done either with a simple averaging circuit with associated amplifier/attenuator, or most commonly now by using an integrating A/D converter, which is essentially a low pass filter that tells a counter to count.

A similar story goes for the RMS meters. They use RMS-DC converters on a chip, which up until recently are analog IC's. Somewhat recently, a new breed of RMS-DC converter has emerged and it operates using delta-sigma technology, but in principle, they are the same as the pure analog types(see Linear Technology). Of course we can't forget the the beautiful but now defunct LT1088 which worked with heating and thermistors. Too bad that chip is gone for ever.

Anyhoo, just my 2 bits worth.

.99

[MileHigh]

Hey .99:

To switch to sales mode, my confidence level with respect to the grounding stuff is about 65%, not super high.  I am curious enough that this week I may check out a decent modern scope in the lab at work to check the resistance between the third prong ground and the lead grounds.  It just seems counterintuitive to me.  Yes, the scope chassis is connected to the third prong ground to prevent it from ever getting hot if there is an internal short to L1.  But why should the scope probe ground bear any responsibility for shorting out any external device that gets hot and is connected to L1?  By the same token, I can see how this makes things ostensibly safer, and will not really affect your testing, with the trade-off that you loose the independence of your probe grounds.  Is this making sense?  I concede that you are much more "hands on" than me with respect to all of this stuff.

About the DC voltage meter....you are giving these meter manf. folks too much credit  . Very few if any of them use computer algorithms for computing average voltage (digital scopes etc. are exceptions). It's done either with a simple averaging circuit with associated amplifier/attenuator, or most commonly now by using an integrating A/D converter, which is essentially a low pass filter that tells a counter to count.

My confidence about the guts in a digital multimeter is 50%.  However an integrating A/D converter is really a sample and hold circuit that connects to the counter, no?  So it is still sampling.

My gut feel has always been that at typical digital multimeter does something like a running average of the last 8 samples where it rejects the highest and lowest samples in the last eight to reject the "oddballs."  The running average is essentially a software low pass filter.  Ultimately the "running average of the last good six" is akin to a pseudo Monte Carlo method sampling.  However, I stated my confidence level.

Confidence level even lower on the true RMS stuff.  I always assumed that implied very very fast sampling coupled with real RMS number crunching.  In theory that implies there is a fixed or variable time span that you are integrating over, possibly dynamically adaptable by a software algorithm that is "sniffing out" the waveform to make a decision on the integration time span.

Anyway, you have to give me credit for trying to reverse-engineer stuff in my head!  lol

The bottom line is that I sense that you know much more than me about the guts inside multimeters.  My true days of designing and really working on the bench are long gone.  Nowadays it's only once in a blue moon that I need to play with a scope to find the source of a problem.  I haven't touched a logic analyzer in years and years and am proud to say I never will again!  lol

MileHigh

[poynt99]

Hey MH,

Here's a good document by Intersil on the ICL7135 chip. I think you may find it interesting.

.99