Quote from: txt on February 17, 2016, 01:24:21 PM
Looks good, and consistent with the theory. The shaking noise you hear is typical for the ELFE battery - all users report it, but it does not seem to harm anything.

The harm is that the electrical contact between the cells is interrupted quite often, and this is also quite annoying for normal use.

I had this problem in the past with other flashlights of similar style, and i used to fix it quite easily by inserting a 'blob' of crumbled aluminium foil between the negative battery contact and the switch (it has to be isolated against the metallic tube otherwise the switch will be shortened).

QuoteMy theory is that it must be the Schumann resonances that you hear there. 

Quote from: txt on February 17, 2016, 01:30:54 PM
Regarding the insufficient contact - if there was no contact between the batteries when laying horizontally, the flashlight would not light, or would be blinking. It does not seem to be the case with your tests, as far as I understood.

At the beginning of each test i did some shaking to get the best possible contact.
So it might be possible that during the recharging time there was no good contact for some time.

Quote... and BTW, Mr. Ivchenko of ADGEX has clearly shown that the batteries "recharge" when the switch is turned off, so it is clear that they do not need any closed circuit to "recharge", and hence any contact problems could not influence the "recharging"

From a conventional point of view you are right, but from this point of view it would not work anyway.
So *if* it works, there has some kind of 'magic' to be involved, which we don't understand. 

Quote from: skywatcher on February 17, 2016, 01:40:13 PMSo *if* it works, there has some kind of 'magic' to be involved, which we don't understand. 

I think I know the magic

But let's wait the results of tests of the other users. There is at least another one who was wise enough to get a luxmeter, though his ELFE is still on the way, so it may take some time. In the meantime, some other tests without the luxmeter, show degradation of brightness and times too, but the users decided to wait 14 days before the next attempt. I know about 2 of them minimally. That's if I do not count the Russian, who opened the flashlight, and measured the depletion of the batteries after 3 weeks of rest directly.

Someone asked about the diameter of the bright light spot:  It has a diameter of 9 cm at 1 m distance from the front window.

I have changed my test procedure:
I have discharged the ELFE until the light intensity was < 1% of the initial value.
This low light intensity is quite stable and i think it would run for days or even weeks on this level.
So i switched it off today at 0:00 when it had a light intensity of 260.

Now i will switch it on every day in the evening for 90 sec and measure the light intensity 30, 60 and 90 sec after switching it on.
Measuring immediately after switching it on makes no sense because it always starts very bright but falls down quite fast in the first seconds.

So this is the first measurement:

18.02.16    00:00:00    260       
               
                                     t=30sec    t=60sec    t=90sec
18.02.16    19:00:00    1280         1090         963

The value for 'fully charged' would be > 28000.

Let's see if it will go up or down in the next days...