Is joule thief circuit gets overunity?

[ltseung888]

@Lawrence: Thanks for the response. The experiments with the super caps as a power source are interesting, and appear to show some potential, but I personally wouldn't be too quick to try to draw any conclusions or to try to attribute what is going on to any particular factor such as noise or whatever at this point, without doing a lot more experimentation and analysis. I have not seen any indication that noise pickup has any effect on actual circuit performance in my own experiments with the joule thief circuit. However, if the circuit is located in a fairly strong EM field, then that might well have some measurable impact on performance. No doubt different types of experiments can be done to help get a better understanding of what is going on. I will do more experiments with this as well, as time permits. I will post up any interesting results back here if you like.
Cheers.

@Void,

One group in Shenzhen told me that they could use "noise" to light up LEDs already.  I believe that they used some modified form of Joule Thief.  The post from reply 1037 onwards are interesting.  Your quoting of the lasersaber video in which he wirelessly drew energy from Power Supply was of particular interest.

My gut feel is that a circuit can be built not just to pick up external EM noise energy.  It may also oscillate or resonate some EM energy within the electronic components of the circuit.....  The research continues.

[ltseung888]

Effect of "noise" at around 0.38V by Mr. T S Lau.

The experiment was done at the home of Mr. Lau with his window facing a high power line within a few hundred feet.  Board 128 used a timer set to 2 minutes off and 10 seconds on.  Board 127 used no timer.  Both have a capacitor (2.3V 10F).

Board 127 is interesting in that the voltage drop was verry slow after the 0.38V mark.  At such level, the Atten DSO showed much crossing of the 0 ref line for Input CH2 (current).  That indicated both positive and negative power.  Negative Power means energy flowing back to source.....

That explained the much longer "hanging on" of the Battery and the Overunity results.

@Void,

Doing DSO Analysis at noise level may not be useless and meaningless after all.....

I used the same rechargeable AA battery as Mr. Lau in his board 127 experiment.  The Battery was recharged to about 0.4V.  It was connected to Board 120 and the Input Ch1 Vrms value was allowed to drop to the "noise level" after a few hours(with the battery and capacitor in parallel).  The Board was separated from the Scope as far as possible.  The setup was moved to a location far from other electrical appliances.

Attached are the results.

[ltseung888]

Let me try to answer the question: "Is the Joule Thief Circuit Overunity?"

Based on the information as of today (June 14, 2015), my answer is:
(1) Based on the Atten DSO results and the Zhou Boards, the Joule Thief Circuit displayed Overunity behavior at around 0.33 to 0.38V DC Input.
(2) At such voltage levels, the electromagnetic noise became significant.  Thus the displayed results would not be accepted as conclusive.
(3) If we add one or more capacitors (e.g. 2.3V 10F) to the circuit, the LED would be faintly ON with such voltage (0.33 to 0.38) for a long time after the battery is removed.  The Atten Scope showed that the Input CH2 (current) waveform crossed the 0 ref line with many spikes.
(4) As the Output Voltage and Current were mostly positive, the Output Power would be positive.
(5) The Input Voltage (CH1) was always positive.  Negative Input Current (CH2) would give rise to Negative Power.  Negative Power would indicate feedback to the source (or recharging the capacitor or battery).
(6) COP could be determined by the ratio of Average Output Power over Average Input Power.  With Input Current (CH2) crossing the 0 ref line, the Average Input Power could be very small.  Thus COP could be very large (much greater than 1 or overunity.)

The above should be verified with better Scopes and skilled experts to ensure that no setup errors were introduced.  One possible explanation of the crossing 0 ref line is due to presence of electrosmog or EM noise.  Another possible explanation may be a still not understood source.....

@poynt99
Do you think that you can do the above verification with your Tektronics and Board 33?  Look for the cross 0 ref line behavior at around (0.33 to 0.38V) from your DC Power supply? 

[Void]

@Void,
One group in Shenzhen told me that they could use "noise" to light up LEDs already.  I believe that they used some modified form of Joule Thief.  The post from reply 1037 onwards are interesting.  Your quoting of the lasersaber video in which he wirelessly drew energy from Power Supply was of particular interest.
My gut feel is that a circuit can be built not just to pick up external EM noise energy.  It may also oscillate or resonate some EM energy within the electronic components of the circuit.....  The research continues.

When I mentioned that I have not seen indications that 'noise' can affect the performance of the joule thief circuit, I am referring to the particular joule thief circuit you and I have been testing with, and I am referring to just the ordinary ambient electrical noise background level that is picked up by the joule thief circuit. As I mentioned previously, if you place a joule thief circuit in a fairly strong EM field such as close to a power transformer or any other device that emits a strong EM field around it, then that might well cause the LED to glow, and we know already that this can happen. I am making a distinction between the ordinary ambient electrical noise level background as opposed to the energy pickup that might occur in the presence of much stronger fields. There are actually people doing research on using ambient RF energy pickup to power low power circuits. For example Nokia is doing research on such a circuit to use in their cell phones which they hope one day will allow a cell phone battery to be constantly recharging from ambient electrical noise and radiated RF signal pickup. There are various others doing research into this area. As I mentioned previously, I have no doubt that much better circuits than a joule thief circuit can be devised to pick up ambient electrical noise and radiated RF and EM fields around electronics equipment and such, and use that energy as a power source, but I am not too interested in this, and it is not really related to the topic at hand which is in regards to whether a joule thief circuit is over unity. I wouldn't consider a circuit that powers itself from ambient EM energy to be 'over unity' in the sense that we are investigating here, although in a sense it is 'free energy'.

[Void]

Let me try to answer the question: "Is the Joule Thief Circuit Overunity?"
Based on the information as of today (June 14, 2015), my answer is:
(1) Based on the Atten DSO results and the Zhou Boards, the Joule Thief Circuit displayed Overunity behavior at around 0.33 to 0.38V DC Input.
(2) At such voltage levels, the electromagnetic noise became significant.  Thus the displayed results would not be accepted as conclusive.
(3) If we add one or more capacitors (e.g. 2.3V 10F) to the circuit, the LED would be faintly ON with such voltage (0.33 to 0.38) for a long time after the battery is removed.  The Atten Scope showed that the Input CH2 (current) waveform crossed the 0 ref line with many spikes.
(4) As the Output Voltage and Current were mostly positive, the Output Power would be positive.
(5) The Input Voltage (CH1) was always positive.  Negative Input Current (CH2) would give rise to Negative Power.  Negative Power would indicate feedback to the source (or recharging the capacitor or battery).
(6) COP could be determined by the ratio of Average Output Power over Average Input Power.  With Input Current (CH2) crossing the 0 ref line, the Average Input Power could be very small.  Thus COP could be very large (much greater than 1 or overunity.)
The above should be verified with better Scopes and skilled experts to ensure that no setup errors were introduced.  One possible explanation of the crossing 0 ref line is due to presence of electrosmog or EM noise.  Another possible explanation may be a still not understood source.....
@poynt99
Do you think that you can do the above verification with your Tektronics and Board 33?  Look for the cross 0 ref line behavior at around (0.33 to 0.38V) from your DC Power supply?

Sorry, but in my opinion you are again attempting to draw conclusions based on unproven assumptions. You also still seem to be overlooking that when electrical noise pickup is a significant portion of the waveform you are trying to measure, that the error in the measurements will be too high to make meaningful measurements. It is not that measurements made under such conditions are "inconclusive" as you are saying here, as if the measurements still have some degree of validity. The measurements made under such conditions are meaningless due to the high likelihood for a very large degree of error. I have already demonstrated that the measurements can be way off under such measurement conditions. I have mentioned that you can possibly use a good quality amplified differential scope probe to make measurements under such conditions, but even then the person making the measurements would need to be well versed in making measurements under such conditions and be able to make sure that all measurement equipment is calibrated properly and used correctly and within the measuring equipment's practical limitations.

If you see zero crossing on the input current waveform, this does not necessarily imply over unity. It may indicate that input power consumption is reduced, but without proper measurements being done for both the input and output power, you can't know anything about actual circuit efficiency or over unity. Such can only be speculation. Other types of experiments might be setup to help get a better understanding of what is going on however. At any rate, if the signal to noise ratio of the waveforms being measured is too low for accurate measurements, it is not going to help at all if you make the measurements on a higher end scope. The poor signal to noise ratio will still be the same, with the one possible exception for the case where much of the electrical noise was being generated by the scope power supply and circuitry of the lower end scope itself. Under poor signal to noise ratio measurement conditions you would have to move to something like a high quality amplified differential scope probe, as I have mentioned already, but even then it would require someone with proper training and experience to ensure proper measurements are done.

Edit: By the way, I am not saying that I believe your joule thief circuit couldn't ever produce over unity under certain conditions, just that I think a lot more experimentation and analysis would need to be done before attempting to draw any conclusions. I think the best you can say so far is that under certain conditions you appear to be getting a higher efficiency, but the best efficiency that can be achieved is still not determined yet.