Claimed OU circuit of Rosemary Ainslie

[MileHigh]

Aaron:

Your last two charging demo clips showed a variation on a solid state Bedini charger.  I will repeat the mantra:  That configuration completes the circuit for the coil discharge so you can get real current flowing in a loop.  There is no "real loop" in the Ainsley circuit so you are comparing apples to oranges.

The problem with the solid state Bedini setup is that it is a pain to disconnect and measure the battery's resting voltage.  You are really measuring the battery voltage plus the charging-input-impedance voltage increase due to the charging.   This measured voltage is the averaged out to a rough DC voltage by the battery chemistry reacting like a sort of low pass filter while it is being hit by the charging spikes.  The multimeter itself samples the voltage and it's algorithm can cope with the spikes and gives you a fairly steady DC voltage reading.  The same thing is happening in reverse on the discharging battery.

So you are measuring this:

Charging battery:  True resting voltage + averaged charging input resistance voltage increase

Supply battery:  True resting voltage - averaged discharging output resistance voltage decrease

The value of the input and output resistances are not fixed, they vary with the battery temperature, state of charge, and age of the battery, and even the load on the battery.  That's why I recommend that they be measured at a few different load values as a way for you to exchange reliable data with outher testers about the conditions of your various batteries before and after yourun tests, etc.

The true resting voltages may be dependent on the battery temperature, I am not sure.

So when you are measuring the cut-off voltage for any rundown test, you are dealing with the above variables on top a series of other variables.

Deciding on when a battery reaches the cut-off voltage for a rundown test depends on the following:

1. The current draw I:  That's the most important because it determines the voltage drop across the battery's output resistance.
2. The current draw II:  The larger the current draw, the more the battery will dissipate energy internally due to its output resistance.  This can then cause the battery to heat itself up more quickly, possibly causing the output voltage to rise.  This rise in output voltage has no meaning and can be misinterpreted as the battery "gaining in energy" while it is driving a load.  You are probably also changing the dynamic output resistor value due to the temperature rise.
2. The initial amount of energy in the battery.  It's really hard to be sure that you have "filled her up" to a precise, repeatable charge level.  And no, you don't do this by measuring the battery voltage.
3. How the dynamic output resistance of the battery will react over the whole discharge cycle considering that you many variables: a) the state of charge of the battery, 2) the age of the battery, b) the overall battery condition,  c) where the battery  is in it's overall discharge-charge cycle lifetime, d) the temperature of the battery.

What a complete mess.  That's the baggage that goes along with your rundown tests.  Let's assume for you that a lot of the variables discussed above are unknowns.  I'll imagine that your typical rundown time is about two hours.  Many of the variables above can probably affect the final voltage time measurement by +/- 10 minutes.  That's just ONE variable, there are many others.

In a previous posting I pasted the Lutech battery measurement fiasco as an illustration of how just measuring battery voltages is meaningless in a generic sense.

When you crunch all of the above your head, I think that it is fair to say that your rundown testing would yield measurement times with a variability of +/-15%.  In other words the testing would not be repeatable from test to test.

You really should use amazing built in capabilities of the DSO.  TK, it can do waveform multiplication, I read the manual.

MileHigh

[MileHigh]

Joit:

That shows one more that you can charge with a Batterie with LOWER Voltage a Batterie to HIGHER Voltage, as the Source,
what is anyway far beyond classical Understanding.

It's hard to not like you when you make statements like that.  You are a happy shiny person.

When logic and proportion
Have fallen sloppy dead
And the White Knight is talking backwards
And the Red Queen's "off with her head!"
Remember what the dormouse said:
"Feed your head
Feed your head
Feed your head"

MileHigh

[TinselKoala]

@MH and Hoppy: of course you are right about the battery discharge complications. But the "rough and ready" test that I described might have several tens of percent error, sure--repeated runs and proper application of statistical methods would take care of much of that--but we are talking about a claim of 1700 percent excess.
And one of the points of the trial that I described is that it is in a sense its own control--since you are comparing the battery's behaviour with itself, at the same or about the same _indicated no-load_ voltages. But sure, I agree that the whole battery discharge issue is not one for amateurs.


Re the DSO: multiplication is easy. But will it do the integration on board as well? I have a Hitachi 4-channel DSO that I didn't show yet, simply because it won't integrate on board--but it does all the other stuff and all its inputs are working. Maybe I'll break it out.

Meanwhile, here are some pix for Harvey and, it seems, for jibbguy:
The trace is from pin 3 of Aaron's 555 circuit tuned to the weird point with about 7 volts Vcc and in circuit with the mosfet gate. And the next pic is what happens a bit later, when further adjustments are made.

[jibbguy]

Ive worked with hundreds of 555's... In my experience they either crap (short to VCC) or they work. To suggest that this effect is caused by it doesn't make a whole lot of sense... And sounds rather convenient.  They are notoriously "weak", sometimes it seems if you look at them crossly they will poop the bed... But "Flaky"? Unlikely. In my experience, 555's work to spec or they don't work at all. 

Not true for transistors or op-amps, tho

Ive seen similar astable oscillations as Aaron shows many times (it very is common with high gain op-amps and cascaded or paired discrete transistors). NO ONE EVER STUDIES THE EFFECT: All they EVER do is change the "bad" component and move on ASAP (sometimes it is because the component is only marginally "off" from other's but not actually "failed" by the manufacturer's standards). What would be the point of playing with it when it's unwanted? None in a business world: GET IT OUT THE DOOR is the only concern.

So it is quite possible, that if there is a unique condition here during oscillation, that it was ignored and missed these 45 years or so.

Its also possible that when the first field tests on transistors were done and the first real-world circuits designed around them, done in secret by contractors to the US Defense Department in the 1950's and early 60's long before they were available to the public (...they had them for nearly 10 years before the general public was allowed to), that this effect was noted then... And sat on; either ignored or suppressed.  In fact, these early days would probably be the ONLY time it would be noted and properly studied in all these years.

The first commercially-available transistors came out along with the first circuit design books for Engineers regarding them...

I happen to know quite well how transistor & IC analog circuits are designed in the commercial world: And since the late 1970's when pretty much EVERYTHING about "Analog" had been discovered and tested, it is ALWAYS done by "stealing" the design of an earlier circuit. No one bothers trying to re-invent the wheel... They look it up in their books (...or now, use a sim proggy which has all the canned circuits listed), and choose one that fits the bill. What "inventiveness" there is, comes in by combining sections, and by making certain replacement IC's or discrete components work in the circuits for reasons of cost, availability, or desired performance... And that is often hard enough to do properly . This "theft" is fully acceptable behavior; and there's nothing "wrong" about it at all, as most circuits are in the public domain, and everyone is under a time restraint... But it means that the art of analog circuit design has pretty much been static for decades. I used to work with true Grand Masters of it, and many of these guys were there from the transition from tubes/valves to semi's. They would NEVER consider spending a minute looking at astable oscillation; for them in the design stage it meant only: "Failure, time to try something else".

The point being that there is very little innovation going on with standard analog circuitry (where power economy specifically is not an issue). What innovation that has happened in analog electronics since has to do with very low power devices for laptops, cell phones, etc that require low operating voltage; and are designed to use as little power as possible. Little of this new stuff is discrete (as IC's are inherently more energy efficient)... But if you look at the new circuits, they usually still follow the older designs, just made for lower VCC's.

Even the device manufacturers, would only look at it long enough to say: "Oops, try again"... Or: "OK; i guess that's the limit for this one".

So over the years, only a hand-full of peeps have ever actually had the real opportunity and desire to study what can happen when a semiconductor circuit goes into "unwanted" oscillation.

THAT'S WHY this is all "possible".. And deserves our attention.

[TinselKoala]

@jibbguy: build the circuit for yourself and play around with it. You just "possibly" might learn something new about 555s. Never seen a partial failure? I have, many times. That's why I buy them by the dozen. Never seen anything but shorts to ground or Vcc, and just not working? I've seen much different failure modes than that. See the pic above for a fairly common one.
But we all know that I'm incompetent, so pay no attention to the evidence before your eyes.