More RoboBots 2012 Battle Videos Uploaded

I have uploaded the rest of the RoboBot Battle videos that I covered in RoboBots Battle 2012 and the 40 hour STEM week, to my YouTube Channel.

Will "Free Energy" be our future energy source? How to improve your Magnetic Monopole's Gate Drive.

I'm sure that you agree we need a new source of energy to power all of our embedded gizmo's. Nikola Tesla once said:

"Ere many generations pass, our machinery will be driven by a power obtainable at any point of the universe. This idea is not novel. Men have been led to it long ago by instinct or reason; it has been expressed in many ways, and in many places, in the history of old and new. We find it in the delightful myth of Antheus, who derives power from the earth; we find it among the subtle speculations of one of your splendid mathematicians and in many hints and statements of thinkers of the present time. Throughout space there is energy. Is this energy static or kinetic! If static our hopes are in vain; if kinetic - and this we know it is, for certain - then it is a mere question of time when men will succeed in attaching their machinery to the very wheel-work of nature." -- An address to the Institution of Electrical Engineers, London (February 1892)

Also there is the Hopi Prophecy: "After the third tribulation, a new source of energy will be discovered that taps the Earth Magnetic field." Is this the end of the Mayan Calender on or near December 21st, 2012? The end of the fourth Mayan age and the start of the fifth?

From the time of Tesla whose inventions are well known, if not always understood, to Nathan Stubblefield to more modern contemporaries like John Bidini, people have been looking for a source of power and communication that does not involve burning fossil fuels.



John Bedini - Peter Lindemann 2012 Science & Technology Conference, Friday June 29th (optional early registration), Saturday June 30th & Sunday July 1st, 2012. Seating is limited to 150 people!

If you spend any time surfing the web for new exotic sources of power soon or later you run in to the term "Free Energy". This does not mean that the energy is free, as in free beer, rather that the energy is 'unattached' or available from the ambient background.

Well intentioned people frequently publish what they believe to be a new Over-Unity source of energy. Over-Unity here meaning that the process is over 100% efficient. In almost every case it comes down to the person not understanding their equipment. Search YouTube and you will find examples of projects that are 105% or 110% efficient. Numbers like that are always measurement errors. Any true Over-Unity process will be thousands of times Over-Unity.

The measurement errors come from assuming all meters can measure all waveforms with equal accuracy, which is never the case. Every instrument that we, collectively, have designed has only measured those things that we know now to measure. Things that we do not know how to measure therefore can not possible exist, right? Most meters are designed to measure DC or 50/60 Hz. Measuring complex waveforms gives meaningless results. Measuring voltage on one meter and current on an other meter and multiplying the results to get an indication of power, Pi= E * I, is equally meaningless with complex waveforms. Proper measurements of "Free Energy" devices are done with True-RMS meters, or better yet Calorimeters (which could be a problem for endothermic Free Energy systems, that is they get colder while operating [These unbalanced systems are unhealthy to be around!]).

One of the most common Free Energy systems people start with are those that involve wire, magnets and "Back EMF". People get amazed that they get hundreds to thousands of volts out of a coil of wire when they only started with a 9V 'transistor-radio' battery. They fail to understand a fundamental formula of inductance: vl = L(di/dt). Where L=Inductance, di in current and dt rise/fall time. Play with dt the most and you see that you can easily get voltages of thousands of volts with very short times. This does not correspond to a gain in power. Watts are Watts. Various schemes are tried to recover this 'Back-EMF', which takes us to JPL. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory document NPO-16268 Recovering Energy From Relays describes the following circuit:

When Q3 is on, transistors Q1 and Q2 are on, and there is current in relay coil L1. When Q3 is turned off, Q1 and Q2 are also turned off. The energy stored in L1, which acts as an isolated voltage source, is commutated through diodes D1 and D2 and returned to the source.

A common problem I see in 'Free Energy' circuits on YouTube and other sites is that someones circuit failed, and went up in smoke. People in the more esoteric realm's blame this on things like "Subtle Energy" overload and other such minutia. Here is the far more realistic explanation:

The very old GE SCR Manual Including Triacs and Other Thyristors goes into all of the gorey details of what is happening inside the part, when the "Magick smoke comes out", as it is unlikely you have the Manual at hand, in a nut shell:

What lets the Magick Smoke out of IGBTS, FETS and SCRs in most cases is turn them on to slowly, causing 'Spot Heating' of the die.

Think of a FET, or SCR, as hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, of very small resistors all in parallel, where each one can be turned on and off individually. The 'resistors' closest to the gate turn on first, and as the gate potential spreads across the die the rest turn on. The ones farthest from the gate turn on last.
With a slow gate turn on, a few of the small resistors nearest the gate are trying to carry all of the load, which they can't do, so they burn up, but the device does not fail quite yet. The next time the device is turned on, which may be only milliseconds away depending on your switching frequency, or days away depending on the application, some more of the resistors further in burn up. When the point is reached that there is simply not enough of the 'resistors' left to carry the load is when the Magick Smoke escapes, and the part dies a catastrophic death.

This is why the parts generally run "for a while" before failing. If it fails as soon as you fire it up the first time, you either had a catastrophic short in the load, possibly shorted caps that take a bit of time to 'wake up' before they hold a charge, generally fixed with 'Soft Start', or the gate drive really sucked big time.

There needs to a be a few *Amps* of current pumped in the gate of the larger parts, in very short periods of time, to get the gate potential to spread across the entire die as fast as possible.

You also want to get the thing turned off as fast as possible.

If you are not familiar with the concept of Magick Smoke, this is where all electronic parts run on Magick Smoke, because once the smoke comes out of the part, it no longer runs...

Have I only painted a bleak pictures of uninformed experimenters? Perhaps. Now what happens if the high speed, high voltage 'Back-EMF' spike causes the Aether to rebound around the operating devices? Can we get a couple of virtual particle Leptons to collide and give up a real electron, and not irradiate ourselves with Gama-Rays (nasty stuff), to our circuit?

For those choking on the word 'Aether', you need to get with the program. This is not the static Aether of long ago, rather a dynamic Aether (the kinetic energy of Tesla) seething with virtual energy, that has gone by over a hundred different names down through the millennium. If your still hung up on all that crap about Relativity then look up Experimental Detection of the Ether by E.W. Silvertooth, in Speculations in Science and Technology, Vol.10, No.1, 1987; page three. See also in that same issue beginning on page nine, On the Silvertooth Experiment summary by H. Aspden. Also see Standing Wave Sensor by E.W. Silvertooth and S.F. Jacobs, Applied Optics Vol. 22, #9/1 May 1983.

According to conventional physics there are four ways to generate electricity:

• Move a magnet in relation to a coil of wire.
• Move a coil of wire in relation to a magnet.
• Change the reluctance between the magnet and the wire. See John Ecklin. I plan on building mine out of Metglas (amorphous metal alloy for low Eddie Currents) with MWS square wire (denser packing of coils) for maximum efficiency.
• Oscillate the magnet above and below its Curie Temperature in relation to a coil of wire; Tesla Patents: US 396,121 Thermo Magnetic Motor and US 428,057 Pyromagneto Electric Generator, build one of your own.

So if our 'Free Energy' device is using magnets why not use some esoteric one sided ones? The closest thing to a magnetic monopole that you can build on your kitchen table is the Halboch Array. The long defunct site MatchRockets once showed how to build a one-sided refrigerator magnet, from standard cube magnets, as shows from the images I recovered:

 Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Halboch Array based Inductrack:

Hopefully soon we will be able to buy powerful off the shelf Halboch Array based motors.
Patrick J. Kelly has put together a 2,400 page eBook. that he keeps updating, that covers the history and current state of 'Free Energy': A Practical Guide to Free-Energy Devices. While there are several historical and technical errors it is still worth a look, to see were energy has been and what is coming in the imagination of many. Before something can manifest in 'reality' it must be a thought of in the imagination...

Something you are sure to come across while looking into 'Free Energy' is Scalar Waves. The basic concept of a Scalar Wave are two signals 180 degrees out-of-phase that sum to zero to create a potential. The difference between a 'Scalar Wave' and the Aharonov-Bohm Effect is one of geometry, that I've still not wrapped my head around completely.

Significance of Electromagnetic Potentials in the Quantum Theory by Y. Aharonov and D. Bohm in The Physical Review, vol. 115, no. 3, Aug. 1959.

Abstract: In this paper, we discuss some interesting properties of the electromagnetic potentials in the quantum domain. We shall show that, contrary to the conclusions of classical mechanics, there exists effects of potentials on charged particles, even in the region where all the fields (and therefore the forces on the particles) vanish. We shall then discuss possible experiments to test these conclusions; and, finally, we shall suggest further possible developments in the interpretation of the potentials.

and Quantum Interference and the Aharonov-Bohm Effect Yoseph Imry and Richard A. Webb in Scientific American, vol. 260, no. 4, Apr. 1989.

Abstract: Can electrons be influenced by a nearby magnet so well shielded that its force field cannot be detected? The counter-intuitive answer is yes: an energy emanation from the magnet known as the potential does indeed affect the electrons' wave function. This quantum-mechanical effect is being brought to bear on the development of new microelectronic devices.

What are you going to power your next Embedded System with? Conventional stuff or stuff of your imagination that you will bring to reality?

Gravitational Reflections in Plain English and Cold Stone

The following introduction is from "Gravitational Reflections in Plain English and Cold Stones" by Pierre Charles of Sacramento, CA. It seems fitting to almost all of the information presented in these pages...

Introduction:

I hesitate to discuss the new physics with most of the population, not that I do not want people to know, but because of the built-in opposition from the population's academic training and the possible misuse of this recently rediscovered source of understanding and power. Following close behind is the possible impact on the economic and control systems over the masses.
We are all slaves to this closed system of things to a degree. For example, we now live in a world of great knowledge and power; unfortunately, it is misdirected, so to live in relative comfort we hold an 8 to 5 job, wear clothes, drive cars, eat food all brought to us by others, and live in a house built by others and usually owned by the bank. Net result: both partners must work away from the home to support it. Meanwhile, the government takes back [more than] 50% to support those who cannot or will not work, and, of course, maintain the existing framework. The children spend most of the day being trained by others to fit into the existing framework, etc., etc.

This bring us to the opposition from academic-trained people, most are copies of copies, 10th generation receivers of what is unquestioningly taught as the eternal truth. Most are so far removed from the original information and thoughts that they do not recognize it and they oppose with great tenacity anyone who dares to defy their implanted ideas. This information will also disturb the traditionally religious people; I don't need to expand on the dangers there...

The New Physics:

To Truly grasp the new physics we must keep two things present in our minds:

1) The New Physics is actually a retrieval of the old or ancient physics,

2) The ancient physics encompassed all things; therefore, you must look at all things, you must remove all academic barriers from your present, considerably large body of knowledge and merge this with the eastern and ancient thoughts. If you find yourself laughing or ridiculing, then you will not find the valuable thread of information that you need...
Little remains of the ancient physics but it can be found nevertheless - for it has been preserved, often by those who had little or no true knowledge of the symbols that they considered sacred..."

Faster than light travel due to lose connectors. Faster than light neutrinos.

Unless your Internet connection has been off or you have just returned from some interdimensional travel, you have probably seen the news about the velocity of Neutrino's exceeding the velocity of Light, Measurement of the neutrino velocity with the OPERA detector in the CNGS beam, which according to conventional physics is not possible. Followed by CERN et. al. succumbing to the Guardians of Status Quo saying "Oops, it was just a bad connector".

Really? People that are given billions of dollars don't have good connectors? What is wrong with this picture?

When you want to do super accurate time and distance measurements you start to have to worry about obscure things like the Sagnac Effect. While we rarely think about the Earth is a rotating body in space, it makes a difference if you are talking your Atomic Clock for a walk from East to West or West to East. I know the people at CERN are aware of this level of details, but not real world connectors? Something is very wrong here.

More details on the original, now discredited, experiment: Time transfer techniques for the synchronisation between CERN and LNGS, and CERN to Gran Sasso Time Transfer.

Poul-Henning Kamp [PHK Is the author of FreeBSD's 'Time Counter', wrote the following on the Time Nuts list:]:

There are three quantities involved here, and most of the [Media] coverage and quite a lot of physicists overlook that:

1. Speed of neutrinos

2. Speed of photons

3. Constant 'C' From relativity.

Until now the assumption have been that 2 = 3, but this is only an assumption, based on the fact that we had no measurements that said otherwise.

If 1 > 3, as most press-coverage seems to posit, because they forgot the above is an assumption, then both the standard model and relativity is in trouble.

If 3 >= 1 > 2, then only the standard model is in trouble, relativity unaffected.

Do quantum entanglement experiments with photons qualify? Einsteins "Spooky Action at a Distance".

Does any one remember Einstein's said about Aether, particularly his obscure speech Ether and the Theory of Relativity; October 27th, 1920, University of Leyden?

Why are we so quick to always want to cling to theories that appear to work, in only some cases, but not all? Is the establishment so afraid that if they started to consider other newer and much older theories like Dynamic Aether (which has 150 different names in every civilization for millenia) that we would soon have Free Energy and Anti-Gravity (or at least ways to reduce the mass of massive objects?).

As the book Faster Than Light: Superluminal Loopholes in Physics, by Nick Herbert, PH.D., tells us, Einstein's theory of special relativity does not rule out faster-than-light (FTL) travel.

A particle like the theoretical Tachyon will always be traveling at faster than the speed of light. By virtue of being born above the speed of light, they are free to travel on to infinite velocity. Their minimum bound is that of the speed of light.

When enough people reach the consensus that Anti-Gravity and Free Energy are not only possible, but here right now, reality itself will transform to match the new consenses...

Gravitational Reflections in Plain English and Cold Stone

The following introduction is from "Gravitational Reflections in Plain English and Cold Stones" by Pierre Charles of Sacramento, CA. It seems fitting to almost all of the information presented in these pages...

Introduction:

I hesitate to discuss the new physics with most of the population, not that I do not want people to know, but because of the built-in opposition from the population's academic training and the possible misuse of this recently rediscovered source of understanding and power. Following close behind is the possible impact on the economic and control systems over the masses.

We are all slaves to this closed system of things to a degree. For example, we now live in a world of great knowledge and power; unfortunately, it is misdirected, so to live in relative comfort we hold an 8 to 5 job, wear clothes, drive cars, eat food all brought to us by others, and live in a house built by others and usually owned by the bank. Net result: both partners must work away from the home to support it. Meanwhile, the government takes back [more than] 50% to support those who cannot or will not work, and, of course, maintain the existing framework. The children spend most of the day being trained by others to fit into the existing framework, etc., etc.

This bring us to the opposition from academic-trained people, most are copies of copies, 10th generation receivers of what is unquestioningly taught as the eternal truth. Most are so far removed from the original information and thoughts that they do not recognize it and they oppose with great tenacity anyone who dares to defy their implanted ideas. This information will also disturb the traditionally religious people; I don't need to expand on the dangers there...

The New Physics:

To Truly grasp the new physics we must keep two things present in our minds:

1) The New Physics is actually a retrieval of the old or ancient physics,

2) The ancient physics encompassed all things; therefore, you must look at all things, you must remove all academic barriers from your present, considerably large body of knowledge and merge this with the eastern and ancient thoughts. If you find yourself laughing or ridiculing, then you will not find the valuable thread of information that you need...

Little remains of the ancient physics but it can be found nevertheless - for it has been preserved, often by those who had little or no true knowledge of the symbols that they considered sacred..."

Dan Saks three day C++ Seminar comes to Cleveland in May

If you missed the evening with Dan Saks earlier this month, you have a second chance to meet Dan and partake of his Embedded C++ Wisdom, in his first ever three day course, on May 21st through the 23rd, 2012.

USA Firmware and DeVore Technologies, are bringing Dan Saks into the Cleveland area, in the suburb of Beachwood, minutes from downtown Cleveland, famous for the Rock'n Roll Hall of Fame, to give a three day long course in using C++ for Embedded Systems designes.

Dan Saks is one of the world's leading experts on the C and C++ programming languages and their use in developing Embedded Systems. Dan publishes his monthly column Programming Pointers, on Embedded.com.

Advanced registration is required. Until April 23rd the price for the three days is $1650, after which time the price goes up.

RoboBots Battle 2012 and the 40 hour STEM week

Yesterday, March/24/2012, I went to the regional Robot Battle RoboBots: Battle Your Bot Off! 2012. This yearly event is the regions attempt to get young people interested in doing hands-on Embedded type work. This year there were 17 schools of 33 teams. You may see some pathetically poor quality videos of the event I took on my YouTube Channel (The crummy AT&T cell phone service in the area limits the length of video uploads to about eight seconds max, when it worked at all).

RoboBots is patterned after the BattleBots [TM] Competitions. The basic idea is two Bots go into the glass cage, one comes own functioning as the winner of the round and the looser comes out in pieces. While some might say this is promoting violence, most say it is promoting an understanding of the laws of physics in the Real World, and not the dry abstract texts of a physics book.

Do you remember such things as calculating the coefficient-of-rebound, or the transfer-of-momentum when two rotating objects touch from your Physics Class? BORING! Lets actually see what happens when metal collides with metal, and rotating drum meets rotating saw blade! Of course there are stringent rules under strict supervision so that no one is injured. These events are the type needed to attract the hands-on Kinesthetic Learners (the ones born with The Knack), into vocational fields.

"The shortage of people who know how to build, program, maintain, and repair robots has gotten so severe that, in some parts of the country, qualified candidates can practically write their own ticket." - Revenge of the robotics nerds: They're in demand By Anne Fisher in CNN Fortune & Money.

Sounds like a great and growing field to get into doesn't it? Maybe not, as a couple of the following quotes show:

"[The Automotive Industry] ... laid off thousands of workers, large numbers of robotics experts left the industry ... those people aren't coming back." - [IDem.]

"So, after a lifetime of watching older members [Like one or both of their parents] of the science and engineering community get outsourced, downsized, run ragged, and generally mistreated by their employers, young people don't want to sign up for the same thing?

Good for them. Maybe the kids today are smarter than we thought." - commenter on SlashDot.org; Science and Engineering Workforce Has Stalled In the US.

I frequently see articles by The Establishment (the mythical 'Them') trying to push youth into in the categories of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM). The purveyors of such articles seem at a loss wondering why no one is interested. It is as simple as the work is hard (no mater how rewarding it might be), undervalued by management (frequently seen as an expendable easy to replace commodity) and society in general. Under paid compared to those frequently seen in the media of athletes, celebrates, politicians and banksters (if you or I did what Wall Street did/does we'd be in jail). Also there is a constant fear the job will be outsourced to a foreign country, or that someone willing to work for less than a livable wage on a H-1B visa will take their job. Then there is my personal pet peeve of the long hours demanded by management. What is there not to get when it comes to lack of interest in these fields?

As far back as 150 years ago during the Industrial Revolution it was found that tired workers make more mistakes and have more injuries. As fatigue and burnout mount productivity starts to go backwards compared to a standard forty hour week. For some more modern statistics take a look at the following articles:

• Why We Have to Go Back to a 40-Hour Work Week to Keep Our Sanity
• Why Working More Than 40 Hours a Week is Useless
• Bring back the 40-hour work week
• Why Crunch Modes Doesn't Work: Six Lessons;There's a bottom-line reason most industries gave up crunch mode over 75 years ago: It's the single most expensive way there is to get the work done
• Memo to My Boss

Then there is also the lack of vacation time. American workers have become so fearful of losing their job if they take any vacation, at companies that at least claim to offer it on paper, that they take none and further increase their burnout and lowering the company's bottom-line in the process.

So are you now ready to sign up for a STEM based career?

Is Object Oriented C 'old-school' or the best way to attack hardware?

This comment by Igor Soumenkov of Kaspersky Lab on the Security List struck me as odd in the discussion of the Duqu Worm:

"All the conclusions above indicate a rather professional team of developers, which appear to be reusing older code written by top "old school" developers. Such techniques are normally seen in professional software and almost never in today's malware. Once again, these indicate that Duqu, just like Stuxnet, is a "one of a kind" piece of malware which stands out like a gem from the large mass of "dumb" malicious program we normally see."

What Mr. Soumenkov is commenting on is the use of Object Oriented C (OOC) techniques in the Duqu Worm. The Duqu Worm looks for information that could be useful in attacking industrial control systems. The part I find odd is the comment makes me think the people working to decode Duqu have no experience in the Embedded System space, where OOC techniques are common (they did not recognize the technique, and to their credit asked the Internet Community for help in identifying the technique). To me it just makes sense that to attack hardware you'd have people with hardware experience writing the attack. Why does that make such code 'old-school'? Continuing Mr. Soumenkov comment:

Having spoken to some of the people who prefer such techniques, they gave two main reasons for it:

1. They don't trust C++ compilers; these are usually people who started programming in the old days, when assembler was the top choice. C was a direct evolutionary step over assembler and quickly became a standard. When C++ was published, many old school programmers referred to stay away from it because of distrust in memory allocation and other obscure language features which cause indirect execution of code (for instance, constructors).
2. Extreme portability. Once again, in the old days (10-12 years ago) C++ was not entirely standardized and it was possible to have C++ code that would compile with MSVC but would not compile with (say) Watcom C++. If you wanted to go for extreme portability and target every existing platform out there, you'd go with C.

Both reasons appear indicate the code was written by a team of experienced, "old-school" developers.

...The event-driven architecture was developed as a part of the Duqu Framework or its OO C extension...

There are these Object Oriented C frame works, among others I'm sure:

• http://daifukkat.su/wiki/index.php/SOO
• http://ooc-coding.sourceforge.net
• http://sooc.sourceforge.net

SOO being particularly similar to the OOC framework used in Duqu but created to late to be the one used in Duqu.

So is your Embedded System code 'old-school' because it is Event Driven Object Oriented C, or your code is that way because that makes for efficient embedded code that is easy to maintain and adapt quickly?

From Its Birthplace: A Symposium on the Future of Nuclear Power, March 27 and 28th and the coming Grid Collapse

As you are going to be in the Cleveland area this week for Dan Saks visit, you might want to hang around until next week for the Symposium on the Future of Nuclear Power, in Pittsburgh. This symposium is sponsored by the University of Pittsburgh Dick Thornburgh Forum for Law and Public Policy and the Swanson School of Engineering.

The main topics of the for symposium sessions are:

Tuesday, March 27, 2012

• Nuclear Power and Energy Alternatives - 2:00 p.m. - 4:45 p.m.
• America's Nuclear Future - 7:00 p.m. - 9:30 p.m.

Wednesday, March 28, 2012

• Three Mile Island. Chernobyl. Fukushima Daiichi - 9:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.
• Legal and Financial Aspects of Nuclear Power - 2:00 p.m. - 4:30 p.m.

Registration for the event is required and there is a $300 fee to attend.

You may be wondering what this has to do with Embedded Systems or Software Safety? Westing House Nuclear is one of the largest employers for Embedded System Designers in the Pittsburgh region. Also, all of our widgets currently require to electricity to run them. Our current path of relying on 'Green' energy, and the closing of Coal based power plants is only going to lead to a failing Electric Grid as early as this summer (2012); I'll have more to say about that in a future blog.

Just this week the Utilities and the Department of Homeland Security ran a Power Hungry: Prototyping Replacement EHV Transformers test, better summarized as the Transformer Replacement Test.

As I've reported previously something like an EMP event, or a Solar Storm could put the Grid out of commission for days to months. Some of the mega-transformers have a two year lead time, when they need to be replaced. 90% of consumed power passes through a high voltage transformer at some point. If these transformers fail, especially in large numbers, therein lies a very big problem.

Small, local, Thorium Pebble-Bed Reactor buried in backyards solves the whole Grid collapse issue (there is no grid, or at least a very small one)...

Embedded C++ expert Dan Saks to speak in Cleveland this Thursday March 22nd

The Firmware Engineers of Northeast Ohio welcomes Dan Saks to the Cleveland area this Thursday March 22nd, 2012, Time: 6pm to 9pm. Dan Saks is one of the world's leading experts on the C and C++ programming languages and their use in developing Embedded Systems. Dan publishes his monthly column Programming Pointers, on Embedded.com.

As our FENO speaker and presenter this month, Dan will share his wealth of knowledge and expertise as he takes your questions about using C++ in firmware development projects.

In order to accommodate the turn out our friends at LeanDog have made arrangement with the Airport Authority to hold our event at Burke Lakefront Airport adjacent to the LeanDog boat and office!

Finally, this event is structured similarly to past events. Expect to have a high quality catered dinner (Come hungry!), followed by some opening remarks, our speaker Mr. Saks and then an hour of networking. Register at: http://www.clevelandieee.org/dsrsvp.