I must give credit, I came up with this idea after replying to "Internet Enabled UAV" Posted by Michael Cottier
His idea is to use cell phone technology to operate/guide a drone, which is an excellent, cutting edge idea, and would mean nearly unlimited range - except for the batteries of course. - but then something occurs to me - Cell towers have a whole lot of wires and power going through them, and I think magnetic induction might work very well to recharge the batteries. If extreme long distance is the goal, then you could simply fly the drone untill the batteries get maybe 1/3 to 1/2 discharged, then land on top of a cell phone tower to recharge them enough to do same again. That way, you could literally fly continuously from one coast to the other across this entire continent! (if you had a team of pilots working in shifts, of course, lol).
Anybody out there - give this guy ( Michael Cottier ) all the help you can - he has a great idea!
Replies
Mythbusters- Myth-Busted: Flawed Free Energy from power lines experiment
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNf8KtWeW1s
Note, most of the comments complaining about the results are made by people who have no idea what they are talking about. 'Resonant' and/or 'tuned' coils do not add any energy to the system, grounding is NOT required and yes the coil they use is in the correct orientation.
Good observation, but even without seeing the video, I can tell you that not only do such things work, it is actually easier than it seems.
Once upon a time, when I first started screwing with coils and magnetism, I had a habit in many things of meswsing with something I knew very little about and having success. My DuPont Engineer friend always doubted me, no matter how many times I surprized him. I took up a similar discussion to this with him and he was a nay-sayer.
I took the yoke coils out of TV's and combined them, like a cone inside of a cone inside of a cone, put it to his TV screen,and behold, I was getting voltage/power off the front of his TV - He didn;t believe it until I showed him the multimeter proving it.
That was a mostly impromtu, jerry rigged, inefficient, sloppy piece of junk and I got results.
Something done half-way right would work three times as well.
Myth busters often gets things wrong - or even falsifies the results, and before anyone disagrees, they did a bit about whether you can get a car's gas tank to blow up by shooting it. They supposedly showed how it will not work.
What they did not venture into was two very important factors:
(A) All you have to do is use any form of incindiary round, and the tank will blow reliably.
(B) There is also a chance that with such an event, one good spark could set things off as well.
Such things work more often than not, even by accident, even when done sloppily.
A person who actually knows what they are doing can absolutely make it work well.
Ok... I have been away and quite busy for quite some time now, so I will skip a lot of this stuff and take it right down to the simple nuts and bolts...
First, about magnetic induction, let's just agree that the concept itself is a proven and working one.
The only disagreements here are about minutia, about frequencies and potential power output, etc.
Has it occured to anyone that there is more than one kind of power at a Cell Tower? They need power to operate too.
Aside from outgoing frequencies, would any of us want to work on the operating head of a Cell Tower, not knowing what we are doing? - of course not - why? Because underneath all this debate is the underlying reality we all know, and that is that there is more than a trace amount of energy in such things one way or another. It would be all but impossible for a commercial Cell Tower to opperate, and service XXX number of calls, etc at a time - these things do indeed have usable power in them, if only the power they require coming in to operate, so let's just drop the whole thing about them supposedly not having enough power in them - they do, period. If enough people want to dispute this, then get together, pool some decent money and bet that nobody can do it or prove it, and I GUARANTEE you that some enterprizing person would do just that and people would lose money - have faith in what techies and hackers can do, they have a reputation for innovation and surprizing people with what they can do.
Now... On to WHY this is a great idea...
Not having read everything on this site (again) to see what has transpired in my absense that might relate, the benefits are nothing less than incredible. You could literally fly a drone for many, many, many miles, and possibly from coast to coast, the remaining problem being the distance between Cell Towers inthe middle of nowhere like Wyoming or something. Keep in mind that the general, original idea was not mine, (See original post) but someone else's - I have just put forth that it was/is a great idea.
If someone wants to argue the legal and contractual, etc. complexities, then they have some basis where that is concerned, but let's not go lookking for quagmires to get stuck in, ok?
Otherwise, anyone who says it will not work is DOOMED to be proven wrong once someone puts hardware together for it. Its like saying we'll never break the speed of sound, it is inevitably proven wrong.
The guy's idea is great and has merit, I don't care what anyone says - and if I have the money to spare, I would put my money where my mouth is, and dare the rest of you to do the same, without any doubts on my part whatsoever.
Instead of saying how something will not work, focus on how some desparate genius might figure it out, eh?
THAT would be the positive and constructive thing to do.
http://www.ndep.us/Power-Harvesting-Induction-Magic
Please note the size of the apparatus required to be directly attached to the power line in order to simply power a camera. This is achieved using a steel yoke that surrounds the entire wire at very close proximity in order to focus as much of the field as possible - an entirely different proposition compared to what we have been discussing. These units will be heavy - take a look at the size of the copter required to carry it - all for around 10W or so of power. These are attached directly to a transmission lines carrying huge current. Trying to say that anything similar is possible on a cell tower where there is absolutely no access to any such current carrying cables and at an order of magnitude higher power levels, just does not make sense.
Hi Guys
I am not an expert in this field but many years ago I was fortunate to live under a 132,000volt overhead powerline and I had all my workshop and garden lighting working on induction coils from the overhead lines. simple and cheap. I never measured the power output.
Hi Dwgsparky, Sounds interesting! Can you please give us more details of your system? Coil sizes/gauge/number of turns - an estimate would be fine. How did you regulate the voltage of this system? How far do you estimate that the coils were away from the lines? What orientation were they with respect to the lines?
Really??? "I think that magnetic induction might work very well" - why? Because you want it to? Do you have any idea what em radiation levels are present "on top of a cell phone tower"? Do you have any idea what is required to harvest any reasonable amount of this energy? Please give real world details how this might possibly work. Why cell towers? Why not land directly on some exposed power lines???
Aeroviornment
There are a few defense contractors working on this right now, but for long term UAV survailance.
Listen, you still just plain don't get it...
First of all, Since you want to brag about your expertise and experience, I have some of my own.
I started off as a computer tech back before most people could even have/afford any kind of a hard drive; then into CADD, which was the main reason I got into computers.
I then got into artificial intelligence security, and did things that are simple in concept, but that no0vbody else has even imagined yet, much less done - I will not go into detail with the specifics, since nobody else has figured out the method I used, and I might still be able to make money on it. The point being that most people cannot see the forest for the trees or the tress for the forest. Sometimes the greatest concepts are actually incredibly simple - such as this, and the post that inspired it. I then got into Virtual Reality, and have also studied and made practical use of Psycho-Biological Acoustics, and a list from there on as well.
I am not Mr. Super Genius by any means, I am a conceptual thinker who makes a life habit of defeating Murphy's Law, I design in 3D CADD in my head for practicality as well as amusement. I can see the potential problems and then completely redesign the concept accordingly. If/when I build something, it works - the first time, every time. But, since this is all done with my getting a high degree I cannot be empoyed in this modern world for those things, as I allegedly am not qualified, - because of paper, not merit.
Magnetic induction is an incredibly simple concept. One example is that one friend of mine, a high ranking DuPont tech engineer and I were screwing around with such things. On a bet, I put together a couple of yoke/voice coils I stripped out of old TV's, wired them up a certain way, and it was picking up power off the front of his TV screen, using it as one half of a transformer, and the voice/yoke coil in his TV for the other half of the transformer. I won the bet.
Magnetic Induction is again, a simple concept. If someone understands it at all, then they do not need the details to understand it. If someone does not understand it, Then they would just have to go check it out, learn about it, etc. I am not going to give a written seminar on it.
I posted an IDEA, a CONCEPT. I am not going to write a freak'in paper on it to satisfy people like you.
In short, all it really requires is a somewhat open and unshielded source of power. That's all.
Now since you want to play this the way you are, let me point out the REAL concern that you should have had - which is the incredible amount of EM and radio coming out of one of those Cell towers which could pose a slight, temporary problem, that is unless someone anticipates it, which anyone who is at all familiar with such concepts would certainly know to anticipate also, as another very basic concept.
Once again it was an IDEA, a CONCEPT, for which I am not going to submit proofs and stats and designs!
Once again, GET OVER IT ! DRESS YOURSELF !
J Smith, You seem to be rather agitated so I'm not sure that responding any further is going to be productive... If you are still pissed at me for the tone of my initial post then I can live with that and we can leave it there, however if you would like to refute any of the points I made then I welcome the debate.
I am unsure from your post, of what it is that I 'don't get'. You started off calling me 'ignorant' so I gave you some of my background on this SPECIFIC subject so that you could better judge the level of my ignorance. It was not my intention to line up at the urinal with a tape measure in hand. I suppose that even though I do not state it outright, you could interpret my responses to your post as an accusation of ignorance too. For this reason you too are justified in giving a bit of backgound information. What you have given has indeed served as a useful insight.
I am not sure why you are reiterating the usefulness of magnetic induction as we obviously both agree.
"In short, all it really requires is a somewhat open and unshielded source of power. That's all." Well, I'm not sure if you read/understood/care about my post, but this is my point. A 'source' of power by itself is NOT all that is required. My previous post addresses this. It would be useful at this point if you specifically address my claims.
As for the "REAL concern" that I should have. I already addressed this in my previous post:
"All this is ignoring the fact that operating any form of electronics in close proximity to such levels of EM radiation would be exceedingly difficult"
You presented an "IDEA/CONCEPT" If you were not prepared to debate the pros/cons of this idea then perhaps you should not be posting on an open forum. I have given specific reasons as to why I believe your idea is not workable. You are obviously passionate regarding this concept so it would be good it if we could properly debate the issues raised.
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