Hi! I have ungrounded elctricity installation. Once when I did a great mess with my wires I try to find any difference of voltage between central heating pipe and wires. I found that between switched off and plugged in atx power supply chassis there is approx. 90V AC. So I tried to rectify the source and put a LED. It blinks, but only sometimes, when i.e. atx switch was on. I tried to connect a LED without rectifing diode. And it glow, hura! I then tried to connect one different way knowing the source is alternating. And it glows too - what a magic stuff I have a question of this design. When I connect the diodes, does it draw the current from installation (because it's probably true) or is it some rubbish electricity made because of switching supply and ungrounded inst. - this is probably true too. Anyway, I'm proud I did something different and ... the LED glows, o yeah (laugh). Try this in your inst, remember unground the PS, maybe will work

Great thanks MarkSCoffman! You instructed me very well. Good lesson. Thanks to my teachers I know what the capacitance is Eventually it shows that the design of this switching supply isn't the greatest one. I heard that all of devices that rectify pure AC without transformers are the problem with making noise in the whole installation, i.e. the CCFL compact lights. I know that only switching supply design has a good efficiency and small dimensions corelating to its high power. If this design would be a better, it wouldn't have this parasitic flow of current. I'm just thinking, if You have complete house system, is it possible to unground it at the end and use this little energy amount somehow?

In the second part as I understood, I should make a connection by a filter from ground to cold wire to cheat the energy meter? Is this right? (I know anybody shouldn't do such anyway, because it's risky!)

Przemek

Ok, I have such poly caps and switch isn't a problem too. You have mentioned 555  or a microcontroller to discharge the cap at a threshold. In this point I would probably crack without any circuit shown. Anyway, I'll try this to see if I have enough energy in aether around my house to glow for free a LED

Przemek

When I put the aluminium rod into soil and attach a wire to the zinc tin roof, my mom was very afraid the voltage will abuse me. When I was ten (14 years ago) I took a transformer and put the wire into the roof of my garage, of my workshop, of a cowshed and at least I connect it to 11m truss of our excavator From that time in my family everybody knows that I'm antenna freak, because I even built my own for TV that gather signal better that from a factory! I don't have now many rectifier bridges available, but I found 8 new poly 0,3uF caps. Hmm, switches would be useless. If a microcontroller will code something useful for microcontroller to switch the sources I will participate. Tell me which platform you will use to code it. Maybe some CMOS 4xxx IC's would be enough to make the switch at a needed freq. ?

Qeustion.1

Is it possible to connect in parallel this ground/antenna receivers with also using ground battery with electrods made of copper and aluminium (I saw a scheme in my book). It's sad that a 1V@2mA can be achieved with 200x200mm plates of alu and copper 0,3m-0,5m near to each other in 1-1,5m deep. The negative wire must be insulated in soil. Or there is some better way to make a soil battery ? I think when it's grounded a good idea would be use just alu and copper rods one after another to achieve some more energy from soil.

Question.2

Do a 4017 CMOS that have 10 output would switch between those ten sources one by one. How to make this circuit?

When rain falls into my installation it charged up much quicker, I wasn't able to switch it fast enough, so some electronic switching will be fine Microcontroller, please give some specific schemes.

Oh, mommy, it's getting dark. Instead of coding a microchip I just discovered something enough for manual operation. I wonder if output of microchip is enough to work as a switch in this circuit? Or some transistors are needed? If anyone wants to participate, here you go [But maybe one fine day I will use a microcontroller ].