ECW Orbo Testing — Orbo Cell Now Behaving According to Steorn's Claims (New Video Posted)

We’re into week 8 of the Orbo testing, and finally I am in a position where I think we can test on an isolated Orbo cell without any interference from internal electronic components.

It’s taken a long time to get to this point, but with the orbo pack that Steorn sent, it seems that the internal voltage controller (which is not an orbo component) had been draining the Orbo cell on o1-2, which was causing the pack not to operate as intended. (Steorn has since informed customers who have ordered Orbo products that they have found problems with the charge controller, and are currently testing a solution.)

If you haven’t been following the threads (I don’t blame you if you haven’t so far!) in a nutshell, I’ve found a way to disable the internal voltage controller on the ports o3-4, and test directly the cell on the o1-2 side of the Orbo pack. This is backwards to how Steorn intended this pack to be tested, but according to Steorn, o1-2 is also an Orbo cell, so it works for testing purposes. If that’s confusing, please refer to the video below for hopefully a clearer explanation.

So with this new approach, I have done some new testing, and what I’ve found is that if you put a load (I am using resistors) on the o1-o2 side of the Orbo pack, the cell will discharge — doing a little work in the process — and when you take the load off, the cell will recharge itself. And so far I have been able to repeat multiple discharge/recharge tests and so far have seen no noticeable degradation in the cell.

This is what Steorn claims happens with Orbo cells, and they have shown this effect in some testing videos they have released.

In the discharge/recharge tests I have been doing, I have not added any external bias voltage. Steorn says that a bias or ‘reference’ voltage can assist with the Orbo recharging, but it’s a lot simpler not to include it.

I have found that after a discharge, the cell will gradually climb to around 3.69-3.70 volts on its own. It might go higher if I left it longer, but as it climbs higher the rate of increase slows, so I haven’t left it long enough yet to see where it might max out.

I haven’t done any power calculations yet, but the raw data is being recorded in the spreadsheet. If anyone would like access to the spreadsheet to include some calculations/charts, etc. please let me know ([email protected]). I would welcome some help in that area.  My intention is to continue the charge/discharge testing for a long time now and keep posting the data for people to look at. Of course I welcome any suggestions for further testing.

Data from discharge/recharge tests done so far can be seen here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1UBIA4JTDb_kBwoytR9LP7OP7tH63yUeiPn2kKye4frY/edit#gid=0

So that’s how things stand at the moment. I would say that the signs are now more hopeful of confirming Steorn’s claims than I have seen to this point.

Mar 29, 2016

Here’s a video I made this morning showing a quick discharge/charge cycle using a 22 Ohm resistor. Notice on the recharge some unusual readings. I’m not quite sure what to make of it.

For reference: