Hi,
Wow, you have to admire the dedication to debunking going on in this video
It's nice to see for a change, rather than such extraordinary claims.
There is such a thing as free energy, but it is very rare and usually not something we can tap into. More about that in a second, but first some comments on the video.
First, this is the "Brinkmann" circuit, which appeared in one of their first LED flashlights way back when small white LEDs had first begun to hit the market. I had given a complete analysis of this circuit way back then on "How Stuff Works" but i think they deleted that section now. I also had a complete schematic posted on my web page before AOL discontinued "AOL Home Town".
The key to that circuit operation i am not sure was depicted well enough in the video, so i'll mention it here. The key is that the lower NPN transistor gets forced out of saturation by the rising collector current, and that is actually what makes the voltage rise fast enough to allow the feedback capacitor to hold it's charge long enough to reverse bias the upper PNP transistor. If this happened slowly, the cap would loose it's charge and would not be able to reverse bias the PNP. Of course reverse biasing the PNP is what makes it turn off and enter the second half cycle of operation.
Second, what is amazing is that the guy that he is talking about in the video did not realize that the toroid cores constituted an actual inductor. That's almost too hard to believe, but apparently true. So we know the level of technical skill on behalf of the would be 'inventor' is extremely low and not very well suited for this kind of task. The only other possibility is that they knew there was no truth to the claims but were still looking for some temporary notoriety.
I think Dave did a really good job at debunking, taking the time to explain, analyze, and even build and reproduce as a proof of concept, or should i say as a lack of proof of concept ha ha
I cant think of anyone else that would be willing to take this debunking task this far. I think i myself would have stopped when i found out the core was not being considered to be an inductor (big, big, chuckle here).
Now back to the real free energy...
Sounds strange right? It should, because it is very rare when we can actually get something like this to work.
First, i'd like you to note that most responses we know of have both a sinusoidal part and exponential part. The exponential part usually has effect during the first moments of operation when something is first turned on and that determines how fast the DC value builds up until we reach the steady state. During this time, any energy that enters the system may stay there, even though the steady state varies up and down sinusoidally. If this energy comes from the same source that we use to power the circuit, then it can not be free energy. But if it comes from a source that we dont have to replenish, then it can be considered free energy. Obviously this only works when there is a source available that does not have to be replenished, such as a gravitational field.
So at least one application is where we have to fly a spacecraft from point A to point B, and we happen to have a planet in between somewhere. It is very likely, or at least possible, that we can find a flight trajectory that takes us close to this planet and at the right speed so we dont get sucked in by the field, such that the gravitation force provides some temporary extra thrust, and thus saves fuel. It is entire possible that with a limited amount of fuel we can reach our intended destination because of that very planet and its placement whereas if that planet wasnt there we might run out of fuel first.
That is one application, and another potential application is somewhere in deep space, have two (or more) magnets mounted on a rigid non magnetic shaft where the two (or more) were spaced apart from each other. Then, using an initial launcher, shoot a steel ball around the first magnet in a trajectory that allows it to reach the other magnet on a trajectory that allows it to reach the first magnet again. The problem here though is that the effect is not repeatable. Back in the 1990's i actually did the calculation for this and found that provided there were no other losses the energy gained getting to one magnet was lost getting back to the other magnet. So even without any other effects, the best we could ever get would be similar to a superconductor, where you can have a perpetual current but cant extract any energy or the current dies. Thus if we tried to extract any energy from the ball it would eventually stop moving.
But in the case of the spacecraft, it's a one time only extraction from a source that is not part of our principle system and does not need to be replenished, so we save fuel.
So the point is, dont give up on free energy but dont fall victim to false claims. Remember that in the spacecraft the astronauts could have died in space had they not considered all possible interpretations of "free energy".