Anyone into
#electronics and/or
#plumbing?
In my home, I found some fun stuff from the previous owner. One thing was an "Aquaquant" branded thing looking like a simple steel rod that was connected to a water pipe with freaking cable ties. As if
that could ever do
anything.
A more interesting thing I found was two spools of insulated standard mains wire wrapped around the main pipe then taped. Each spool was connected to the box on one end, and closed (insulated) at the other end.
So all it can do is create an electrical field. There definitely can't be any real current - the entire thing is basically a coil, then a "capacitor" to the water pipe, then the water pipe itself being a basically zero ohms resistor, then another "capacitor" formed of insulation, then the second coil. If you ask me, just estimating, with frequencies below the GHz range nothing interesting whatsoever can happen there, as both capacitances and inductances of those must be
tiny.
So, well, what was in the box? Two boards:
- One PCB with a transformer, four diodes; so let's all say it together:
FULL BRIDGE RECTIFIER and a rather large capacitor. That capacitor is rated for 35V, so let's take that as upper bound for the output voltage. Also, the thing powered a LED behind a resistor for power indication.
- A second board, a stripboard (not PCB!) with some of the traces cut out and of course some blank jumper wires. This board contains a few capacitors and small resistors at the power side (probably interference suppression), then more resistor and capacitor stuff around an 8-pin IC socket. The IC turns out to be a 555.
Now, I didn't plug it into mains, but I tried out the second board with my lab bench power supply in reasonable voltage ranges, and basically whatever I set it to, I get around 700 Hz square wave close to input voltage at the output.
So now I ask:
- What was that thing even good for? 700 Hz low voltage isn't gonna do anything to the water inside the pipe, which actually is a Faraday cage anyway. And all it does is a really weak electrical field anyway (I mean, at most 35V over 10cm distance - I get a stronger electrical field around a button cell) that turns on and off at 700 Hz - there should be basically no magnetic component as at such low frequency the current should be lower than anything I can even measure. AFAIK there's nothing an electrical field that weak at such low frequency can even do to water - even less so behind a freaking metal pipe acting as shield.
- Why not simply have
nothing in that box except for the LED? It's not like the 700 Hz circuit even
did anything. Only for people like me who open this? But then all those already know it's BS...
- What did the previous owners pay for that esoteric nonsense? I can't find any manufacturer name or label on it. Sure wasn't cheap...
