Roughly measuring the rate of millet seeds hitting a surface.

If you're just looking for electrical field disturbances, there's probably other ways to do it than a millet seed detector.

We accidentally built a motion sensor out of a FET input opamp by leaving off the bleed resistors on the input, you could (erratically) detect people walking 30-40 feet away down the hall, especially if they had just waxed the floor.

I'd imagine there is a reasonable circuit that does this by intent, that would be more sensitive than seeds moving around.

a reply to: Bedlam
Cool, but will it detect ghosts?

That seems to be the objective of this project.

I also accidentally built an electrical field disturbance indicator in EE lab but it wasn't the easiest thing to reproduce. We were all given the same components to build the lab experiment, but mine was the only one that ended up having remote-sensing abilities (The waveforms on the oscilloscope would flatline when someone 1-2m away sat down in a chair in that location). All the components were essentially the same, the routing of the wires was apparently the key.

I don't know if they are as sensitive as the one you built, but EMF detectors are standard equipment already sold to gullible ghost hunters:

An EMF meter is among the most common devices used by ghost hunters today. I spoke to Tom Cook, of TomsGadgets.com, a British purveyor of "scientific" paranormal kits for the enterprising (and gullible) investigator. Starter kits begin at £105 (US$180) and reach up to £500 (US$850) for a custom ghost-hunting kit. (Negative Ionizer Ghost Containment packs were not listed.)

I asked Cook what, exactly, the scientific rationale was behind the equipment he sold.

"At a haunted location," Cook said, "strong, erratic fluctuating EMFs are commonly found. It seems these energy fields have some definite connection to the presence of ghosts. The exact nature of that connection is still a mystery. However, the anomalous fields are easy to find. Whenever you locate one, a ghost might be present.... any erratic EMF fluctuations you may detect may indicate ghostly activity."

In the final analysis, Cook admitted, "there exists no device that can conclusively detect ghosts."

I remember an episode of ghost hunters where their EMF detector showed a high reading in one spot...was it a ghost? I don't think so, turns out it was near a big bundle of wires, so I think the description below of an EMF detector as a "red herring detector" in ghost hunting is apt.

The supposed links between ghosts and electromagnetic fields, low temperatures, radiation, odd photographic images, and so on are based on nothing more than guesses, unproven theories, and wild conjecture. If a device could reliably determine the presence or absence of ghosts, then by definition, ghosts would be proven to exist. I own an EMF meter, but since it's useless for ghost investigations—it finds not spirits but red herrings—I use it in my lectures and seminars as an example of pseudoscience. The most important tools in this or any investigation are a questioning mind and a solid understanding of scientific principles.

The ghost hunters' anti-scientific illogic is clear: if one area of a home is colder than another, that may indicate a ghost; if an EMF meter detects a field, that too may be a ghost; if dowsing rods cross, that might be a ghost. Just about any "anomaly," anything that anyone considers odd for any reason, from an undetermined sound to a "bad feeling" to a blurry photo, can be (and has been) considered evidence of ghosts.

So even though no ghost detector has ever been shown to detect ghosts, and I don't have higher hopes for the millet seed device, that doesn't mean there isn't a substantial market of gullible consumers of pseudoscientific devices to which you could sell ineffective ghost detecting devices, or give them to Tom Cook on consignment and let him sell them for you.

Whether ghosts exist, that's another question. But the ghost hunting investigations we see on TV are more pseudoscientific than scientific.

originally posted by: Arbitrageur
a reply to: Bedlam
Cool, but will it detect ghosts?

That seems to be the objective of this project.

Well, the OP thinks so. I think there are simpler ways to measure electric fields than counting millet seeds. I don't know if it'll have the results he wants, but hey, it's not my project. Personally, I think ghosts are either delusions, misidentification of natural phenomena or, my favorite personal conjecture, neutral scents.

Which at least has some objective basis to it, although I might be totally off base. But it sort of makes sense, even if it's totally unproven.

Bedlam

We accidentally built a motion sensor out of a FET input opamp by leaving off the bleed resistors on the input, you could (erratically) detect people walking 30-40 feet away down the hall, especially if they had just waxed the floor.

I'd imagine there is a reasonable circuit that does this by intent, that would be more sensitive than seeds moving around.

I would love to build a detector which detected movement that far away and I could spend hours playing with it to get it less erratic perhaps.

Arbutrateur

I also accidentally built an electrical field disturbance indicator in EE lab but it wasn't the easiest thing to reproduce. We were all given the same components to build the lab experiment, but mine was the only one that ended up having remote-sensing abilities (The waveforms on the oscilloscope would flatline when someone 1-2m away sat down in a chair in that location). All the components were essentially the same, the routing of the wires was apparently the key.

Even this would be useful to detect movement - whether or not it was from 'ghosts' or any other body.

A lot of the ghost hunters go around taking base readings first just so that they do not detect EMF fields from wires and machinery. I would also like to point out that many of these places are abandoned and do not have electricity running through their wiring. In those cases EMF fluctuations are likely to be caused by some other influence (other than electrical interference)

What are ghost hunters supposed to do if science cannot accept the way they currently detect ghostly energy? They have to find other ways to detect it which rule out as many false positives as possible. No-one will pay much for ghost research as there is no profit to be made, yet the same ghost research may be able to give us some pointers into life continuing after death and possibly into beings living in other dimensions too. (i.e. aliens)

Actually, I am looking for more physical ways to detect ghosts. That would mean that we do not have to worry about any electrical disturbances distorting the readings. If the 'trigger' is physical and the indicator is electrical, it will rule out any anomalous or stray fields influencing the electrics. I feel that this is needed to provide 'proof' to the skeptics who say that ghosts do not exist and also to move research forward into areas where we cannot provide proof and repeatability.

It has been shown in the videos (if they are not faked) that ghosts can manipulate the physical world in some degree and so they should be able to manipulate physical triggers if they are so inclined. The millet seeds experiment is just another way to detect something interacting with the physical and which may be easy for them to manipulate perhaps. At the moment, we dont know.

a reply to: qmantoo

Qmantoo, is the device I provided construction plans for in the last post on page 1 helpful or do you need a new direction?

CraftBuilder - I sent you a private message with my email address in it a while ago. I cannot see images on this site. I cannot see any avatars, posted images and even the forum logos are just square boxes to me. Google and China do not see eye-to-eye unfortunately as both have control issues and ATS insists on using Google to host their jquery which messes up loads of stuff on here for me.