SPOT
THE MISTAKES!
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Many readers have asked for more-complex projects.
I have already produced a number of fairly complex projects and they have received very little interest.
The readership of every page is recorded in a file by Histats and the 50 - 555 Circuits  chapter gets 500 visitors each day, whereas the Basic Electronics Course gets less than 40. 
The duration of each reader on a page is not recorded, however the mere fact that a complex project gets just a few readers each day, shows the interest dwindles for anything complex.
A recent quiz on an electronics forum asked the readers to identify the following: 

Thermal Switch - or "cut-off"

At the beginning, some readers thought it was a transistor; one thought it had a positive or negative temperature co-efficient, a ceramic disc thermostat, a resistive temperature thermostat, and many other obscure answers.
The number of incorrect answers was surprising, even after many had correctly identified the object.
It highlights the fact that many readers can supply an incorrect response without first checking the details on the web.
 

I’m an engineering student. My professor required me to make a 7-segment display that start counting from 00-99 when hitting single switch. My professor only asked for logic gates IC like 7400, 7402, 7404, 7408, 7432, 7486 or simple OR, NOT, AND, NAND, NOR, XOR, etc. She also asked 555 timer for delays and used only the given IC. I already know the Karnaugh map values from a-g, so the question is how to make a 7-segment display from 00-99 with just single click on the switch with a delay from 555 timer?

My Answer:

This is a totally worthless assignment.
Time at University is expensive and very limited. Every effort has to go into producing the greatest outcome.
No-one has ever explained the real purpose for gaining a degree. The real reason is to produce a student who can make an impression on companies who are looking for new staff.
They are actually looking for those who will generate 2 to 5 times their salary.
Engaging a new member of staff is a commercial transaction and don't fool yourself otherwise.
That's why they really want an "electronics wiz" with 5 to 20 years experience.
But these are hard to come-by and they have to resort to a "second-choice."
The only reason you invest in a University degree is to get your "foot-in-the-door" without having 5 years experience in electronics.
If you think you know anything about electronics after a 5-year course, you are fooling yourself.
You probably don't even know how much room is required between a tall and short component to allow for wave soldering.
If you only complete 3 or 4 projects each year, the above task should be to produce a 2-digit counting circuit using a microcontroller, with up-down feature and a preset.
This is the type of counter used in packaging on production-lines. 
I can understand using gates to produce a counter some 30 years ago, but times have changed.
I have had a lot to do with "Professors" and they are still living in the 70's and re-gurgitating concepts they learnt in the past.
Tell the "Professor" you are going to use a microcontroller and want help with the debounce routine.

Here are the most-common 3 mistakes of ALL TIME:
1. I know nothing about electronics, I have hardly built a project, but I will take an electronics course and become an ELECTRONICS ENGINEER!
You are fooling yourself if you think an electronics course will teach you anything or everything about electronics. We see dozens of students on forums asking for advice on a final electronics project.
Even after suggestions they can hardly interpret a circuit diagram or source the components.
I have seen students emerge after a 3-year course, not being able to read a resistor or solder a surface-mount component.   But they can read the load-line of a transistor - AND GET IT WRONG!
Students think the lecturer, the notes and text-book will turn them into an engineer. I have not found one text book that is vaguely related to understanding how to build and design the full range of the most-common building blocks.
Ten of my most-basic question are not answered in any text book. How can you possibly say a course will get you "into electronics?"

2. I will buy a CRO (or other piece of test equipment) to solve my circuit diagnosing problems.
This is a BIG MISTAKE. A Logic Analyser or Solid-State CRO will show all sorts of wave shapes but it will not tell you the location of the fault or which part of the graph is faulty. Sometimes it will lead you in the wrong direction! It is only helpful in the hands of an EXPERT.

3. With my "Master's Of Electronics" I will be able to design and build my own projects.
There is absolutely no relationship between fulfilling the requirements of a course and being able to design a successful project.
90% of students in their final years are just beginning to scrounge around and look for a "FINAL YEAR PROJECT."
They are doing the wrong course.
I have 10 projects "on the go" at any one time and always waiting for 3 or 4 panels of PC boards to be made in China. One project sparks another and if you are not deigning one project after another, you are in the wrong profession.
If you think you will "learn on the job," you will miss out on being employed.
Only 1 person in one-hundred is really employable in a profession (we are not talking about counter-staff, or burger-flippers) and you need to be that 1%.


Spot the Mistakes adds a new dimension to teaching electronics. It explains why certain things cannot be done, (such as using a high-power transistor in an RF amplifier to replace a small current device - the circuit will simply NOT drive the high power transistor AT ALL).
We have already presented hundreds of circuits, shown how to test components, provided the basics to circuit design, and Spot the Mistakes  fills in the final elements.
All that is left is for you to build something.
I have 15 projects on the go at any one time and many of them are waiting for the PC boards to come back from the manufacturers.
There are some very cheap manufacturers in China that cost less than $1.00 per board but you have to wait 10 days for the post to deliver the parcel.
I have explained this in the article PROTOTYPING BOARDS and covered the use of MATRIX BOARDS and how to start designing your own board with Protel software. 
Electronics is one of the cheapest hobbies because you can re-use many of the components in the next project and the cost of parts has come down a lot due to eBay.  You can buy everything on eBay and sometimes the postage is FREE.
You cannot compete with the Chinese.
They have copied the Western World to a TEE.
40 years ago, Philips and Germany were the leaders in component design.
The components from the US were UGLY. Fortunately China copied the European designs and now we have the best components at the lowest prices.
But it's no-good "LOOKING" at the components. You have to involve yourself and think of ideas. One idea generates another and after producing more than 1,000 projects, I have a whole list of ideas for the future.
You don't need a "CV" to get a job. Just write: " I have a box of 63 models and projects to show you in the interview"   and you will land the job.


There is a small group of readers who have read nearly all the pages in this Spot The Mistakes section.
It is actually one of the MOST IMPORTANT sections you can read. You can learn 10 times faster from a faulty circuit than reading boring theory.
Here is an email received two days ago: (the spelling and grammar have been corrected)

My name is Hariesh and I am from India. I love electronics and I am an electronics enthusiastic who likes to build projects for my own use. The love of electronics was always in my blood as it started from my childhood. By profession I am a computer engineer. I previously searched online for different circuits and I tried to build them, but many of them did not work. A few weeks ago I come across your website and found "spot the mistake page." The folder was so lengthy (almost 24 pages). I have gone through all the pages and was really shocked to see the mistakes and untested circuits. I don't know how to express my thanks to you since the criticizer in you has revealed many mistakes which will be useful for the people like me and it is really sad that most of the circuits you have spotted have been tried by myself and failed, without knowing that the circuit was just an idea and are not really tested. There are many circuits which are useful to me but many people will not point out the mistakes because they do not understand how the circuits work. But you are different from others. And off course I know that you may be disliked by many authors who publish wrong circuits. I believe they don't know how to deal criticism in a positive style and sports-man-like spirit. Imagine if nobody was there to criticize literature. How would we get great works like Leo Tolstoy? And when it comes to electronics, you are the number one who criticizes to get junk off the web.

The web is wonderful. It can inform everyone in the world to the latest technologies, no matter where they live. Everything is FREE on the web and you just have to pay for time at an internet cafe to download.  
80 years ago this was called "School of the Air" where students had PEDAL RADIOS radios to listen to classes (in the outback of Australia). Hobbyists in 3rd world countries can now study and keep up with electronics and this will allow them to generate a skill to assist them in a career.  Talking Electronics gets hundreds of emails from readers doing just that. Eventually they will get into the service and supply of electronics to help those in remote areas.
As I have said before, the web will be the eventual TEACHER of the world.

I am trying to build a warning speedometer that will be capable of driving an 8 ohm speaker and the speaker will sound at 60mph and the tone increases and interrupted 10mph thereafter. It must also show the values in 2 seven segment display. In addition I cannot used programmable chips. Can anyone please help me in my senior design project. I am struggling to build and design it.

Where has he been for the last 3 years of his "MASTERS OF ELECTRONICS" course?

Either the course is poor quality, or the Lecturer is incompetent or the student is dong the WRONG COURSE.

With the introduction of the web there is absolutely no excuse for not referring to it on a daily basis and looking through the projects and circuits designed by others.
40 years ago there was hardly a source of circuits and major text books were expensive.
Everything is now FREE and if you expect to be successful in electronic design, it is too late to ask for help on a simple project like this, in your final course-year.
In fact we don't people like this, pulling-down the profession. Fortunately it is mainly reserved for people who understand electronics and anyone "bumbling along the bottom" will quickly exit the field.

The lesson to be learnt is this: Don't think you can "fool your way" through a course. You have to be 100% successful to be a design engineer.
You can be a solicitor and never win a court-case. Or build a bridge and hope it will never fall down.
But an electronic device will not work if even with the slightest mistake.  That's why you need to pay attention to detail.


CAR INTERIOR LIGHT FADER
The circuit fades the interior light after the door has been closed:

The circuit has lots of mistakes.
The 100k from the 12v supply supplies power to the op-amps. The op amp will reduce this voltage to almost zero. The 10k and 8k2 will also reduce the voltage across the op-amp. The circuit DOES NOT WORK.

The circuit can be simplified to this:

There is NO skill in producing a complex circuit.
Before you waste time designing ANYTHING, look on the web for circuits that have already bee designed and tested.

TOGGLE AN OUTPUT
The circuit toggles the output to turn the lamp on an off via a laser pointer.

The circuit can be simplified to this:

The 100u creates a delay so the chip can only be clocked every second.

LED and SWITCH

BATTERY FAULT
Here is a simple circuit that drops the 6v from the two coin cells to 5v1 via the zener diode:

Don Fiehmann has mixed up truth with fiction.
The area under the graph produces the energy of the waveform. For the sinewave, the lower part of the wave is inverted and placed beside the first half-cycle. You can see the small part of the sinewave above the RMS value fills the space between the two half-waves to produce a rectangle equal to the DC waveform.
For an AC waveform you can consider one of the wires does "not move" and the other wire rises to a high voltage and then falls to the low voltage.
When it comes to the DCC waveform, one wire sits at +14.25v and the other wire is 0v. The positive wire then immediately goes to -14.5v.
There is no gradual rise and fall and thus there is no "area under the graph" that needs to be "computed."
ALL the energy from a DCC waveform is passed to the motor (via a bridge) and thus the energy from DCC is equivalent to DC.
This means there is no "computing the value of the voltage." It is simply the voltage on the two wires (multiplied by time) and 100% is delivered to the motor (minus the losses in the bridge).  That's why trying to introduce the term RMS does NOT apply and this piece of electronic mumbo jumbo by Don Fiehmann needs to be corrected.

Reply from:
Larry Maier
Tech Support
Tony's Train Exchange

The peak to peak voltage is 28.5 volts, but the RMS value of the shown DCC waveform is 14.25
When the shown DCC waveform is rectified with a full wave rectifier, it produces (approximately) 12.8 volts DC, which is suitable for operating the 12VDC motor found in most engines.

If you perform an RMS operation on a DC voltage, the result is simply the DC voltage. This is a pointless exercise.
Introducing RMS tries to make the project more complex than it is. It simply measures the peak voltage and does not consider it to be an AC waveform. Otherwise it will produce a figure of 0.707 x the reading.

The term RMS was "invented" or started to be introduced when alternating current was first delivered to homes at the beginning of the invention of electricity (electricity to the home).
 
The original electricity was DC (called DIRECT CURRENT - but actually means DIRECT VOLTAGE) and the voltage (and current) was present at all times when the "electricity" flowed.
When you turned on a 1,000 watt radiator you received 1,000 watts of HEAT. The voltage was 110 volts.
But when AC (alternating current) was introduced, (actually ALTERNATING VOLTAGE) the voltage has to rise higher than 110v because the voltage dropped below 110v for part of the cycle and to "make up" for the drop, the "rise" had to be higher. This means the "peak" had to be about 41% higher to make ALTERNATING VOLTAGE equal to DIRECT VOLTAGE.
Everyone was scared about "electricity" at that time and rather than say the new voltage was "162 volts" they just kept the old voltage of 110v to 120v on all the "stickers" (name plates) and "secretly" increased the peak to 162v.
RMS mean EQUIVALENT TO DC.    
For DCC the peak voltage is the same as RMS and no calculation or conversion needs to be made.

How are you going to illuminate a 1 watt LED through a 220 ohm resistor????
It should be about 220 milliohm    = 0.22ohm  = 0.22R  = R22   The resistor is one thousand times too large !!!!!!
I saw this fault INSTANTLY.  None of the staff at EFY picked up the mistake.  It was repeated 6 times in the project !!!  How dumb can you be ????

A CD4060 will not work at 24MHz.  It goes to about 12MHz max.

The only problem with this circuit is the current delivered to the LEDs. The 1u capacitor will deliver about 70mA in full-wave and this delivers 35mA to each string of LEDs. A 5mm LED needs 17mA and 25mA max.  35mA will limit its life considerably.

Now we come to projects in Everyday Practical Electronics.
I offered to supply them with beginner projects as I could not find anything in their issues for the past year that was suitable for a beginner and had the back-up of a kit of components.
They reply from Matt Pulzer: We have so many projects awaiting publication at the moment that I am not accepting further submissions for now.
The project he is referring to come from Silicon Chip and are re-presented in the magazine 12 months AFTER they are released in Australia.
These kits were backed up by Jaycar but the response was so poor that Jaycar has pulled their entire advertising over 12 months ago.
I then contacted all the advertisers in EPE to see if they were interested in supplying kits. The response surprised me. None were even the slightest bit interested and one said the projects were "boring old amplifier that no-one wanted to build. He had already contacts the editor with suggestions and the email "fell on deaf ears."
I have to say I have never read EPE but the past issues had lots of beginner projects. As soon as Silicon Chip took over, these projects disappeared.
I contacted Silicon Chip with a small project and the reply from Leo Simpson was::

I am afraid your intruder alarm would not get to first base. Put simply, the PCB is not big enough to accommodate all the components - the battery holder is only half on the PCB. Nor are there any mounting holes for the PCB. There is not enough supply bypassing with only 10uF & 100nF capacitors and there does not appear to be any input protection for the micro.

I thought Leo Simpson had some understanding of electronics. But to say the PCB is not large enough is absolutely absurd. The battery holder is a 3v coin cell holder and it has two very strong pins. It does not have to be fully mounted on the PC board. He could have said: "could we make the PCB longer" . . . . . .
If you look at their PCB's and the cost of many at $10.00 it is no-wonder they sell 1 to 5 boards over a period of 18 months. Their projects are simply not popular because the board is too expensive and no-one provides a back-up kit.

You don't need mounting holes for a small board that is going to be placed on a shelf with the PIR detector.
Then he really caps it off with his understanding of electronics when he says:
There is not enough supply bypassing with only 10uF & 100nF capacitors and there does not appear to be any input protection for the micro.

The Intruder Alarm project takes 1.5mA     10u electrolytic is ample for 1.5mA and 100n is across the chip.
Then when he says there is no input protection - - - - - I ask him: " where do you put the input protection????? 
He complains about my small PC boards but have a look at this board for $15.00 Australian or about $30.00 UK.
Not only is the board twice the size it should be but it has no legend.

What a piece of junk !

Thus is a terrible guide. Look on Amazon for a preview to see how much unnecessary information (verbiage) is presented. It is out of date, (he talks about a temperature-controlled iron for $80.00 whereas they are now $10.00) out of touch with reality (does not talk about copper-wire sponge and lots of other things) and I have produced a FREE guide to soldering containing all the points missed out by all these "guides."   They are just mountains of verbiage.  
You have to provide something worthwhile on a website to get visitors coming back again and again and the internet is the way of the future. The two magazines have nothing. They just want to squeeze "the last drop of blood" out of a dwindling audience and try to charge for every minute item.  

Even on the internet, the conversion-rate can be as high as 50,000:1. In other words it needs 50,000 views of a project to get one order or one person constructing. With sales of 10,000 for a publication, you can hardly get one sale for each page of advertising.
Things have changed over the past 20 years. Conversion rates were 1% to 5%. Not now. The reader has such a wide variety of options and choices. And of course computer games, Facebook and Apps??  have taken over.
You Tube projects,  Make projects or Instructables are getting 50,000 views. Compare that to 10,000 sales of a magazine.  Magazines are DEAD.
Anyone who does not see the "writing on the wall" for the print media is burring their head in the sand and simply "re-arranging the deck-chairs on the Titanic." The only publication to increase its sales this year is Charlie Hebdo. All the rest are on their "last legs."

It's a sad situation but magazines are not providing any instructional videos to back-up their project. They don't offer any kits and have stupid prices for PC boards. They do nothing in their favour.
The Chinese produce boards at 10% the price of all other manufacturers. Magazines have NEVER offered this and NEVER passed on the lower prices. The same with kits.
The Chinese offer kits with free postage for 10% of the cost of magazine kits.
Readers are starting to become aware of this and eBay has taken over as the largest sales of electronics components. Electronics suppliers are nearly doomed too. It just takes time to see them go. You can buy ANYTHING on eBay.
You can fool some of the people some of the time but not all the people all the time.

LET'S GO BACK
I didn't want to start a magazine in the first place.
I knew it was impossible to design projects, write them up in "publisher format", draw the circuits, take photos, layout the pages, pay for printing and handle the advertisers.
So about 1980 I sent a letter to Electronics Australia with a suggestion to the Technical Editor Jim Rowe that I would supply some beginners projects. At the time they had one or projects in each issue and I thought to add to this with a larger range of projects.   
He accepted my offer.  On the second page of his typewritten reply, he said, Oh, by the way, if you fail to deliver the projects by about 23rd of the month, there is a penalty of $2,400.  

That is equal to $20,000 today. I bought my first block of land for $2,000 - so the "fine" was ENORMOUS.
That spurred me to produce the magazine myself. For $2,400 I could get 10,000 copies printed at our local web printer.
From the first day the magazine hit the newsagents I got 80 orders. And I never looked back. The first issue was 32 pages and typed on an electric "Golf Ball" typewriter. 
After about a year of running Jim Rowe had the audacity to come to my office with Virginia Salmon (the advertising manager) and say "I suppose you didn't like the penalty in the letter I wrote to you."

What could I say?  with 8 staff around me and a woman.  I said nothing.

But that's how the opposition tried to stifle me.

But it didn't end there.
After 2 months of operation Electronics Today International sent all their advertising representatives to the advertisers offering 12 months advertising for half price.
I could not get one single advertiser (components supplies) and decided to continue with the magazine WITH NO ADVERTISING.
But that wasn't enough.
The opposition magazine then decided to put out a competition magazine for 95 cents, whereas mine was $1.25.
They continued for 6 months, putting out up to 40,000 copies each month.
Then, one day Colin Rivers rang me to say: "You have won the day."
I didn't know what he meant, so he explained that they were pulling "Hobby Electronics" because I had not folded. It had cost them $50,000.
In the meantime I had learnt from an advertiser that the other magazine was scrutinizing my publication for a single paragraph that could constitute "copywrite infringement" . . .  for an all-out court case.
Luckily I never read any of their magazines and nothing of mine even resembled any of their articles.
Now we come to Silicon Chip.
I offered to supply articles to them just recently, but obviously the success of my magazine was still in the mouth of Leo Simpson who realised my approach to writing (and content) outshone their endeavours and he gave some poultry excuse for not wanting to include them. 
Obviously EPE could not include them because they had sacked all their production team. They are the losers.  With a circulation of 10,000 the number of beginners will be miniscule as not one single beginners project has been presented in either magazine for the past "x" number of years. It would take a long time to get any sort of following because no-one is visiting the newsagents and the content will go unseen. I realise it is too late for them. The time has gone. The trend has changed and the youth of today don't see the need to learn electronics because there is simply no future. All the designing and manufacture is done overseas and the electronics careers have all dried up.
Instead of teaching electronics, Universities should teach "Meet and Greet" because that is the only "job" at the K-Mart or Wall Mart store.        
The bottom-line is this:
Neither magazine is interested in producing or assisting the beginner with components.
It is a lot of work to provide kits but that is what I specialised in and made a huge success, selling over 300,000 kits with the FM bug kits selling more than 30,000 of one type alone. The magazines could outsource the requirement and charge a commission on sales.
But the plain, cold, hard fact is: they are not interested.
They put on all the pretense of being successful when the statistics from their websites show a different story.
You can't beat statistics. The first IBM computer in the USA (card version) predicted a win by a small margin to a certain political party and IT WAS RIGHT. From that day, political parties have poured over computer figures. If you don't believe statistics, you are fooling yourself.   Look at Ocean's 11 and study its background.
I have outlived 4 magazines and there are only two more to go.  
Such is life.

Here is a kit promoted by Michael Tooley in the January issue of Everyday Practical Electronics:
Whizzkits Electronics Builder’s Kit
Apart from the price of £18  (about $35.00) the kit has a number of major flaws:s:
Here is display of the components:

The major fault with the kit is the BREADBOARD. It is the worst design you can get. It does not have any power rails. It teaches the completely wrong way to lay-out a circuit. Look at the way the leads of the battery are poked into the holes in the breadboard.
This is the sort of photograph I get from readers who don't have a CLUE about electronics and poke wires into the board "all over the place." Where has "Bob" from Spiratronics - the producer of the kit and Michael Tooley, the kit reviewer, been for the past 20 years??? In a cave??? Junk breadboards like this went out 30 years ago.
I would not even purchase one, let alone show a project using one in a PROMOTIONAL ADVERTISEMENT.
And the jumpers. You can get proper jumpers on eBay for one cent each !!!!
Secondly, the kit seems to have just 5 projects. At least with a Tandy kit 30in1 or 100in1 you get a lot of projects to try.
Thirdly the kit does not have a piezo diaphragm, a switch or a pot with a shaft. A piezo diaphragm is very handy for siren circuits and can even be shown to be a microphone.
Why they would provide a sheet of sandpaper to clean the contacts, is beyond me.  I have never used sandpaper in 40 years!!!
It's just a "Mickey Mouse" kit. In fact it is an embarrassment to all electronics engineers. And that is as mild as I can get.

Projectsts
The five main projects that can be built with the kit are:
a light-operated switch (which can be extended in order to drive a small relay);
a simple audio amplifier;
a time delay (which can also be extended using a small relay);
a trigger/reset device; and
a heads and tails game.

Michael Tooley says:
The projects are well thought out and cover a variety of different circuits ranging from amplifiers to comparators and light sensors to timers. The circuits are based on a subset of common low-cost semiconductor devices, including LEDs, diodes, NPN and PNP transistors, a 741 operational amplifier and a 555 timer.r.

He says the kit contains 50 components. He has counted ALL THE WIRES too !!!   I have never heard of a piece of wire as being a "component."
It looks like it has ONE capacitor in each range, so you can't even make a flip-flop.  What a FLOP  !!!!
It's just an overpriced kit where you could buy all the parts separately for $10.00 from an electronics store and get dozens of circuits from the internet. You can also get component identification from the internet. So, why pay $35.00 ????  You can get a proper breadboard for $2.00 on eBay  plus 50 jumpers for $2.00   post free.


But that's not the whole story. .
It's fortunate very few beginners will be sucked into buying the kit because Everyday Practical Electronics has such a small readership, that almost no-one will be seeing the advertisement.
With a circulation of 10,000 the whole magazine is below viability, however if they are getting the majority of the project-pages "almost free," the small amount they have to spend on "news" items will fill the magazine and they can survive.
It's just the advertisers that are "hood-winked." The advertising blurb still has the old circulation of 20,000 and they have admitted this has dropped to 10,000 in the past 4 years.
At 10,000 it is not worth placing an advertisement.
I have already said the conversion ratio is about 1% and out of those who start to order a kit, only 20% actually place an order.
But this 1% refers to the group of reader INTERESTED in a particular product. The magazines have not presented a beginners project in more than 12 months, so the percentage of beginners reading the magazine will be miniscule.
Most beginners will pick up the magazine at the newsagents and look for articles of interest. Going by my past experience of 30 years in the magazine publishing business, the percentage of beginners is about 20% when suitable projects are presented.
For my magazine it was 100% because that is all I presented.
But for EPE the target audience (to use their terminology) is 2,000. And 1% of 2,000 is 20 orders. At a cost of £500 for the advertisement, each order costs £25 for an £18 kit  !!!   Simple mathematics !! 
Some of the shopping carts ask for details TWICE and some will not process an overseas telephone number.
Shopping carts are an absolute disaster as some don't know what postage to charge, some charge exorbitant postage (like $30 for a $5.00 PCB) and some don't process .com.au addresses.  They simply freeze.
For the kit above, the shopping cart charges £3.00 for an overseas order.  Obviously they have NEVER posted a kit overseas !!  They will get a shock at the real cost. That's why shopping carts are a DISASTER.  

The SOLAR ENERGY scam
I get bombarded with emails every day about getting SOLAR PANELS on my roof.
It all sounds like a good idea but when you go into the economics and environmental aspects, you find a different story.
Let's go back to where it all started and do some mathematics.
This whole thing would not have got off the ground if it were not for government subsidies.
The scheme itself is not sustainable and some clever person persuaded the government to back the idea on the grounds of ENVIRONMENTALLY FRIENDLY - GREEN FRIENDLY  - "carbon" friendly NONSENSE.  
Let's take the economics first.
The original systems were 1,500 watt for about $3,000.
One kilowatt of electricity costs 20 cents. (actually one kilowatt-hour). This means the solar system generates 30 cents per hour of energy. If the system works for 8 hours a day, it will take 1,250 days to pay-off.
This is 3.5 years. That's not counting cloudy days, interest costs on $3,500 and inefficiencies.
Many of the original purchasers only paid $500 TOTAL COST. The government paid the rest.
But here's the problem:  A normal household does not use 1.5kW during the day.  The only consumption is a fridge, a light and a TV.  This is 800watts.  The rest of the energy is pumped into the grid and the owner of the solar system gets a rebate.
Initially this rebate was 60 cents per unit (per kW-Hr) and that's what made the whole idea so attractive.
But who do you think is paying the 60 cents per kW-Hr?  The other consumers. Instead of paying 17 cents per unit, they were paying 20 cents per unit to make up the costing.
Fortunately this SCAM has been uncovered and the rebate has fallen to 30cents and sometimes 10 cents.
At 10 cents, the whole SOLAR SCAM is not viable. And neither it should be.
It's exactly like me getting an electric car and because I am not polluting the city with exhaust fumes, I get registration for $100 instead of $500.   The government then increases all other registrations to $550 to make up the short-fall.
But let's look at the other figures.
It takes 2 years to re-cover the energy expended into making the panels and how many thousands of gallons of poisoned water is produced to wash the silicon wafers?
The whole concept is so crazy that I never thought it would get off the ground, but then I did not think of the FRAUD of getting 60 cents rebate on something that cost the electricity utilities less than 8 cents to produce. I never thought they would bow to government pressure like this. It is EXTORTION and imagine if you were producing say plastic bottles for $1.00 and the government said you had to accept used plastic bottles from customers for $3.00 !!!   There is NO DIFFERENCE. FRAUD is FRAUD.
It's just no-one has explained it so clearly.
Now the electricity companies have an oversupply of electricity to the extent of 20%, of which 10% is due to solar panels and 10% is due to everyone cutting down on consumption with LED fixtures and turning off the lights.
This has caused them to increase electricity rates 20%.   It's a spiral.
With peak rates climbing to 60 cents per unit due to smart meters, the time will come when households will opt for self-generation with battery-back-up. 
A normal household uses 24kw-hr per day and this equates to 1kw-hr, but you have to take into account peak usage.
The biggest user is the tumble dryer. All other high-current devices can be converted to gas.
You can get 5kW inverters and if you are generating 1.5kW, and the dryer takes 2.4kW, you need to supply 1kW from back-up batteries. A cheap "car battery"  (12v  40A-Hr) will deliver 0.5kW-hr so you need 3 batteries at $70 each as a minimum back-up.
This will all require a separate inverter unless you have enough batteries to match the voltage of your solar panels.
All this becomes viable when you consider you are paying $200 per year just for the connection of the electricity. 
A new connection costs between $300 and $1,000 where they make you pay $350 for the smart meter.
I can remember paying water rates for a property that had no house. Why ???
Because the water "passes the door !!!"
That's what they will do with those who decide to go "off the grid."
No matter which way you look at it,  electricity costing is a SCAM. 
They sell electricity in bulk to ALCOA (aluminium producers) for 5 cents per kW-Hr. 
And the government sells Liquid Petroleum Gas (LPG) to China for 5 cents to 10 cents per litre.  It costs us 40 cents per litre.
 
     
Here's an incorrect diagram from an Indian publication:

The centre "holes" are connected in sets of 5 as shown:

When you see all these critiques and criticisms, I am not biased. I have an open mind. If something is well-designed, it gets my tick of acceptance.
Some people are clever and some are not.
One of the cleverest persons in the world was HITLER. Look what he achieved.  The Autobahn, the People's car, the submarine, synthetic fuel and improvements to the plane, tank, V1, V2 Rocket. Just through his backing, the design-engineers got to work on so many amazing projects - including the stealth fighter.
When you think of it, the war was also the basis of the Jet, the Computer and the rocket.
One of the most absurd "dreams" was the Jet engine. It was "pooh-pooed" by the British admiralty as preposterous!  How can you "blow" an aeroplane along ??? But Frank Whittle was not wrong.
There are (and were) hundreds of clever people who have advanced the world to the conditions we are now enjoying. And I have studied the persistence they displayed in the process to achieving their goal. Look at the "bouncing bomb" and "Tall boy" or the hovercraft. 
Why did I bring up this diverse group of people? Because I feel I fit right between.
I have been accepted by some and made a great improvement to many peoples lives.
I was accepted as a teacher and taught hundreds of students.
I was accepted as a technician and repaired over 35,000 TV's, radios and stereos.
When I ran the magazine, I never refused anyone who wanted to work for the magazine.
I gave them the chance in life that I was given on so many occasions.
In fact one of the lowliest workers produced the greatest income for the business.
One day he said: One of the customers has brought in a plastic credit card to pay for the items.
This was the first we had heard of the concept.
I did not want to reject the idea but I was hesitant of its success.
Rather than be "smart," I said I would go to the bank and find out the details. It cost $70 to get an "impression machine" to handle the cards - which was a lot of money. 
In the next 15 years, credit card sales rose to 50% of overall sales.
The next thing he comes in and says a customer wants a binder for the magazines.
Again, I took the idea on-board and ordered 100 binders.  In the end we sold over 1,000 binders.
Next he comes in and says a customer wants an FM bug kit made-up.
I thought to myself, what hobbyist would want to but a ready-made item??
But this was a person who wanted to use the bug to listen-in.
I asked if this request had been made before and he said yes.
So I got him to make up 10 bugs.
In the end, half of income was built-up products.
So, you never know who has the brilliant idea and rejecting a person can starve the world of great ideas.
That's exactly how I feel when the editors of the two magazines above refuse to include my projects.
It doesn't hurt them, but it is obvious they are refusing all those budding electronics contributors from both Australia and England. I have not seen one budding contributor in either magazine.
That's why I say, they should not be in charge of a magazine.
This not only applies to electronics magazines but to all governments, postal systems, utilities, schools, Universities and the list goes on.
To give someone a TER score of 99.95% to enter University is an absolute absurdity. No-one gets anything 100% in any endeavour.
It just gives the student the wrong concept in life.
No-one is perfect and the attitudes I have had from University students would make you cringe.
One student wanted to write for the magazine and when I said I would give him a kit of parts to help design the project, he said: Oh, I don't do soldering."
Another worked on a project for 4 days and hand-taped the PC board. When it came back from the PCB manufacturers, all the circuit was back-to-front. He tried to fix it by bending the legs of the chips around the other way. All the 7-segment displays showed the wrong segments.
The next day he did not show up. I rang him a 9:30.   He said: "you can stick your job up your arse."
Comments from the two publishers fall next to what I have encountered from the university students.
That's why professors have slip-on shoes. They have never learnt to tie shoe laces!!
One student: Oh, Professor you have one brown shoe and one black shoe."  
"That's funny, I have another pair just like this in the cupboard."
That's why "intelligent" people should not be in charge of things.
They can't even do up their shoe-laces !!!!
 


Here are some corrections and mistakes on Mike Tooley's website:  http://www.miketooley.info/ for Everyday Electronics Teach-In