Please just buy a pair of mains voltage diff probes. They're not expensive (around $500 each new, much less used) and they will eliminate the crazy connection scheme and give you true input -> output fidelity.
I hope nobody sees this article and tries to replicate the experiments as presented. You can get away with it when everything goes correctly, but a diff probe is good insurance.
Great to see LTT in this space, you're well positioned for it (access to a variety of hardware.) Would love to see a more developed experiment design.
Would love to see how the waveform changes over load -- perhaps test at 0, 10, 20, 40, 80% load.
Also, how does waveform vary as the battery depletes?
Another metric is how capacity varies with load. If a UPS gives me 1 hour @ 100w, will it give me 10 hours @ 10w? How long will it power an idling rpi5 (<1w)? How long will it give my workstation PC?
Please just buy a proper differential probe for stuff like this, you definitely don't need the R&SRT-ZHD mentioned in the article. Otherwise loved the article btw.
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