Edit: if you saw this video, realized there was a battery involved, and your first thought was "Perpetual Motion Device!", you might be delusional or severely misinformed. For your own sake, please research the topic a bit more and avoid echo chambers.
The first paragraph is splendid.
But if I ever go down a rabbit hole and end up detached from reality, I would love to have someone to tip me off. It's like pointing out someone's fly is open.
Maybe OP is perfectly sane and just got confused on the physics of this system. Maybe they are very young. Or I misread their comment. In that case, OP has my deepest apologies.
It's just that perpetual motion is a well known trap for intelligent people; and expressions like "first real perpetual motion machine" and "provide back the energy to the battery somehow" make me worry that a fellow human being is going down the wrong path.
By the way, your reply was so neutral and respectful that I didn't realize you were the original commenter. That's remarkable, so thank you.
OP, your confusion is perfectly normal. I came here to post that my dad would think this is a perpetual motion machine. He simply is not familiar with the physical laws that make such a thing impossible and likes the idea of it.
"I googled, and found differing opinions on whether perpetual motion is possible. Is this an example that shows that it is?" would be a better question. It still would surprise me that there are people on HN who would pose such a question about such a simple device, but it would show some intelligence and a will to make an effort to learn. The OP still may have both, but the way the question is posed doesn't show it.
There are many reasons for this. Not everybody knows the same things. It can be surprisingly valuable to go over the basics even when you already know them. And then there's the "stupid question" that so often is far from stupid—often everyone else in the room is wondering the same thing. It usually isn't obvious in advance whether a question is deep or shallow.
Asking simple foundational questions out of interest isn't a problem around here. The finest conversations always welcome them. It's the intellectually petty discussions, where people try to one-up each other with displays of knowledge, that can't handle them.