I'll have to disagree with you as far as ZERO giving freebies away. The oil industry is nothing like any other sector.
Maybe if ZERO intended to make millions of a $5.00 item, then they can afford to give a few samples away, or if they intended to produce an OEM sub-assembly by the thousands or more.
But I've worked in the oil industry, and oil companies like Exxon/Mobil, Shell, etc have no problem spending millions on new tech that they think will save them money or increase production.
The piece of tech I worked on costed two million dollars and two years engineering before they even knew if it would work. Once we had built a prototype, and proved that it worked in a test well, they went ahead and bought several systems for tens of millions of dollars.
And this down hole tool was just a monitoring system for use in an oil well fracture process that happens after a well's production begins to taper off to increase production. What STWA is developing sounds like it will save billions in oil pipeline costs. With that level of potential savings, I can see a big outfit shelling out millions to ZERO for R&D.
So I am watching for any kind of R&D contract. THAT will tell me that the company is on the right track. Until then, I'll continue to accumulate at around a buck, and take profits as they come (like today).