During the past decade multi-dipolar plasmas have been employed for various purposes such as surface treatments in biomedicine, physical and chemical vapour deposition for hydrogen storage, and applications in mechanical engineering. On the other hand, due to the design and operational mode of these plasma sources (i.e., strong permanent magnets for the electron cyclotron resonance coupling, low working pressure, and high electron density achieved) they are suitable for studying fundamental mechanisms involved in negative ion sources used in magnetically confined fusion and particle accelerators. Thus, this study presents an overview of fundamental results obtained with: (i) a single dipolar source, (ii) a network of seven dipolar plasma sources inserted into a magnetic multipolar chamber (Camembert III), and (iii) four dipolar sources housed in a smaller metallic cylinder (ROSAE III). Investigations with Langmuir probes of electron energy probability functions revealed the variation of the plasma properties versus the radial distance from the axis of a dipolar source in its mid plane and allowed the determination of the proportion between hot and cold electron populations in both chambers. These results are compared with the density of hydrogen negative ions, measured using the photodetachment technique. Electron energy probability functions obtained in these different configurations show the possibility of both hot and cold electron production. The former is a prerequisite for increasing the vibrational level of molecules and the dissociation degree and the latter for producing negative ions via dissociative attachment of the cold electrons or via surface production induced by H atoms. V C 2013 AIP Publishing LLC. [http://dx.