Author Topic: Blog #98 Micro$oft's Patented "Instaload" battery holders  (Read 21709 times)

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Offline TheWelly888Topic starter

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Blog #98 Micro$oft's Patented "Instaload" battery holders
« on: July 04, 2010, 06:10:56 pm »
I rather doubt this patent of M$ will take the world by storm, battery sizes are only nominal with quite wide dimensional tolerances so a springless battery holder will only work when the batteries are exactly the right dimensions! Hang on.... perhaps M$ are planning to produce and sell exclusively batteries of exactly the right specs to fit their patented holders... :-\

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Offline allanw

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Re: Blog #98 Micro$oft's Patented "Instaload" battery holders
« Reply #1 on: July 04, 2010, 07:24:15 pm »
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Offline saturation

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Re: Blog #98 Micro$oft's Patented "Instaload" battery holders
« Reply #2 on: July 04, 2010, 08:27:45 pm »
Interesting.  The main item is just the connector, and its fairly simple, which makes it likely to work.

The key thing is can it withstand shock and vibration, and it hinges on battery's maintaining the proper dimensions when it comes to the + / - terminal specs.

There are 2 variants.  I like the lower one.  When you insert a battery, the long + nose contacts the deeper terminal, while the flat bottom - contacts the outer terminal.  It also seems to be angled to push forward like a spring. 

In the upper variant, inserting the battery momentary connects the + with the - terminal.

In both variants, you could have a nonconductive spring behind the assembly, pushing forward to engage the batteries.

http://download.microsoft.com/download/3/8/D/38D13CF1-F634-43B3-9189-16D7D6943635/Microsoft_InstaLoad_Brochure.pdf

« Last Edit: July 04, 2010, 08:49:20 pm by saturation »
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Offline EEVblog

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Re: Blog #98 Micro$oft's Patented "Instaload" battery holders
« Reply #3 on: July 05, 2010, 02:07:16 am »
I've submitted this to Slashdot:
http://slashdot.org/submission/1274938/Microsofts-Instaload-Battery-Technology-Patent?art_pos=1

So anyone in a position to "vote it up" it would be much appreciated!

Thanks.
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Offline allanw

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Re: Blog #98 Micro$oft's Patented "Instaload" battery holders
« Reply #4 on: July 05, 2010, 02:09:59 am »
Seems like something Slashdot would like. The submission doesn't seem to be in the format that Slashdot stories typically are though, so that'd hurt your chances.

I'll submit it to reddit.com's r/electronics too.
 

Offline ProfK

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Re: Blog #98 Micro$oft's Patented "Instaload" battery holders
« Reply #5 on: July 05, 2010, 05:02:40 am »
Even the best of battery brands I have seen bloat and distort as they leak after a year or so of being installed in a device.  Often even after leaking I measure a voltage on the cell.  So a bad cell is not dead. I cannot help thinking the leakage of the cell that often is only at one end, wouldn't short across these two poles and cause heating or burning or worse. Practical design concepts with batteries are that the terminals of opposite polarity on a battery not be brought close to each other in order to avoid accidents.  9V batteries are fine examples. Keep a 9V in your pocket with change or keys and you start a fire.
I can't help thinking how poor a design this is. This can only add cost to the battery and the devices. Rack it up to new and improved sales hype. 
What of the series stacking of 1.5 V cells? The wiring alone is costly to equipment manufacturers on the assembly line. The battery compartment will need to be machine produced because the days of hand wiring the connections will be gone if this battery catches on. 
 

Offline Ferroto

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Re: Blog #98 Micro$oft's Patented "Instaload" battery holders
« Reply #6 on: July 05, 2010, 01:58:18 pm »
Microsoft's problem has always been sticking with it's knitting. That is, they built the foundation of their empire on the OS market (Windows), and the Software development market (BASIC). They should focus on their windows platform, because they have really let it go down the crapper lately and although I don't think anyone is quite capable of challenging Microsoft's monopoly on the OS market yet. You can only skate on market share for so long before you wear a hole in the ice.

Examples of this include, WEBtv, Virtual PC, Microsoft Surface (table top PC that cost $12,000), Silverlight (trying to compete with flash).

Sure there are the few exceptions to this such as the xbox, and the xbox 360 that actually do quite well. But that doesn't change the fact that Microsoft really needs to cut the fat and focus more attention to it's core products that actually generate revenue, such as the xbox and windows franchise.
« Last Edit: July 05, 2010, 03:58:54 pm by Ferroto »
 

Offline David

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Re: Blog #98 Micro$oft's Patented "Instaload" battery holders
« Reply #7 on: July 05, 2010, 02:21:58 pm »
To me this seems like another product trying to solve a problem that doesn't really exist in the first place! As Dave mentioned, I believe it will probably cause more confusion than anything else!
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Offline saturation

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Re: Blog #98 Micro$oft's Patented "Instaload" battery holders
« Reply #8 on: July 05, 2010, 03:16:13 pm »
Especially if devices using this no longer put a battery orientation icon in the battery compartment.  If it succeeds even marginally, not all devices will use it, so if one is mindless enough to insert batteries pellmell into Instaload, would they do the same to the majority of devices that aren't Instaload?  

But, most designs use polarity protection on battery compartments.  OTAH, the future is low power devices.  The typical circuit protection is a diode or similar p-n junction device, and this becomes quite a large V drop as devices start leaning towards single battery supplies.  If you remove this protection, then an idiot proof battery orientation system becomes more crucial.

To me this seems like another product trying to solve a problem that doesn't really exist in the first place! As Dave mentioned, I believe it will probably cause more confusion than anything else!
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Offline charliex

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Re: Blog #98 Micro$oft's Patented "Instaload" battery holders
« Reply #9 on: July 05, 2010, 07:17:29 pm »
I'm amazed people these days still think Microsoft has some sort of business model problem.  Yes they've had a lot of failures, but even with those they've still got plenty of money and a huge market share, and they're willing to try different things out.

Developing products that are outside its revenue focus is called research and development, which they're really good at too, they have some super smart people up there. It's easy to pick a handful of things and poke fun at it, carrot top makes an easy living from easy hanging fruit.

Seriously, they're massively successful. I'd be insanely happy with a fraction of one percent of their success.

Though no doubt it'll get a lot of blog traffic, microsoft, apple, etc all are good for traffic spiking. just have to look at places like engadget for that. There are a lot of people that can ride on the back of a beast as big as them.
 

Online mikeselectricstuff

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Re: Blog #98 Micro$oft's Patented "Instaload" battery holders
« Reply #10 on: July 05, 2010, 11:55:52 pm »
File under "Nothing to see here...!"
Totally agree that this is a potentially flawed solution to a non-problem.
Would having this clip swing anyone's decision to buy a product? No.
Would having the name Microsoft asociated with your product actually deter buyers? Maybe.
Why would you pay M$ a licence fee to use it in your product? er....
Will you see Chinese clones of this very soon? Definitely.
 

 
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Offline NiHaoMike

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Re: Blog #98 Micro$oft's Patented "Instaload" battery holders
« Reply #11 on: July 06, 2010, 12:32:49 am »
Things will get interesting when some brand of battery has dimensions such that it would short circuit in that holder, causing Microsoft to recall their "technology"...
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Offline PetrosA

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Re: Blog #98 Micro$oft's Patented "Instaload" battery holders
« Reply #12 on: July 06, 2010, 02:17:11 am »
A weakness I see in the design:

- Layout will be limited to side-by-side, one row deep which will force product design around the battery holder. If you go two deep, you're back to having to match polarity, at least on pairs and many products use a two-deep layout.

I'm stumped by one thing, namely how to get a circuit like this to work with more than two batteries in series. I've been sketching different variations for about 20 minutes and I can't see any way to make the loop without shorting it out at some point once you go to three batteries. Anyone else know how it's done?
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Offline EEVblog

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Re: Blog #98 Micro$oft's Patented "Instaload" battery holders
« Reply #13 on: July 06, 2010, 02:49:55 am »
I'm stumped by one thing, namely how to get a circuit like this to work with more than two batteries in series. I've been sketching different variations for about 20 minutes and I can't see any way to make the loop without shorting it out at some point once you go to three batteries. Anyone else know how it's done?

Each cell has it's own pair of dual polarity contacts and hence it's own + and - output, so you simply wire them in series just like you would any other single cell battery holder.

As you said, you can't go two cells in series end-on-end as in common is 2+ cell cylindrical torches for example.

Dave.
 

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Re: Blog #98 Micro$oft's Patented "Instaload" battery holders
« Reply #14 on: July 06, 2010, 04:38:26 am »
I been keeping tabs on Microsoft and actually there first product to use this Insta-Load is going to be there Mice, Wireless Keyboards, IIS 8 Server Loading Control. Actually there will be software written by a few Microsoft people, and battery loading will eventually take the laptop market, assuming that apple keeps off.

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Offline saturation

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Re: Blog #98 Micro$oft's Patented "Instaload" battery holders
« Reply #15 on: July 06, 2010, 11:42:32 am »

I can see production houses with Microsoft products forced into using these as part of their specification, so at least there will be some demand for these products.

But you suggest laptops will work off AA batteries in the near future?  As is, mice, KB do use AA or AAA so I can see that conversion instantly, but laptops I can't see happen as individual Li cells cost more than the total cells needed in a battery pack, and no strides have been made in power consumption for real laptops in the past 10 years due to the LCD and hard drive needs.  Some netbooks maybe, but they are quite slow to run 10 hours on standard Li packs.

If you have an URL which mentions laptops please post.


I been keeping tabs on Microsoft and actually there first product to use this Insta-Load is going to be there Mice, Wireless Keyboards, IIS 8 Server Loading Control. Actually there will be software written by a few Microsoft people, and battery loading will eventually take the laptop market, assuming that apple keeps off.

~~~~Great Dave~~~~
« Last Edit: July 06, 2010, 11:46:22 am by saturation »
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avrfreaks

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Re: Blog #98 Micro$oft's Patented "Instaload" battery holders
« Reply #16 on: July 06, 2010, 03:59:24 pm »
Here is a few links: There main market is keyboards + mice but using a Solid State drive and more digital; they can work on the netbooks first and work there way up the line. More are more are coming and jumping in like Sony + Dell Laptop Company.

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2010/jul10/07-01instaloadpr.mspx

http://www.microsoft.com/hardware/mouseandkeyboard/licensing/instaloadoverview.mspx

http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/34072/microsoft-plan-change-battery-insertion
 

Offline Simon

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Re: Blog #98 Micro$oft's Patented "Instaload" battery holders
« Reply #17 on: July 06, 2010, 05:16:39 pm »
It's a solution to a nonproblem and really if we make the world fool proof all the future generations will be is fools !

As for M$ having been so great and got so far yea: they started on stolen code forced their way to market by making everything incompatible with their own stuff, using crap code and getting developers to use their own crap programming environments so they are tied up to M$ (ever tried running a .Net program..... ? it is so ssslllo0oooooooooooooowww).

now they are getting bright engineering ideas ? gah humbug the only thins M$ knows how to do is dictate, oh and by the way they trust their own crappy OSes so much that they have Linux firewalls at M$ hahahaha I've never known such a joke of a company, yea they are great, so are corrupt politicians !!!
 

Offline saturation

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Re: Blog #98 Micro$oft's Patented "Instaload" battery holders
« Reply #18 on: July 06, 2010, 06:46:50 pm »
Thanks!  I used an old DOS based 'palmtop' that was powered by AA and it worked very well for early modem-BBS things, I got about 6-8h of battery life.  But haven't seen anything like those since. 




Here is a few links: There main market is keyboards + mice but using a Solid State drive and more digital; they can work on the netbooks first and work there way up the line. More are more are coming and jumping in like Sony + Dell Laptop Company.

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2010/jul10/07-01instaloadpr.mspx

http://www.microsoft.com/hardware/mouseandkeyboard/licensing/instaloadoverview.mspx

http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/34072/microsoft-plan-change-battery-insertion
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Offline charliex

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Re: Blog #98 Micro$oft's Patented "Instaload" battery holders
« Reply #19 on: July 06, 2010, 06:48:29 pm »
Thanks!  I used an old DOS based 'palmtop' that was powered by AA and it worked very well for early modem-BBS things, I got about 6-8h of battery life.  But haven't seen anything like those since. 

http://www.open-pandora.org/
 

Offline saturation

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Re: Blog #98 Micro$oft's Patented "Instaload" battery holders
« Reply #20 on: July 06, 2010, 07:09:24 pm »
Thanks!  Alas, while its likely to be a new palmtop it doesn't use AA batteries.

Details here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandora_%28console%29



Thanks!  I used an old DOS based 'palmtop' that was powered by AA and it worked very well for early modem-BBS things, I got about 6-8h of battery life.  But haven't seen anything like those since. 

http://www.open-pandora.org/

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Offline EEVblog

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Re: Blog #98 Micro$oft's Patented "Instaload" battery holders
« Reply #21 on: July 06, 2010, 09:52:04 pm »
My Psion 5 takes AA batteries.
As does my old Tandy 100!

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Offline PetrosA

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Re: Blog #98 Micro$oft's Patented "Instaload" battery holders
« Reply #22 on: July 06, 2010, 10:41:09 pm »

Each cell has it's own pair of dual polarity contacts and hence it's own + and - output, so you simply wire them in series just like you would any other single cell battery holder.

As you said, you can't go two cells in series end-on-end as in common is 2+ cell cylindrical torches for example.

Dave.

That's just it... I can see how to do it if the batteries are wired parallel, which maintains the single cell voltage, but if you wanted 4 cells in series for 6V or 6 cells for 9V, will this invention work or will the products be limited to 1.5V at some greater A/hr rating?
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Offline EEVblog

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Re: Blog #98 Micro$oft's Patented "Instaload" battery holders
« Reply #23 on: July 06, 2010, 10:43:47 pm »

Each cell has it's own pair of dual polarity contacts and hence it's own + and - output, so you simply wire them in series just like you would any other single cell battery holder.

As you said, you can't go two cells in series end-on-end as in common is 2+ cell cylindrical torches for example.

Dave.

That's just it... I can see how to do it if the batteries are wired parallel, which maintains the single cell voltage, but if you wanted 4 cells in series for 6V or 6 cells for 9V, will this invention work or will the products be limited to 1.5V at some greater A/hr rating?

It works either way, series or parallel, as I said. But it requires a set of these dual polarity contacts at each end.
These contacts do exactly as they say, they give you +/- output terminals whichever way you insert the battery. So you are free to wire them in series or parallel after that.

Dave.
 

Offline PetrosA

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Re: Blog #98 Micro$oft's Patented "Instaload" battery holders
« Reply #24 on: July 07, 2010, 02:27:17 am »

Each cell has it's own pair of dual polarity contacts and hence it's own + and - output, so you simply wire them in series just like you would any other single cell battery holder.

As you said, you can't go two cells in series end-on-end as in common is 2+ cell cylindrical torches for example.

Dave.

That's just it... I can see how to do it if the batteries are wired parallel, which maintains the single cell voltage, but if you wanted 4 cells in series for 6V or 6 cells for 9V, will this invention work or will the products be limited to 1.5V at some greater A/hr rating?

It works either way, series or parallel, as I said. But it requires a set of these dual polarity contacts at each end.
These contacts do exactly as they say, they give you +/- output terminals whichever way you insert the battery. So you are free to wire them in series or parallel after that.

Dave.

Man do I feel stupid. I must have been overthinking the whole thing while I was doing my drawing and I got blocked. I was trying to imagine the whole thing as a series with the final positive and negative leads coming off of the first module instead of one from the first, one from the last. In my defense, I do work mostly with AC ;)
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