Author Topic: EEVblog #751 - How To Debunk A Product (The Batteriser)  (Read 3059734 times)

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Offline miguelvp

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Re: EEVblog #751 - How To Debunk A Product (The Batteriser)
« Reply #125 on: June 06, 2015, 11:08:10 pm »
I posted the last two patents on another thread regarding this:

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/20150056476.pdf

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/20150048785.pdf

But I didn't read them in detail but the voltages setting is not set on the patent, I think they refer to it as a target voltage.
 

Offline zapta

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Re: EEVblog #751 - How To Debunk A Product (The Batteriser)
« Reply #126 on: June 07, 2015, 12:12:07 am »
But I didn't read them in detail but the voltages setting is not set on the patent, I think they refer to it as a target voltage.

Another patent that comes to mind is having some smart, history and heuristics that determine the target voltage dynamically.
 

Offline DanielS

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Re: EEVblog #751 - How To Debunk A Product (The Batteriser)
« Reply #127 on: June 07, 2015, 03:03:39 am »
I have a better idea, an actual improvement on this product. Instead of having it supply 1.5V 100% of the time, just let the DC-DC converter bypassed until the battery drops below, say 1.1V, then start the boost and keep the voltage on 1.1V until it drops dead.
If your device has a cut-off voltage of 1.3V and you wait for 1.1V to start boosting, then you wasted your time and money since booster will never engage.

Where this thing would be most useful is to make devices with high cut-off work with single-cell NiMH when they normally wouldn't, or at least not for long, because their cut-off voltage is close to full-charge voltage on NiMH, particularly older gadgets which may have been designed to operate off direct battery voltage.
 

Online westfw

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Re: EEVblog #751 - How To Debunk A Product (The Batteriser)
« Reply #128 on: June 07, 2015, 06:32:16 am »
Quote
It is not a scam. It just the usual BS marketing numbers
I think it's sad that we make excuses like that.  "usual BS marketing marketing" ARE "scams."
 

Offline AndyC_772

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Re: EEVblog #751 - How To Debunk A Product (The Batteriser)
« Reply #129 on: June 07, 2015, 06:51:58 am »
Do we have any idea what the quiescent power consumption of this dc-dc converter is meant to be?

It needs to maintain 1.5V not just into a heavy load, but also a very light one. Most battery powered devices spend most of their time switched off, or at least, in a standby mode where their consumption is microamps. Draw more than a few uA when the device is off, and you're doing more harm than good.

The marketing, and perhaps the application itself, isn't doing justice to what could be some genuinely worthwhile technology. Perhaps they do indeed have a notably efficient, small dc-dc converter, which is cheap, robust, and has extremely low standby power use? That in itself is a really useful piece of technology, just not for use in this particular product.

Offline mikeselectricstuff

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Re: EEVblog #751 - How To Debunk A Product (The Batteriser)
« Reply #130 on: June 07, 2015, 07:17:05 am »
Do we have any idea what the quiescent power consumption of this dc-dc converter is meant to be?

It needs to maintain 1.5V not just into a heavy load, but also a very light one. Most battery powered devices spend most of their time switched off, or at least, in a standby mode where their consumption is microamps. Draw more than a few uA when the device is off, and you're doing more harm than good.

The marketing, and perhaps the application itself, isn't doing justice to what could be some genuinely worthwhile technology. Perhaps they do indeed have a notably efficient, small dc-dc converter, which is cheap, robust, and has extremely low standby power use? That in itself is a really useful piece of technology, just not for use in this particular product.
Based on common devices, likely to be somewhere between 5-20uA, but this will be drawn at the output voltage, so scale this by the step-up ratio & efficiency
If we say 30uA, this represents roughly 80Khrs, about 10 years.
Of course some devices will draw some current in "off" mode for various reasons, so "shelf" life would be reduces, but for AAs upwards, probably not enough to be a major issue. 

 
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Offline mcinque

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Re: EEVblog #751 - How To Debunk A Product (The Batteriser)
« Reply #131 on: June 07, 2015, 08:34:58 am »
It is not a scam.

Legally here the word "scam" is used to describe something that makes you obtain an advantage by using artifice and deception.

Telling that a product does something huge (while it does not) only to obtain an advantage (to have your crowdsourcing campaign funded, for example), technically and legally, here it's considered a scam.

Of course you're right: there's nothing new in this kind of marketing, we can see this "technique" used in every single country of the planet, but this 800% improvement is a little bit cheeky, don't you? :)
 

Online mikerj

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Re: EEVblog #751 - How To Debunk A Product (The Batteriser)
« Reply #132 on: June 07, 2015, 10:06:55 am »
Running a battery at 100 mA and 1.5 volt down to say 1V then put the gizmo on... means you will take 150 mA (in a perfect world) out of the poor battery, which is depleted already.

With increasing Ri this thing will go down hill real fast  :-DD

Wrong. Look at the most efficient constant power curve of the Duracell AA battery. There is no significant time curve dip below 1V, down to 0.7V.
The internal battery resistance doesn't increase until below that voltage.

At constant power the voltage is pretty much in free-fall by the time it's hit 1v, even for fairly small loads.

 

Offline Wytnucls

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Re: EEVblog #751 - How To Debunk A Product (The Batteriser)
« Reply #133 on: June 07, 2015, 10:49:30 am »
The curve published by Duracell for 100mW is much flatter and goes below 0.8V.
At 1V, the load will draw 100mA and 170mA at the claimed 0.6V threshold, to maintain that power.
10 to 20% battery life extension seems plausible at that power level.

 

Offline MrAl

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Re: EEVblog #751 - How To Debunk A Product (The Batteriser)
« Reply #134 on: June 07, 2015, 10:51:01 am »
So my camera eats a new battery every eight minutes.

I put this on a dead battery get an hour of run time?

That's what they're saying right?

Hi,

That is what it is SUPPOSED to do, but there are too many unanswered specifications we still dont know yet, like the max current output for the Battery Thingizer.
Cameras need a decent amount of current, and it is not known yet if the new device can put out the required current that the camera would need.  Typically i think some cameras could benefit from a product like this, but only if it is able to put out enought current to satisfy the needs of the camera.  Right now because of the required size of the new device (that must fit over an AA cell and be able to still fit inside the battery compartment) it is very doubtful that it can work with high current devices, even when that current is just a pulse.  So it may only work with low current devices like remote controls, which may not really need the device anyway.

We have to wait and see what happens when someone gets one of these and tests it since the company that makes them only publishes specs they want you to know, and dont publish any specs they dont want you to know.
 

Offline MrAl

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Re: EEVblog #751 - How To Debunk A Product (The Batteriser)
« Reply #135 on: June 07, 2015, 10:55:12 am »
The curve published by Duracell for 100mW is much flatter and goes below 0.8V.
At 1V, the load will draw 100mA and 170mA at the claimed 0.6V threshold, to maintain that power.
10 to 20% battery life extension seems plausible at that power level.



Hello,

I used a similar curve to calculate an approximate 100 percent gain at a cutoff of 1.3 volts.  We KNOW that a boost circuit can do this, but the real problem is we dont know ALL the specs of this thing yet, like can it do a 1 amp load for example?
For most real life applications a boost circuit is designed AROUND a given application.  It's not designed for just ANY ol' application because it has to be optimized for that application, and that means the choice of parts like MOSFET, inductor, etc.  There's no choice allowed here as the circuit you buy would be the same one i buy, and we might have entirely different products to use it in which draw significantly different currents.
 

Online mikerj

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Re: EEVblog #751 - How To Debunk A Product (The Batteriser)
« Reply #136 on: June 07, 2015, 12:11:16 pm »
The curve published by Duracell

The chart I posted was straight out of the standard Duracell MN1500 datasheet..  The "Plus Power" and "Ultra power" variants all look very similar, though Duracell have cunningly changed the power values so they can't be directly compared.
 

Offline AndyC_772

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Re: EEVblog #751 - How To Debunk A Product (The Batteriser)
« Reply #137 on: June 07, 2015, 12:14:58 pm »
Based on common devices, likely to be somewhere between 5-20uA, but this will be drawn at the output voltage, so scale this by the step-up ratio & efficiency
That's better than I expected. Some combination of pulse skipping and a decent sized output cap to reduce the ripple voltage, presumably...?

Offline mikeselectricstuff

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Re: EEVblog #751 - How To Debunk A Product (The Batteriser)
« Reply #138 on: June 07, 2015, 12:34:40 pm »
Based on common devices, likely to be somewhere between 5-20uA, but this will be drawn at the output voltage, so scale this by the step-up ratio & efficiency
That's better than I expected. Some combination of pulse skipping and a decent sized output cap to reduce the ripple voltage, presumably...?
Yes - they generally have a pulse-skip mode. The big catch is that the front-page quiescent current spec is from the output, which can be a significant issue if boosting to a significantly higher voltage like 5V
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Offline mrkev

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Re: EEVblog #751 - How To Debunk A Product (The Batteriser)
« Reply #139 on: June 07, 2015, 03:53:36 pm »
As someone who worked in shop with electronics, I came across only few products that couldn't be powered from rechargeable batteries.
I would say that it was probably more common few years back, when they didn't have devices that could run on that low voltage (like OA in some walk-men type device) but it's pretty much only case of cheap electronics now...
 

Offline Poe

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Re: EEVblog #751 - How To Debunk A Product (The Batteriser)
« Reply #140 on: June 07, 2015, 04:32:02 pm »
The curve published by Duracell for 100mW is much flatter and goes below 0.8V.
At 1V, the load will draw 100mA and 170mA at the claimed 0.6V threshold, to maintain that power.
10 to 20% battery life extension seems plausible at that power level.



It's a shorter graph, but I'm not so certain those lines are flatter.  Since the internal resistance increases as the battery is discharged, the cutoff voltage is a function of how much current you're pulling.
 

Offline calzap

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Re: EEVblog #751 - How To Debunk A Product (The Batteriser)
« Reply #141 on: June 07, 2015, 05:08:14 pm »
1. What's the going rate for a professor?  In the 70s one asked me for $2000 (under the table) in order for me to sell my product at his school and I did not want to pay it, so I lost my business.  And to be honest to this day, I wonder where I would be if I had paid him the money.  Professors are people and like people, some can be bought.

As a retired professor, I can attest that with regard to ethics, there is a broad spectrum in the academic ranks.  Actually, the majority are quite ethical.   Most common conflict is requiring their students to buy a textbook that they wrote.  At the least, they should refund the royalty per textbook to each of their students who buy it.  Some are for sale to do endorsements.  Usually these are more senior profs who have a reputation in their field, so are attractive endorsers for companies.  And being tenured, they don't have to be too concerned about the opinion of their colleagues and department head.

Some naive young (and not so young) profs get suckered into doing endorsements without realizing how it will be used for marketing.  Happened to me as an assistant prof.  There was a commercial analytic lab that contacted me suggesting that my lab and theirs compare results on some samples.  I agreed.  The results were very close, and I sent them a letter stating that was the case.  A few weeks later, quotes from my letter appeared in their ads.  Learned to be careful after that.

Mike in California

 

 

Offline Wytnucls

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Re: EEVblog #751 - How To Debunk A Product (The Batteriser)
« Reply #142 on: June 07, 2015, 07:26:02 pm »
I just finished running a discharge test of a single Duracell AA battery, between 0.7V and 0.6V, with a constant resistive load (5.6 Ohms + test leads).
Initial discharge current was 100mA and at the end, 90mA. It took 1 hour and 5 minutes for the 0.1V discharge.
Assuming the discharge slope is constant between 1V and 0.6V, that would be 4 hours of extra battery time. Depending on the converter efficiency at 100mA, that time could be reduced significantly.
Those figures seem to tie up with the Duracell graph.
There doesn't seem to be any significant rise in internal battery resistance above 0.6V.

Test jig: Keithley 2000 measuring voltage, Rigol DM3058E measuring current on 2A range and 10W 5.6 Ohm resistor.

« Last Edit: June 07, 2015, 07:38:10 pm by Wytnucls »
 

Offline Mybetoostnedforths

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Re: EEVblog #751 - How To Debunk A Product (The Batteriser)
« Reply #143 on: June 07, 2015, 09:25:30 pm »
Hi from Sweden!
I just thought of something crazy aight.
Consider this
If applying the gizmo to your battery provides constant voltage at 1.5, by converting the stuff.
And if as Dave says, screws up battery-indicators,
wouldn't that mean that the indicator would just go to 100% (as in 1.5 volt), making it seem like it's full? As seen in their marketing video at 26 seconds.
That'd fool consumers into thinking it actually works, since it's full. Atleast for a while.

But hell, I'm just a very-low-time electronics hobbyist, and I sure as hell could just be wrong.
Regards
Mybetoostnedforths
 

Offline 0xdeadbeef

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Re: EEVblog #751 - How To Debunk A Product (The Batteriser)
« Reply #144 on: June 07, 2015, 11:34:47 pm »
I just finished running a discharge test of a single Duracell AA battery, between 0.7V and 0.6V, with a constant resistive load (5.6 Ohms + test leads).
Initial discharge current was 100mA and at the end, 90mA. It took 1 hour and 5 minutes for the 0.1V discharge.
Assuming the discharge slope is constant between 1V and 0.6V, that would be 4 hours of extra battery time. Depending on the converter efficiency at 100mA, that time could be reduced significantly.
Well, 1st of all 400mAH is 20% of a 2000mAH cell. Not quite 800%.
Also keep in mind that even at ideal efficiency, the boost up of the voltage to 1.5V means that 100mA drawn from the boost up converter doesn't mean 100mA are drawn from the battery. Actually, at 0.7V more than 200mA are drawn which raises to 250mA at 0.6V. Obviously, considering a realistic efficiency, the current would be even higher. And higher currents means negative impact on battery life.
Trying is the first step towards failure - Homer J. Simpson
 

Offline Muttley Snickers

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Re: EEVblog #751 - How To Debunk A Product (The Batteriser)
« Reply #145 on: June 08, 2015, 12:07:58 am »

Either technically or morally the device appears to fall into a peculiar category.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasitism

Muttley
 

Online EEVblogTopic starter

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Re: EEVblog #751 - How To Debunk A Product (The Batteriser)
« Reply #146 on: June 08, 2015, 01:00:17 am »
Due to popular request I have a shorter and perhaps more digestible text based article here:
http://www.eevblog.com/2015/06/07/the-batteriser-explained/
 

Offline Smokey

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Re: EEVblog #751 - How To Debunk A Product (The Batteriser)
« Reply #147 on: June 08, 2015, 05:17:18 am »
Nice text article.  I'm interested to see if you get more exposure from that than the video.  I would think it would be way easier for a news site to use the text article as a source than pointing people to watch a video.  The text is more quotable and makes a better static reference.
 

Offline BradC

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Re: EEVblog #751 - How To Debunk A Product (The Batteriser)
« Reply #148 on: June 08, 2015, 05:52:53 am »
The section on rechargeables has me wondering. The theory on discharge down to 1V is to make sure the battery is not discharged to the point where individual weak cells can be reverse-charged. I've never heard any evidence to state that discharging a single cell to 0V will damage it, and in fact it is sometimes recommended to store NiCd & NiMh cells that have been properly discharged with shorting bars attached. I've certainly never damaged a cell by flattening it completely in isolation.

Discounting all the other failings of the product, if it can stop a rechargeable cell being reverse charged it's a bonus.
 

Offline Wytnucls

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Re: EEVblog #751 - How To Debunk A Product (The Batteriser)
« Reply #149 on: June 08, 2015, 06:55:54 am »
I just finished running a discharge test of a single Duracell AA battery, between 0.7V and 0.6V, with a constant resistive load (5.6 Ohms + test leads).
Initial discharge current was 100mA and at the end, 90mA. It took 1 hour and 5 minutes for the 0.1V discharge.
Assuming the discharge slope is constant between 1V and 0.6V, that would be 4 hours of extra battery time. Depending on the converter efficiency at 100mA, that time could be reduced significantly.
Well, 1st of all 400mAH is 20% of a 2000mAH cell. Not quite 800%.
Also keep in mind that even at ideal efficiency, the boost up of the voltage to 1.5V means that 100mA drawn from the boost up converter doesn't mean 100mA are drawn from the battery. Actually, at 0.7V more than 200mA are drawn which raises to 250mA at 0.6V. Obviously, considering a realistic efficiency, the current would be even higher. And higher currents means negative impact on battery life.
Well, first of all, I never said that 800% is a realistic figure.
I think 10 to 20% is plausible, depending on final efficiency. Assuming an efficiency of 80~90%, with a current draw of 100mA, 2~3 hours at 40-50mA is still useful for some devices. A multimeter, for instance, only uses 10mA of current on average. A couple of sleeves would be easier to carry around, than extra batteries. Definitely not a huge market, but a market nevertheless.
I don't know how the device works, but the IC could reduce final voltage to 1.2~1.3V at the low end and still have most devices working at that voltage.

 


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