EEVblog #751 - How To Debunk A Product (The Batteriser)

[AmmoJammo]

So, 5 days before everyone is meant to have them, they admit they don't even have a functioning unit? 

[Fungus]

We expected our final IC to be ready and out of the fabrication facility (FAB) over a month ago. However the IC is still being worked on by our engineering team

Film at 11.

[jancumps]

well this comes as no surprise!

interesting though they do reveal the prototype had a maximum 500mA output limit

Dear Indiegogo Supporters,

Our team has been hard at work completing final development of Batteriser and moving into initial production. At this time, we have encountered a slight delay relating to the manufacturing of the Batteriser's integrated circuit (IC).

Our earlier proof of concept prototype IC could efficiently deliver 500 milliamps of steady state current. However, as many applications need higher current driving capabilities, we modified our Integrated Circuit (IC) design to make it capable of the higher level of current driving capability. We expected our final IC to be ready and out of the fabrication facility (FAB) over a month ago. However, due to a drift in process parameters, the IC is still being worked on by our engineering team, in order to be ready for mass production. Fortunately, we have been working diligently with the FAB to address and fix the issues responsible for this delay, and we are anxiously waiting to receive our final IC in the coming weeks. We are committed to producing your Batterisers with the highest quality standards.

As you might recall, this is the last component necessary to start assembling and shipping Batterisers. At this time, we will need to delay our estimated ship date, but we are doing everything possible to ship Batterisers to you and your family as soon as possible, and hopefully before Christmas.

As part of our commitment to shipping to our supporters as early as possible, we have already made arrangements to have the first production batch shipped via air from our manufacturing partners in Asia, therefore significantly expediting the overall shipping process. Although we will incur significantly more costs by air shipping, it will be well worth the reward of making our Indiegogo supporters happy.

We sinerely apologize for the delay and for any inconvenience it may cause you. We couldn't be more thankful for your support, and hope to have Batterisers in your hands as soon as possible! Thank you and please enjoy a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Best Wishes,
Bob Roohparvar
CEO | Batteroo, Inc.

Doesn't that invalidate the FCC certifications?

[g.lewarne]

"hopefully" before Christmas.....2016   

So they have gone over a month since their last update when they were "working hard" with their 3rd party logistics to get them all out to investors, then another update a few weeks ago about them being almost ready, just needing final assembly, now to engineering and fabrication delays.  It seems kinda backwards to me, like these things should be announced in reverse order.

[WN1X]

Doesn't that invalidate the FCC certifications?

Indeed, it would. A moot point considering this product will probably never actually ship 

[AmmoJammo]

If they don't even have the final design yet, there's zero chance they'll get them out this year.

Its now gotten to the point that they don't even have the product they ran the indiegogo campaign for, so should be refunding people, and starting again from scratch, or just scrapping the whole thing.

[FrankBuss]

Doesn't that invalidate the FCC certifications?

They did the EMC test with a 1k load resistor. They can be pretty sure that the new IC will pass this test, too

[Jay_Diddy_B]

Hi Group,

I am going to demonstrate that the specification that Batteriser is trying to achieve is not physically possible. There is no need to consider the IC at all.

Battery Measurement

First I used my HPIB controlled Load and DMMs to characterise a AA Cell. I used a Duracell Procell. This is a top tier battery.
Here is a picture of the equipment:



The discharging was interrupted periodically to measure the Open Circuit Voltage and the ESR of the battery.



This data is consistent with data published by various battery manufacturers.

LTspice Model

The data from the battery measurements was transferred to an LTspice model. The model includes tables for OCV and ESR.

I have arranged the model to step from 90% charged to 10% charged in 20% steps. At each step I have swept the load resistance from 2 Ohms to 0.1 Ohms. I have plotted a graph that shows peak power in Watts that can be obtained from the cell. (I use the word charged even though the alkaline battery is a primary cell. Think of the cell as being chemically charged.)






Maximum Power Theorem

The Maximum Power Theorem states that the maximum power will be delivered to the load when the load resistance (impedance) is equal in magnitude to the source resistance (impedance). In this case this happens when the load resistance is equal to the ESR. And at that point half the power is dissipated in the ESR and half in the load.

Observation

In order to get 1.5W from the cell, the cell must have greater than 70% of capacity left.

Regards,

Jay_Diddy_B

[EEVblog]

Screen cap for posterity

[Jay_Diddy_B]

Hi,

This is the most incredible, as in unbelievable, part of that message:

However, due to a drift in process parameters, the IC is still being worked on by our engineering team, in order to be ready for mass production.


Semiconductor fabs are absolutely fanatical about the consistency of their processes. It is most important thing they do. They want to make identical parts, day after day, week after week and year after year.

Regards,

Jay_Diddy_B

[EEVblog]

Their latest updated translated:

Dear Indiegogo Supporters,
Our team has been hard at work completing final development of Batteriser and moving into initial production.

Still don't have a working product even though we are at the end of the month it's supposed to ship, and we've been working on this for 3 years. It's seriously embaressing, we are supposed to be experts and the best in the business, and know more about batteries than every other engineer on the planet.

At this time, we have encountered a slight delay relating to the manufacturing of the Batteriser's integrated circuit (IC).

This is huge and there will be massive delays, but it would be foolish to admit that.

Our earlier proof of concept prototype IC could efficiently deliver 500 milliamps of steady state current.

We took everyone's money on the promise that the EE work had been done and we were ready to go into production. But that wasn't true.

However, as many applications need higher current driving capabilities, we modified our Integrated Circuit (IC) design to make it capable of the higher level of current driving capability.

We spend many years developing this and getting patents, and only now just realised this. We aren't very smart.

We expected our final IC to be ready and out of the fabrication facility (FAB) over a month ago. However, due to a drift in process parameters, the IC is still being worked on by our engineering team, in order to be ready for mass production.

It's really awesome to be able to blame IC production, and it sounds highly technical which is a nice bonus.

Fortunately, we have been working diligently with the FAB to address and fix the issues responsible for this delay, and we are anxiously waiting to receive our final IC in the coming weeks. We are committed to producing your Batterisers with the highest quality standards.

We have no real clue what we are doing, but we really care about you, the customer. This is a really good thing, trust us.

As you might recall, this is the last component necessary to start assembling and shipping Batterisers.

It's the only active component in the whole thing, and we should (and promised we) have perfected it years ago before the campaign even started. But we completely screwed up and only want to tell you now.

At this time, we will need to delay our estimated ship date, but we are doing everything possible to ship Batterisers to you and your family as soon as possible, and hopefully before Christmas.

There is no way in hell we can deliver before Christmas, but we care about you, so we are giving you some false hope.
We still have to get it re-tested and evaluated (without screwing up), get it FCC tested (something we forgot about before), get new pre-production prototypes made, evaluate and test them, then push the production button. All this really does take a lot of time, many many months, but you don't need to know that.
This buys us another month before we have to update you again.

As part of our commitment to shipping to our supporters as early as possible, we have already made arrangements to have the first production batch shipped via air from our manufacturing partners in Asia, therefore significantly expediting the overall shipping process. Although we will incur significantly more costs by air shipping, it will be well worth the reward of making our Indiegogo supporters happy.

We never had a hope in hell of ever meeting the shipping date, and don't want to ship you the 500mA units because that would mean people would be able to test it and we can't continue to claim that they are full of BS.

We aren't going to show you any photos of the 500mA chips we must have had made in order to meet the promised dates we have previously made, because, well, just because, ok.

We sinerely apologize for the delay and for any inconvenience it may cause you. We couldn't be more thankful for your support, and hope to have Batterisers in your hands as soon as possible! Thank you and please enjoy a wonderful Thanksgiving!

We still haven't found a huge retail chain like Walmart who are willing to buy these things to make us filthy rich. Nor have we have anyone we can sell the company to yet. But we certainly hope that will happen before we have to actually ship units!
We'll update you in another month and thank you for your support once again, and will wish you a merry xmas.

[EEVblog]

Doesn't that invalidate the FCC certifications?

They did the EMC test with a 1k load resistor. They can be pretty sure that the new IC will pass this test, too

Good point! No problem with FCC then 
 

[EEVblog]

So they have gone over a month since their last update when they were "working hard" with their 3rd party logistics to get them all out to investors, then another update a few weeks ago about them being almost ready, just needing final assembly, now to engineering and fabrication delays.  It seems kinda backwards to me, like these things should be announced in reverse order.

Which meant that they must have had 10's of thousands of the "500mA" chip already made and ready to go.
Why not ship some 500mA units for those that agree to take them?

[EEVblog]

well this comes as no surprise!
interesting though they do reveal the prototype had a maximum 500mA output limit

Which after 3 years of work on this by some of the best and experienced guys in the power business, a professor no less, and a holder of 500 patents no less, and raising serious VC money and producing fantastic  and impressive prototypes and forming a company to produce it, they now admit they have no clue what they were doing about the most basic spec on a product like this
Incredible, absolutely incredible.
They are laughing stock 

[EEVblog]

So, 5 days before everyone is meant to have them, they admit they don't even have a functioning unit? 

Yep, because couldn't even get a basic spec like maximum current right.
Comedy GOLD!

[Bud]

At this time, we will need to delay our estimated ship date, but we are doing everything possible to ship Batterisers to you and your family as soon as possible, and hopefully before Christmas.

There is no way in hell we can deliver before Christmas, but we care about you, so we are giving you some false hope.

And dear customers just please check the Chinese holidays calendar and do not bother us until March

[Jay_Diddy_B]

Hi,
I identified some of these issues when I built my imitation Batteriser that is documented in these messages:



https://www.eevblog.com/forum/projects/new-project-a-batterruser/msg739648/#msg739648

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/projects/new-project-a-batterruser/msg739968/#msg739968

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/projects/new-project-a-batterruser/msg740380/#msg740380

This was on August 26th, 3 months ago.

McBryce said at the time:

You do realise that you have already done more R&D on this than the Batteriser team managed in 5 years?

McBryce.

Regards,

Jay_Diddy_B

[LabSpokane]

I'm still betting that in addition to the obvious tech problems, they have a problem with order volumes, as in their current order volume is an order of magnitude or more below what was expected and Batteroo's suppliers and CM have correspondingly raised their prices.  If Batteroo is genuinely using a custom IC, they may even not be able to come to terms with the MOQ necessary for a production run. 

[Galenbo]

... shipped via air from our manufacturing partners in Asia, therefore significantly expediting the overall shipping process...

All their environmental claims just flew away.

[Brutte]

h) Sink the Batterizer with Roohparvar onboard, before the captain abandons ship.

[d-smes]

Maximum Power Theorem

The Maximum Power Theorem states that the maximum power will be delivered to the load when the load resistance (impedance) is equal in magnitude to the source resistance (impedance). In this case this happens when the load resistance is equal to the ESR. And at that point half the power is dissipated in the ESR and half in the load.

Observation

In order to get 1.5W from the cell, the cell must have greater than 70% of capacity left.

I thought max. power theorem was true only for linear circuits.  Once you insert a DC-DC boost converter, can't peak power be much higher for a given SOC?   Isn't this how Batteriser utilizes the "80% remaining capacity" in "dead" batteries?  Or is that your point?

If you add a ideal DC-DC converter to your simulation, does it show 800 u% (micro percent) more runtime? 

[AndyC_772]

I thought max. power theorem was true only for linear circuits.  Once you insert a DC-DC boost converter, can't peak power be much higher for a given SOC?

Imagine for a moment that the boost converter is just another part of the load - which it is, of course.

Meanwhile, the battery is still just a two terminal device, which we can model as a voltage source in series with a resistor.

The maximum power theory still applies to the battery, regardless of what the load consists of, and maximum power is still achieved when the equivalent resistance of the load equals the ESR of the battery.

Adding a dc-dc converter may well cause a different amount of current to be drawn from the battery under a given set of conditions than would be drawn without it, but it can't affect the maximum power that the battery is physically capable of providing.

It's also worth noting a consequence of the maximum power theory, which is that at max power, the system of [battery + load] is only delivering power with 50% efficiency, with the other 50% being wasted as heat in the battery. Drawing more power from the battery actually decreases the total energy available.

[helius]

A boost voltage converter can increase the voltage going to the load, but not the power. It actually must reduce the maximum available power by switching losses. Accumulating charge in the converter circuit for power peaks won't help unless it's synchronous with the load, which rules out devices like the Batteriser.

[AmmoJammo]

If the original design could only do 500ma at 1.5volt output... what input voltage would it have needed to even do the 500ma? Obviously, it wouldn't still do 500ma down to whatever voltage they claimed the butteriser to work down to...

[Godzil]

A boost voltage converter can increase the voltage going to the load, but not the power. It actually must reduce the maximum available power by switching losses. Accumulating charge in the converter circuit for power peaks won't help unless it's synchronous with the load, which rules out devices like the Batteriser.

That's simple, you can't increase the power only decrease it
1W at the output side? it will be a bit more than 1W on the input side

So for 1W, if the battery is at 0.8V you will need at least 1.25A to provide 1W on the other side   (a bit more in fact as there is some loss during the step-up conversion process )