design our own working battery life extender

[fahraynk]

Since we have seen now that products work with a lower battery voltage, cant we design a working one ?

Basically... it would have to lower the voltage of the battery to slow the current so that products work on their minimum voltage rating. This should cause the products to work for their minimum current for their entire life span ?

So like, a 1.1 volt voltage regulator in series with the battery ? and the total power saved throughout the life of the battery should be 1/R * int([V(t)^2 - 1.1^2] dt) where V(t) is the battery voltage function over time.

Thoughts?

[BurtyB]

Thoughts?

A tired monkey is sad.

[mikerj]

Since we have seen now that products work with a lower battery voltage, cant we design a working one ?

Basically... it would have to lower the voltage of the battery to slow the current so that products work on their minimum voltage rating. This should cause the products to work for their minimum current for their entire life span ?

What about those products that use a DC-DC converter (many of them from the research in the Batteriser threads)?  Lowering the voltage will then simply raise the current demand.

The problem is not down to engineering flaws within Batteriser (though there may well be some), it's simply that the entire concept is flawed.  There may be niche products that you can extend the life by reducing the voltage, but those are the kind of products that would very likely work less well at the lower voltage, e.g. an unregulated LED flashlight, or one with a conventional filament lamp would consume less power at a lower voltage, but would also be less bright.

[free_electron]

[NiHaoMike]

For unregulated LED flashlights, a simple inline resistor will do the trick. On the really cheap ones that run the LEDs so hard that the efficiency really drops off, you can even prolong battery life by quite a bit without a very noticeable drop in brightness.

[tszaboo]

Rechargeable battery
Up to 800 times the battery capacity.
Doh!

[SaabFAN]

How about the Saitek Eco Charger? http://www.saitek.com/manuals/eco.pdf
We used one on our sailing boat for the radio and the GPS (Small Handheld device made by Philips around 1991/92 that used 9 AA-Cells and was therefore unable to use accumulators due to the lower voltage) quite sucessfully: With refreshing after max. 2 hours of use in the GPS, we were able to use one set of batteries for around 10 to 12 hours instead of 6.

[fahraynk]

Good point bernyb.... Box for like an Xbox controller, if you decrease the voltage alittle so it doesn't transmit full energy? Doesn't have to be the MINIMUM. It's probably stupid though. I don't actually want to do the integral to find the energy saved and they probably design the products with this in mind.

[mos6502]

I have an idea, if we put batterizers on solar roadways, we'd have infinite free energy!

[nitro2k01]

I have an idea, if we put batterizers on solar roadways, we'd have infinite free energy!

Why settle for something that is tangible, and exists and works, but is a really bad idea? Try Rossi's E-Cat, which totally works and is not a scam.

[SteveLy]

Such a device would not work for the vast majority of electronic products. Sure if you're only talking about a lightbulb or simple LED circuits, lowering the input voltage would save power but would it would also make those light sources dimmer.

A typical electronic circuit does not present a constant resistance to the battery, but needs a fixed amount of power to operate. So a low voltage battery will need to supply more current to achieve the required power. At best then you'll break even if you can losslessly lower the input voltage. But typical electronic devices are likely to be designed to be most efficient at the battery's typical operating voltage rather than when the battery is almost dead. So an input voltage lowering circuit will be more likely to waste than to save power (without even considering further losses in the additional circuitry).