Author Topic: EEVblog #751 - How To Debunk A Product (The Batteriser)  (Read 3055984 times)

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Offline EEVblogTopic starter

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Re: EEVblog #751 - How To Debunk A Product (The Batteriser)
« Reply #7350 on: December 17, 2016, 09:25:31 pm »
i got a batterizeroo-ad on this forum just now.
Reminds me of a few years ago when a UK MP complained about seeing pron adds on some web page, until someone explained that the ads being served are based on what you'd previously been viewing.

They must be deliberately targeting technical users through Supply Frame who run the ad server on this forum. These are not Google Adsense ads.
That's money down the drain for them!  :-DD
 

Offline EEVblogTopic starter

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Re: EEVblog #751 - How To Debunk A Product (The Batteriser)
« Reply #7351 on: December 17, 2016, 09:28:14 pm »
And really sprouting those manipulated thrown away battery figures:



When they say "dead batteries" they mean discarded batteries.

So it turns out, if you throw away a battery with 93% capacity remaining, you could get 10 times the run time, if you used it till it was fully discharged....
Whats this got to do with the Batterpoo though?

Absolutely nothing. They are just using is as a bullshit to justify their demonstrably wrong "only 20% of a battery is used" claim.

Quote
Their percentage figures confuse me though.... surely the total percentage of discarded batteries must add up to 100%? And also take in to consideration the percentage that are completely depleted?
According to Batterpoo, 200% of dead batteries have over 50% capacity remaining?

If you go read the actual paper (which they found on this forum thread BTW after someone posted it) they have very deliberately misinterpreted the data.
 

Offline EEVblogTopic starter

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Re: EEVblog #751 - How To Debunk A Product (The Batteriser)
« Reply #7352 on: December 17, 2016, 09:32:12 pm »
I don’t know if battery hungry Multimeters usually already uses a boost converter, but I can imagine someone is going to try using batterisers on them.
And how about the unfortunate U1272A which shown to be sensitive to EMC how would it react to 4 batteriser chokes in very close proximity.

Problem with multimeter is they usually have a few hundred hours battery life. That makes for a long test.
 

Offline timb

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Re: EEVblog #751 - How To Debunk A Product (The Batteriser)
« Reply #7353 on: December 17, 2016, 09:33:54 pm »
Unfortunate consequence of Australian accent - this sounds to me like "Imagine a container full of Jizz..."  :-DD



Well, technically a battery *is* like a container of jizz! After all, both are composed of electrolytes!
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic; e.g., Cheez Whiz, Hot Dogs and RF.
 

Offline EEVblogTopic starter

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Re: EEVblog #751 - How To Debunk A Product (The Batteriser)
« Reply #7354 on: December 17, 2016, 09:35:25 pm »
Theoretically it should be possible, to some extent, to relay the remaining battery capacity through the Batteriser, as like when the battery voltage drops so would the output of the Batteriser though of course still keeping a higher voltage than the battery. It’s going to be interesting to see if their custom chip is just a plain boost converter trying to output 1.5V no matter what, or if they included some battery monitoring logic for a more controlled shutdown when battery is close to completely empty.

It's a plain fixed boost converter. All their marketing has reflected that and early tests show 1.5V out with a low voltage input. No scaled output.
The problem with the scaled output is that it will be product dependent, so you can't really do that with a general purpose product.
 

Offline IanB

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Re: EEVblog #751 - How To Debunk A Product (The Batteriser)
« Reply #7355 on: December 17, 2016, 10:01:37 pm »
Theoretically it should be possible, to some extent, to relay the remaining battery capacity through the Batteriser, as like when the battery voltage drops so would the output of the Batteriser though of course still keeping a higher voltage than the battery. It’s going to be interesting to see if their custom chip is just a plain boost converter trying to output 1.5V no matter what, or if they included some battery monitoring logic for a more controlled shutdown when battery is close to completely empty.

It's a plain fixed boost converter. All their marketing has reflected that and early tests show 1.5V out with a low voltage input. No scaled output.
The problem with the scaled output is that it will be product dependent, so you can't really do that with a general purpose product.

Although I suspect that any boost converter will have a hard time maintaining a 1.5 V output under load with a depleted alkaline battery providing the input power. So the probability is that the output voltage will drop off gradually as the battery runs down.
 

Offline Someone

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Re: EEVblog #751 - How To Debunk A Product (The Batteriser)
« Reply #7356 on: December 17, 2016, 10:06:57 pm »
She sounds like she is from West Australia, I would say around Darwin
Well, Darwin is part of the Northern Territory rather than Western Australia, and while west of the "middle" of Australia its more central than east/west.

Anyway the accent is NSW, of a typical north coast type.

Do we know anybody from that part of Australia who personally visited Batteroo's offices with his wife a few months ago?

Somebody who later got preferential treatment from Bob and a hand-mailed box of Batterisers?  :popcorn:
You really need to brush up on Australian geography, Darwin is nowhere near the NSW north coast. Here are some Darwin accents for you:
 

Offline ez24

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Re: EEVblog #751 - How To Debunk A Product (The Batteriser)
« Reply #7357 on: December 17, 2016, 10:11:37 pm »
Problem with multimeter is they usually have a few hundred hours battery life. That makes for a long test.

I am monitoring my AC mains 7/24 and get about 8 days on high quality 1000 mAh (min 800 mAh) Kastar rechargeable AAA batteries (2) in my multimeter (not Bryman).   I get about 18 hours on my MP3 player (like the one that is going to be used in the tests).  It will be hard to do real device testing with AAA batteries because of the lack of such devices.
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Offline dcac

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Re: EEVblog #751 - How To Debunk A Product (The Batteriser)
« Reply #7358 on: December 17, 2016, 10:19:30 pm »
Theoretically it should be possible, to some extent, to relay the remaining battery capacity through the Batteriser, as like when the battery voltage drops so would the output of the Batteriser though of course still keeping a higher voltage than the battery. It’s going to be interesting to see if their custom chip is just a plain boost converter trying to output 1.5V no matter what, or if they included some battery monitoring logic for a more controlled shutdown when battery is close to completely empty.

It's a plain fixed boost converter. All their marketing has reflected that and early tests show 1.5V out with a low voltage input. No scaled output.
The problem with the scaled output is that it will be product dependent, so you can't really do that with a general purpose product.

Some form of scaled output could at least give the user some warning instead of a sudden shutdown. I believe from the very start it was mentioned that battery gauges would be rendered useless and it's a significant drawback. If only battteroo were paying attention, we'll see. But in any case it would be up to the user to 'reinterpret' what the battery gauge is showing, and they are often not very accurate to begin with.
 

Offline dcac

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Re: EEVblog #751 - How To Debunk A Product (The Batteriser)
« Reply #7359 on: December 17, 2016, 10:32:31 pm »
I don’t know if battery hungry Multimeters usually already uses a boost converter, but I can imagine someone is going to try using batterisers on them.


Problem with multimeter is they usually have a few hundred hours battery life. That makes for a long test.

I was more thinking of older feature rich DMMs with 50-100h runtime, though many of those are probably on 9V so not really relevant (yet).
 

Offline mikeselectricstuff

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Re: EEVblog #751 - How To Debunk A Product (The Batteriser)
« Reply #7360 on: December 18, 2016, 12:39:27 am »
Theoretically it should be possible, to some extent, to relay the remaining battery capacity through the Batteriser, as like when the battery voltage drops so would the output of the Batteriser though of course still keeping a higher voltage than the battery. It’s going to be interesting to see if their custom chip is just a plain boost converter trying to output 1.5V no matter what, or if they included some battery monitoring logic for a more controlled shutdown when battery is close to completely empty.

It's a plain fixed boost converter. All their marketing has reflected that and early tests show 1.5V out with a low voltage input. No scaled output.
The problem with the scaled output is that it will be product dependent, so you can't really do that with a general purpose product.

Although I suspect that any boost converter will have a hard time maintaining a 1.5 V output under load with a depleted alkaline battery providing the input power. So the probability is that the output voltage will drop off gradually as the battery runs down.
Nope - it will try to maintain 1.5v, and just draw more & more current in an attempt to do so, so the output will just suddenly fall off a cliff, and maybe repeatedly recover and fail a few times, depending on the load characteristics.
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Offline Brumby

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Re: EEVblog #751 - How To Debunk A Product (The Batteriser)
« Reply #7361 on: December 18, 2016, 12:57:43 am »
Nope - it will try to maintain 1.5v, and just draw more & more current in an attempt to do so, so the output will just suddenly fall off a cliff, and maybe repeatedly recover and fail a few times, depending on the load characteristics.

Yep.  My thoughts as well.
 

Offline djos

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Re: EEVblog #751 - How To Debunk A Product (The Batteriser)
« Reply #7362 on: December 18, 2016, 01:00:49 am »
Nope - it will try to maintain 1.5v, and just draw more & more current in an attempt to do so, so the output will just suddenly fall off a cliff, and maybe repeatedly recover and fail a few times, depending on the load characteristics.

Yep.  My thoughts as well.

The videos are going to be fascinating, I too think this is the most likely scenario.

Offline SL4P

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Re: EEVblog #751 - How To Debunk A Product (The Batteriser)
« Reply #7363 on: December 18, 2016, 01:13:41 am »
Nope - it will try to maintain 1.5v, and just draw more & more current in an attempt to do so, so the output will just suddenly fall off a cliff, and maybe repeatedly recover and fail a few times, depending on the load characteristics.
Yep.  My thoughts as well.
Maybe they could do a 'pacemaker' version to show Boob's faith in his product?
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Offline amyk

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Re: EEVblog #751 - How To Debunk A Product (The Batteriser)
« Reply #7364 on: December 18, 2016, 03:27:55 am »
I can't find any matches for "B041" (not sure of the package --- is that a WLCSP?), but would not be surprised if it's actually an existing boost IC. Some of the other IC-ID gurus on here might have better luck though.

Unfortunate consequence of Australian accent - this sounds to me like "Imagine a container full of Jizz..."  :-DD



Well, technically a battery *is* like a container of jizz! After all, both are composed of electrolytes!
..."flow into a passive load device, such as a fleshlight..." :o :-DD

I see it says 3 comments on the video, but I can't see any of them. Have they been deleting them again...?
 

Offline rrinker

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Re: EEVblog #751 - How To Debunk A Product (The Batteriser)
« Reply #7365 on: December 18, 2016, 04:03:18 am »
 So they hired some big-time marketing wank, that no one apparently ever heard of until you look up his Wikipedia page and see what he was (allegedly) involved with.

 But you know who could sell these things big time, if he were still around? Joe Sugarman. I mostly remember his ads from the paged of Popular Electronics back in the day, but I'm sure they ran in other magazines of the time as well.

 Most everything I have that takes AA or AAA batteries has a spring for the positive terminal, only a few have a metal strip which wouldn't chew up those contacts on the Batteroo.

 

Offline firewalker

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Re: EEVblog #751 - How To Debunk A Product (The Batteriser)
« Reply #7366 on: December 18, 2016, 08:22:11 am »
Can a company use a "Cease and Desist" document to prevent a decupping of a chip? :D

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Offline razvanme

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Re: EEVblog #751 - How To Debunk A Product (The Batteriser)
« Reply #7367 on: December 18, 2016, 08:55:50 am »
Like it was said previously I don't think anyone has doubts about the boost converter, and keeping a constant 1.5V.
Now the video regarding the "fleshlight" has brought another point. By definition using a flashlight means you walking in darkness or needing some light. Using the batteriser means you can have constant light and going into darkness suddenly. I think I would prefer extra time with a small amount of light, then consuming everything and using ecolocation to navigate after that.

What happens if you are in a forest and need to get back, I prefer extra time with a small amount of light, than spending the night there. Or if you are in a cave, again extra time wins. So even the flashlight example is wrong, by definition I need light, the longer the better.
 

Offline EEVblogTopic starter

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Re: EEVblog #751 - How To Debunk A Product (The Batteriser)
« Reply #7368 on: December 18, 2016, 09:12:30 am »
I wonder how long before we'll see a high-profile manufacturer explicitly warning against the use of them in their products.

All it will take is one person to complain to the manufacturer that their battery gauge is "faulty". Batteroo don't warn you about this, so you can't expect Joe Public to understand that it would be the Batteroo at fault.

Batteroo are stuck between a rock and a hard place here. They can't tell people it will render their battery gauge useless because that will kill sales. But people will ultimately complain about this and it will lead to bad press and warnings from the manufacturers.
 

Offline EEVblogTopic starter

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Re: EEVblog #751 - How To Debunk A Product (The Batteriser)
« Reply #7369 on: December 18, 2016, 09:14:13 am »
Can a company use a "Cease and Desist" document to prevent a decupping of a chip? :D

Nope. Reverse engineering for educational and journalistic purposes is allowed.
 
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Offline mikeselectricstuff

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Re: EEVblog #751 - How To Debunk A Product (The Batteriser)
« Reply #7370 on: December 18, 2016, 09:30:11 am »

I see it says 3 comments on the video, but I can't see any of them. Have they been deleting them again...?
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Offline Someone

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Re: EEVblog #751 - How To Debunk A Product (The Batteriser)
« Reply #7371 on: December 18, 2016, 10:23:50 am »
Like it was said previously I don't think anyone has doubts about the boost converter, and keeping a constant 1.5V.
Now the video regarding the "fleshlight" has brought another point. By definition using a flashlight means you walking in darkness or needing some light. Using the batteriser means you can have constant light and going into darkness suddenly. I think I would prefer extra time with a small amount of light, then consuming everything and using ecolocation to navigate after that.

What happens if you are in a forest and need to get back, I prefer extra time with a small amount of light, than spending the night there. Or if you are in a cave, again extra time wins. So even the flashlight example is wrong, by definition I need light, the longer the better.
Petzl maintained this gradual dimming as one of the "features" even in their regulated lamps:
https://www.petzl.com/US/en/Sport/How-is-Petzl-lighting-performance-measured-?ProductName=NAO-PLUS
Most people feel its a very important feature of a lamp.
 

Offline SeanB

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Re: EEVblog #751 - How To Debunk A Product (The Batteriser)
« Reply #7372 on: December 18, 2016, 11:07:58 am »
Yes, in a torch "anaemic glow worm" is a lot better than having a unit that just drops off dead at some point, with absolutely no warning at all. kind of like a "limp home" mode is built into a car ECU, so that a simple failure, which does not totally disable the engine, leaves you still able to at least get to a safe place to stop or repair it.

Otherwise grenading the engine and drivetrain if an interior light blows will soon drive a manufacturer out of business. Yes it is going to make sure the unit is always working perfectly, but pretty soon people will stop buying them as they break down for almost no reason.
 

Offline Fungus

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Re: EEVblog #751 - How To Debunk A Product (The Batteriser)
« Reply #7373 on: December 18, 2016, 12:08:37 pm »
If you look at decent flashlights they're designed to have a flat brightness then gradual falloff.

eg. Daves Fenix LD01 (green line is brightness):



The designers obviously went to great effort to get a curve as perfect as that, I wouldn't want a Batteriser messing with it.
 

Offline razvanme

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Re: EEVblog #751 - How To Debunk A Product (The Batteriser)
« Reply #7374 on: December 18, 2016, 12:46:42 pm »
That's one reason I don't like them, and the product (Beside lying). One of the design rules for a product is to fail in a in a controlled way. They decrease functionality and keep on working. Any product I can imagine does that, you decrease performance and functionality, yet you keep on working and let the user know the performance is degrading.
I am pretty sure any phone could have the screen as bright as possible and when the battery is out, shut down. I don't think users will be happy.

The only kind of product this will work is where you need constant performance all the time, even in that case I am sure the designers would have done something to let the user know about it.
 


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