Author Topic: EEVblog #751 - How To Debunk A Product (The Batteriser)  (Read 3059877 times)

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Offline PeterL

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Re: EEVblog #751 - How To Debunk A Product (The Batteriser)
« Reply #75 on: June 06, 2015, 09:42:53 am »
The thing I don't get is why he even had to do that?
I would say only for marketing.

All that the crowd reads here is: "This device is confirmed by an independent authority".

...
Look at his LinkedIn profile:
Quote
..Dr. Roohparvar is also a professor at California State University, ...

Wow, I just wonder why they didn't put that in the PCWorld article.

I'm starting to get a bad vibe about universities in California now...
 

Offline PeterL

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Re: EEVblog #751 - How To Debunk A Product (The Batteriser)
« Reply #76 on: June 06, 2015, 09:59:45 am »
...At the price it would have still sold like hot cakes if they simply said 50% extra life or whatever on average.
Yes, and if that was how they had put it, I would probably actually be positive about myself..
(though cautious to recommend it to others, since you do need to understand when and how to use it).

About the price: What kind of production numbers do you think they're targeting at? It must be huge I would say, and they already mentioned the price, so they really need a big start on their IGG campaign don't they?
 

Offline Grapsus

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Re: EEVblog #751 - How To Debunk A Product (The Batteriser)
« Reply #77 on: June 06, 2015, 10:01:11 am »
Those kinds of marketing stunts really make me loose faith in humanity. The technical guy who designed the converter knows that their claims are bullshit, the marketing guys are even worse because they invented the bullshit. Then you have all those shitty tech magazines who probably have doubts but do nothing to verify what they publish, because if they did they would be unable to come with this giant headline and lose potential audience. I doubt releasing the product is in their interests, the real goal is to build a lot of hype around their startup so that a lot of venture capitalists fight in order to "fund" them. And their product is just perfect for duping any kind of investor: "look this battery is dead and when we plug our thingie on it, it comes alive again by tapping into all this wasted energy".

So what's the future for the Batteriser ? If they succeed in their little scam, they'll be able to get more than a million dollars. Then they'll rent offices in Sunnyvale, hire their friends. Maybe finally release something. And since real people won't use it, they'll be screwed.
 

Offline Wytnucls

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Re: EEVblog #751 - How To Debunk A Product (The Batteriser)
« Reply #78 on: June 06, 2015, 10:19:40 am »
Why do you think this is a scam? The voltage boost technology has been around for a while. The battery manufacturers are well aware of the wasted energy in their product and how to recover some of it.
The miniaturization of the circuit in this gizmo is the clincher.
The 800% battery life increase may even be true in some extreme case. We know marketing will naturally concentrate on those figures to grab the headlines. With most devices cutting out below 1V, the normal battery life extension is more likely to be around 20%, according to the Duracell constant power discharge curve.

This is an electronic blog. Someone here should have the equipment and the skills to disprove the claims with some hard testing of batteries, instead of everybody dismissing it all, out of hand.
« Last Edit: June 06, 2015, 05:31:44 pm by Wytnucls »
 

Offline 0xdeadbeef

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Re: EEVblog #751 - How To Debunk A Product (The Batteriser)
« Reply #79 on: June 06, 2015, 10:35:14 am »
The 800% battery life increase may even be true in some extreme case.
As mentioned before, an increase by 800% would mean that only about 11% of the capacity would be used under normal conditions. Not taking into account efficiency etc. I guess it will be extremely difficult to find one case where this is the case.
Trying is the first step towards failure - Homer J. Simpson
 

Offline Mr Simpleton

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Re: EEVblog #751 - How To Debunk A Product (The Batteriser)
« Reply #80 on: June 06, 2015, 10:41:23 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
 

Offline k2teknik

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Re: EEVblog #751 - How To Debunk A Product (The Batteriser)
« Reply #81 on: June 06, 2015, 10:50:10 am »
I'm actually really interested in Dr. Parvin's side of the story here
Give him an email at kiumars.parvin@sjsu.edu
Hi looks to exist: http://www.sjsu.edu/people/kiumars.parvin/
 

Offline Wytnucls

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Re: EEVblog #751 - How To Debunk A Product (The Batteriser)
« Reply #82 on: June 06, 2015, 10:51:59 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.
 

Offline Grapsus

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Re: EEVblog #751 - How To Debunk A Product (The Batteriser)
« Reply #83 on: June 06, 2015, 10:58:12 am »
Why do you think this a scam? The voltage boost technology has been around for a while. The battery manufacturers are well aware of the wasted energy in their product and how to recover some of it.

We all agree that some additional energy can be squeezed out of batteries with a boost converter. Would such a converter achieve any significant gain for the user ? Simple technical considerations show that no, unless we talk about some very rare badly designed products. Therefore their claims are false and the end-users will never get what is advertised to them. This is the definition of a scam.

In the same way, the "white van" audio system does produce sound. Does it meet its high fidelity claims ? No. Same thing.

With Batteriser, the scam is even more elaborated because their real target are probably the silicon valley investors.
 

Offline Wytnucls

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Re: EEVblog #751 - How To Debunk A Product (The Batteriser)
« Reply #84 on: June 06, 2015, 11:15:08 am »
I wouldn't call a probable 20% gain for most devices insignificant. Your technical considerations are based on flawed principles, like battery voltage that can't be used below 0.8V coupled with supposedly high battery internal resistance.
 

Offline Wytnucls

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Re: EEVblog #751 - How To Debunk A Product (The Batteriser)
« Reply #85 on: June 06, 2015, 11:41:08 am »
The 800% battery life increase may even be true in some extreme case.
As mentioned before, an increase by 800% would mean that only about 11% of the capacity would be used under normal conditions. Not taking into account efficiency etc. I guess it will be extremely difficult to find one case where this is the case.

They only need one instance to make the statement true. Totally misleading, but we wouldn't be talking about their gizmo if they had only claimed an average of 20% increase. So the advertising fib paid off.
 

Offline amyk

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Re: EEVblog #751 - How To Debunk A Product (The Batteriser)
« Reply #86 on: June 06, 2015, 11:42:41 am »
Battery life on just about all moderm electronics products is their achilles' heel. To gain commercial advantage, manufacturers will pull every trick in the book to make THEIR gizmo last longer than a competitor's, by better battery management and, where applicable, buck/boost converters in their power conditioning circuits.

So IF some external electronic snake-oil was going to have ANY effect on product longevity (on one set of batteries), don't you think that the manufacturers would have already built the same technology into their products, for the competitive edge it would give them? Only they don't do it, because it doesn't work (for 90% of all devices).
This, exactly. What's stopping designers from putting boost converters in?

In fact, most devices with electronics either will cut out completely around 0.7-0.8V anyway, or already have boost converters to generate the right voltages. Adding another boost step just lowers the overall efficiency so that extra bit of energy at the end might not ever be used to do useful work.

The "80 percent of the energy that is usually thrown away" quote might even be referring to their ultraminiature boost converter having only 80% efficiency...  which is not that great.
 

Offline max_torque

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Re: EEVblog #751 - How To Debunk A Product (The Batteriser)
« Reply #87 on: June 06, 2015, 11:46:30 am »
What do we know:

1) on "average" based on testing a (fairly common, and random) selection of battery powered devices, Dave showed that most run down to around 1v, before cutting out.

2) for an "average" battery, the 1V point is approximately 80% discharged typically, leaving another 20% of energy unusable.


3) A 100% efficient DC/DC convertor could leverage that extra 20% energy and make it available to the load.

4) No DC/DC convertor is 100% efficient, and their operating efficiency is HIGHLY dependent upon the load placed across them.

5) On average, typical existing DC/DC convertors would be expected to be between 90 & 95% efficient. meaning the extra energy available to an average load can be expected to be between 10 and 15%



Now, you'll note the use of "on average" as this is the important bit!  What matters is the average useage of this device not the extreme ends of the normal distribution curve!
It's like claiming your car does INFINITE miles per gallon because you have rolled down a hill with the engine off, and conveniently forgetting to mention how it got to the top of the hill, or that most people don't only drive downhill etc

So if we ignore all the marketing Bull, this product does potentially have some uses.  For example, you're giving a presentation and the battery in your wireless mouse goes "flat".  You whip out a Batteriser, and you're able to finish your presentation.  That's a genuinely usefull scenario.

 However, you could also finish that presentation by simply keeping a spare battery in your bag, which would fit any device, and provide 100% more run time, not 10%........


If this device is well designed, cheap, and they actually claim some realistic performance claims (which will be easily testable!) then it has a good future imo, but the blatant marketing spin and frankly, downright lies, published to date do nothing to help their case!
 

Offline mzacharias

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Re: EEVblog #751 - How To Debunk A Product (The Batteriser)
« Reply #88 on: June 06, 2015, 11:50:32 am »
The battery drop-out voltage on my Fluke 27II was 1.4 volts per cell. And when it drops out, it REALLY drops out. You have to remove the batteries and replace them before the meter will turn on again.
 

Offline max_torque

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Re: EEVblog #751 - How To Debunk A Product (The Batteriser)
« Reply #89 on: June 06, 2015, 11:54:37 am »

They only need one instance to make the statement true.


Sorry, but no we don't.  They use words like "most" or "majority" or "typically"  to refer to the proportion of devices that only discharge their power source to 1.4V, any of which wording would not stand up in a court of law.   Technically speaking, to have a majority, you need over 50% of devices to cut out at 1.4V to support their claims.

If they had said "some" or "occasionally" then they would have a case.


For example, history shows it is possible to be shot in the head by a bullet and survive, for example:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2030646/Man-survives-bullet-brain-30-YEARS-wife-shot-gun-bought-gift.html

And yet if you look at worldwide statistics you'll find that actually, only 5% of people survive being shot in the head.

If i said "most people survive being shot in the head" i'd be lying.
If i said "some people survive being shot in the head" i'd be telling the truth.

Those two sentences are very nearly identical, with just ONE letter different in fact, and yet they have a totally different meaning.  This is what "marketeers" rely on to dupe stupid people into believing what they say................
 

Offline Fungus

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Re: EEVblog #751 - How To Debunk A Product (The Batteriser)
« Reply #90 on: June 06, 2015, 11:58:24 am »
Why do you think this a scam? The voltage boost technology has been around for a while. The battery manufacturers are well aware of the wasted energy in their product and how to recover some of it.
The miniaturization of the circuit in this gizmo is the clincher.
The 800% battery life increase may even be true in some extreme case. We know marketing will naturally concentrate on those figures to grab the headlines. With most devices cutting out below 1V, the normal battery life extension is more likely to be around 20%, according to the Duracell constant power discharge curve.

This is an electronic blog. Someone here should have the equipment and the skills to disprove the claims with some hard testing of batteries, instead of everybody dismissing it all, out of hand.

Well ... as Dave says, many devices will get *less* battery life. eg. The keyboard shown in their own marketing video. Those keyboards consume microamps when you're not pressing keys. This device will probably make average consumption much worse than that, shortening the battery life.

 

Offline PeterL

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Re: EEVblog #751 - How To Debunk A Product (The Batteriser)
« Reply #91 on: June 06, 2015, 11:59:20 am »
Another disbeliever (at least about the 800% claim):

http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/batteriser-cool-tech-or-scam/

 

Offline Fungus

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Re: EEVblog #751 - How To Debunk A Product (The Batteriser)
« Reply #92 on: June 06, 2015, 12:18:22 pm »
The miniaturization tech which he seems to specialise in must be impressive to fit in the space. I can't wait to see it myself, I'll buy some when they go on pre-sale.
It will be interesting to see what the standby/quiescent currents are.

Efficiency will also be interesting with such a tiny inductor. Maybe they could run it at ultra high frequencies or something.

Also: What will it output when a battery is fresh out of the pack and outputting 1.6V?
 

Offline 0xdeadbeef

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Re: EEVblog #751 - How To Debunk A Product (The Batteriser)
« Reply #93 on: June 06, 2015, 12:19:09 pm »
They only need one instance to make the statement true. Totally misleading, but we wouldn't be talking about their gizmo if they had only claimed an average of 20% increase. So the advertising fib paid off.
They state the "only 20% are used" and directly derive a "plus 800%" number from it. Indeed they call it "grossly simplified", but it's utter nonsense and nothing in their own claims justifies the 800% assumption. So before going into details why a dramatic increase of battery life is unrealistic, one should 1st mention that the 800% number is complete bs.
Trying is the first step towards failure - Homer J. Simpson
 

Offline Fungus

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Re: EEVblog #751 - How To Debunk A Product (The Batteriser)
« Reply #94 on: June 06, 2015, 12:20:33 pm »
One other thing nobody's mentioned (or at least, I haven't seen it) is Ohm's Law, which works against this device.

Batteries output around 1.2V-1.3V for most of their lifetime, right?

If you boost the battery voltage to 1.5V then most devices will simply follow Ohm's Law and consume 20% more current, therefore shortening the overall battery life.
« Last Edit: June 06, 2015, 12:23:29 pm by Fungus »
 

Offline Fungus

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Re: EEVblog #751 - How To Debunk A Product (The Batteriser)
« Reply #95 on: June 06, 2015, 12:25:52 pm »
They state the "only 20% are used" and directly derive a "plus 800%" number from it. Indeed they call it "grossly simplified"
Yep, the idea that we're only using 20% of our batteries is ludicrous. Laughable, even.

 

Offline 0xdeadbeef

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Re: EEVblog #751 - How To Debunk A Product (The Batteriser)
« Reply #96 on: June 06, 2015, 12:32:31 pm »
One other thing nobody's mentioned (or at least, I haven't seen it) is Ohm's Law, which works against this device.
...
If you boost the battery voltage to 1.5V then most devices will simply follow Ohm's Law and consume 20% more current, therefore shortening the overall battery life.
This depends on the device. Indeed if it uses a boost converter to step up e.g. the ~1.5V from one cell to 3.3V, this converter might be a little more efficient when stepping up from 1.5V then when stepping up from 0.9V. Then again, the combined efficiency of batteriser and the device's boost converter will always be worse.
Trying is the first step towards failure - Homer J. Simpson
 

Offline Grapsus

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Re: EEVblog #751 - How To Debunk A Product (The Batteriser)
« Reply #97 on: June 06, 2015, 12:32:54 pm »
Wytnucls just says enough to get everyone going into explaining the thing again and again and then he replies totally ignoring everything that has been said to keep the controversy going. Totally classic troll, don't waste your time.
 

Offline zapta

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Re: EEVblog #751 - How To Debunk A Product (The Batteriser)
« Reply #98 on: June 06, 2015, 12:44:06 pm »
an increase by 800% would mean that only about 11% of the capacity would be used under normal conditions.

Not necessarily.

It's possible that in normal operation you consume more than 11? but waste a portion of it on heat because the battery starts with higher voltage then the minimum required by your device.  Theoretically, an ideal DC/DC can fix that as well.

It's not clear if the debunking here is about 'breaking the laws of physics' or is just about the limitations of our current DC/DC technology.
« Last Edit: June 06, 2015, 12:48:24 pm by zapta »
 

Offline Wytnucls

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Re: EEVblog #751 - How To Debunk A Product (The Batteriser)
« Reply #99 on: June 06, 2015, 12:50:05 pm »
Wytnucls just says enough to get everyone going into explaining the thing again and again and then he replies totally ignoring everything that has been said to keep the controversy going. Totally classic troll, don't waste your time.

Typical ad hominem statement. Come up with real physics instead. All my posts are backed up by Duracell graphs and application notes. You obviously didn't bother to read or grasp any of it.
« Last Edit: June 06, 2015, 01:16:47 pm by Wytnucls »
 


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