General > General Technical Chat

Ban of non-rechargeable batteries

<< < (5/23) > >>

MarkR42:
I have a doorbell with a "kinetic wireless remote". It is basically a heavily weighted springloaded switch which hits a piezo crystal quite hard and generates enough charge into a capacitor (presumbaly + regulator circuit) to run the radio / microprocessor for the fraction of a second required to send the digital signal. Very clever stuff.

I have no idea how robust it would be long term, but ideal for a wet environment as there are no batteries to leak or corrode.

Cyberdragon:

--- Quote from: MarkR42 on June 30, 2020, 06:28:11 pm ---I have a doorbell with a "kinetic wireless remote". It is basically a heavily weighted springloaded switch which hits a piezo crystal quite hard and generates enough charge into a capacitor (presumbaly + regulator circuit) to run the radio / microprocessor for the fraction of a second required to send the digital signal. Very clever stuff.

I have no idea how robust it would be long term, but ideal for a wet environment as there are no batteries to leak or corrode.

--- End quote ---

Or the orginal TV remotes that used audio from plucking metal reeds.

janoc:

--- Quote from: M0HZH on June 30, 2020, 04:32:16 pm ---
I think this is completely unfounded. It is much more expensive even in the long term to use rechargeables than disposables.

Quick math:

8x AA Rechargeable + charger = £22.22 (£2.775 per cell)
100x AA Disposable = £21.99 (£0.21 per cell)

This means a rechargeable cell costs roughly 13 times more than a disposable.

In the most common use for AA batteries (remote controls), batteries last 1-2 years; to get your money's worth out of a rechargeable set you'd have to use the same set for about 20 years. There are no rechargeables with a lifetime of 20 years of continuous duty, even the TV's average life cycle is 7.5 years, the charger will probably break or get lost many times by then. And you also have to live with not using the TV remote for 8-12 hours because the batteries are charging, every few months, for 20 years.

--- End quote ---

You are trolling, right? Because you have picked exactly the one use case where rechargeable batteries are a poor choice because of poor self-discharge behavior and low current requirements.  And built your entire argument on that  :palm:

AA cells are used in tons of other things than clocks and TV remotes - many toys (e.g. Legos, Furbys, ...), some cheap cameras, wireless game controllers (e.g. Xbox, Oculus Quest, Wii ...), some home appliances use them (various mini vaccuum cleaners, electric potato peelers, etc.).

If you have kids and they have a game console that uses a game controller powered by AA cells, you will realize the advantage of having recheargeables on hand pretty quickly. E.g. my Quest goes through a set of batteries in the controllers every few days when I am using it regularly. And no, an integrated lithium battery wouldn't be better - AA cell you can swap and continue playing, with a non-replaceable battery you are SOL until it recharges, so Oculus (and Nintendo before them) knew exactly why they decided to use AAs instead.

rdl:
I use rechargeables in all my remotes, mostly for leak damage avoidance. The batteries in the remote for my TV, which is almost 6 years old, have needed recharging once. I have a lab thermometer that uses a 9 volt battery and is always on. It will use up a standard battery in about a month. I switched it to 9 volt Li-Ion several years ago and that alone has probably saved me well over a hundred bucks.

ace1903:
Alkaline batteries if made properly are actually better for the environment. Recently I saw on TV how these batteries are recycled into nutrients for the soil. Iron, carbon, KOH, zinc, MnO2 and other microelements are good for corn and other cultures. Some processing is needed but completely possible. I also recently searched to find a way how lithium-based batteries are recycled and there is no public thesis or other materials.
In alkaline batteries recycling the biggest problem is to identify mixed NiCd ones and to separate them(also Hg based but those are rare these days).

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page

There was an error while thanking
Thanking...
Go to full version
Powered by SMFPacks Advanced Attachments Uploader Mod