Something I made ended up on TV!

[tom66]

I worked at an internship at BitBox Ltd last year (I'm going back this year as well.) BitBox is quite a small little company, I think less than 20 employees. Just an electronics design/engineering/manufacturing company.

I made a battery analyser and we found some surprising results: http://www.batteryshowdown.com/ for the results. Basically cheap batteries are so close to the branded batteries that it might as well not matter which you buy.

Well, Channel 4 contacted my boss (Quentin Lister), and they did some filming there and it's ended up on Channel 4's Super Scrimpers.

UK viewers and possibly international viewers can see it here (skip to around the 10:30 mark)
http://www.channel4.com/programmes/superscrimpers/4od

It's a shame they mixed our scientific battery tests with the nearly completely unscientific robot rabbit and camera tests; there's too many variables with those to make use of that data unless you do a lot more repeats and use statistical analysis to figure out your outliers. (CCD/CMOS sensors for one use different power depending on light levels, frame rates, shooting modes... robotic rabbit has variable friction, motor design, direction, etc.) And they forgot to mention how small the difference was... The overall conclusion of the tests was "there is no major difference between brands of alkaline battery, excluding a few outliers... so just buy the cheapest alkaline you can!"

I made the PCB you see (it has an STM32 daughterboard) and the software running on the laptop, as well as the overall layout of the setup. The big lab power supply supplies the USB power, as the laptop can't power five STM32's at once (this was found out the hard way when the results went skewy depending on the laptop's charge and discharge cycle... fun bug to track down!)

So as far as I'm concerned I've had my 15 minutes of fame.

[PA0PBZ]

Not available in Holland, so I'm sorry but no fame for you over here 

[tom66]

Maybe I can get an rtmpdump of the video file and upload it somewhere.   
I just noticed the Kodak lasted 4hrs in the bunny test to the Duracell and Ikea's ~2-3 hrs, which shows how bad test was performed; each battery should have about the same capacity at a discharge of around 600~800mA (which works out to be 2 hours approximately.) Nearly 100% between batteries.... not gonna happen.

[c4757p]

Not available in Holland, so I'm sorry but no fame for you over here 

Yeah, you're not famous here either.

[Dave]

Great website, I admire you for doing the work of comparing all those different batteries.
By the way "alkalisk" just means "alkaline" in Swedish. It's not a name, just an adjective.

[mariush]

In other news, I'm still waiting to see the rest of the batteries I sent you put there in the charts.

Don't care either way, cause I got reimbursed for them, but it's just sad i wasted time and sent them all the way to uk only to not see them tested.

[tom66]

Hi Marius, I will be putting them up, but testing takes a lot of time and I do still have a job to do there. It takes about 15 hrs for every 5 batteries plus repeats. Plus I have to edit the website and add them manually (for some reason I'm not allowed to use PHP and a database...) And I'm only there for 4 weeks at a time usually.

[SeanB]

No view hre in South Africa either, and we used to be a colony.........

[nessatse]

No view hre in South Africa either, and we used to be a colony.........

Install the Media Hint browser extension https://mediahint.com/.  Works like a charm (for chrome and firefox anyway)

[c4757p]

No view hre in South Africa either, and we used to be a colony.........

So were we! 

[PA0PBZ]

The mediahint chrome plugin worked, so I was able to see the program, fame for TOM66! 

It made me think though: would the results differ if you use a variable current to discharge the batteries? Maybe one brand recovers if the current draw is low for some time, while it doesn't matter for others?

[tom66]

We've definitely considered pulse discharging, and the rig supports it in theory (the control loop is capable of doing 10Hz steps) but we haven't yet had the time to do that. My time at BitBox has been mostly assigned to more important projects, though I do occasional discharge tests when I've got some free time.

[staxquad]

No view hre in South Africa either, and we used to be a colony.........

Install the Media Hint browser extension https://mediahint.com/.  Works like a charm (for chrome and firefox anyway)

rats, we've got the Queen on all our money, and still ...

thanks for  Media Hint, it works

[tom66]

It's a strange thing seeing my boss on TV.  You can see a picture of the filming here:
http://www.bitbox.co.uk/news-item/bitbox-battery-tests-appear-on-channel-4-tv/