EEVblog #751 - How To Debunk A Product (The Batteriser)

[Fungus]

Fairfax will already have read all our comments and posts with fact-checkers doing their homework. They'll walk into the interview armed with knowledge, just as Dave will.

LOL!

[Halcyon]

Fairfax will already have read all our comments and posts with fact-checkers doing their homework. They'll walk into the interview armed with knowledge, just as Dave will.

LOL!

I assume by your "LOL" you think the reporter will have just plucked a story out of their ass, done no research at all and have decided to contact Dave because they're bored? Or maybe they just ran out of coffee?? They run a business like everyone else and as per my previous comments, they don't like to be proven wrong or made to look like fools.

[Godzil]

@Godzil. Did you updated the git of BUTTERUSEr?

Alexander.

That's not fair

I have some nasty changes to be done on the silkscreen (the latest kicad changes does not help on editing polygones, that would be nice if there where something about that!)

[samgab]

At least, this new video is much more difficult to attack, apart from the fact that most device won't fail on the fist voltage spike, there is no the crap "you have to take the whole square for remaining capacity" or that poor snail that no one ask if he was happy to be there.

Still quite a few errors.
00:44 Significant number of batteries thrown away only used 20% of their capacity. Debunked.
00:48 80% still trapped inside. Debunked.
01:39 "The first time one of these glitches goes below the minimum operating voltage of the device, the device stops functioning (showing a chart with a glitch at about 20% of the discharge curve" Debunked.
02:00 Shows a 2 hour battery life for Garmin Approach G3 on allegedly new Duracell? Debunked.
02:10 Claims that UL have replicated and verified their result. And that UL found that batteriser improved battery life in the Garmin by nearly 600% over new batteries. Debunked.
02:13 Claim that the full UL report is at batteriser.com. It is not. No one has ever seen an official full UL report on this. Debunked.
02:26 A battery recycling conference tested batteries from unknown/unstated sources: ("The sample batteries have been collected by Kassensturz during spring 2002 from 19 recycling boxes in supermarkets, consumer electronic shops and offices in the Zurich and Basle area."), and found that 30% of them had 84% capacity remaining. It is unknown if these batteries were recycled from commercial locations, where batteries are thrown away when still good, where people don't care about using the capacity in batteries, perhaps they have short term needs of batteries that won't give out on jobs and they recycle them afterwards or just throw away unused packs of batteries because the dates are expired and they've been stored for ages. People in office, industrial, commercial settings are unlikely to worry about using all the capacity in batteries before they chuck them and put in fresh ones. Those users aren't going to care about using batterisers either. Given that we don't know the background of these particular sourced batteries, it is not a reliable figure to place any weight on.

Also, here is the actual study in Switzerland which they took that data from: http://www2.ife.ee.ethz.ch/~rolfz/batak/ICBR2003_Zinniker.pdf
They had a sample of 636 cells. Not a very big "study" then. The same study found that 55% of the batteries (more than half) had less than 500mAh capacity remaining. 40% had zero capacity remaining. They found that the overall average capacity remaining was 33% per cell. And that from a sample pool which is most likely to throw away perfectly good batteries. Much more so than a household. The reason being not because the devices can't use most or all of the batteries capacity or because the user needs a device to enable such, but because of the actions and attitudes of the users.
The study came to several conclusions and recommendations, none of which was to put a sleeve on batteries to make them seem like they have 100% of charge until they die.



Glaring omissions from the video:
-Most devices run down to 1.0V, or 0.9V per cell.
-Most devices therefore use at least 80-90% of a cells available energy.
-The last 10-20% is harder to extract because of lower cell voltage and higher ESR.
-The batteriser must be extremely current limited, making it impossible to draw a useful current, especially as the cell gets low in energy.
-The batteriser can be no more than 70-80% efficient on average in a best case scenario, offsetting any potential gain made by extracting all of the capacity in cells, burning it off as waste heat.
-They claim it saves money and the environment. Both are false. It costs money, albeit not a lot. It doesn't save on battery consumption. It is far more harmful to the environment to provide a placebo device which encourages people to continue using single-shot Alkaline cells rather than moving to LSD NiMH rechargeable cells which can be reused over 2000 times.
-If users were to switch to LSD NiMH cells, they would have the advantages of higher current capability, no vampire current loss, no device inefficiencies, longer life between battery changes, over 2000 re-uses per cell, better performance in high and low temperature environments, flatter discharge curves...

[firewalker]

I don't think they are interested for the product. Only for the fact that a company (allegedly) "attacked" a video blogger with dislikes for busting their product.

Dave did an excellent video for the fact. They can use it and write a story.

Alexander.

[timofonic]

@Godzil. Did you updated the git of BUTTERUSEr?

Alexander.

That's not fair

I have some nasty changes to be done on the silkscreen (the latest kicad changes does not help on editing polygones, that would be nice if there where something about that!)

Did you write an email about the issue to kicad-developers? If not, please do it.

There's currently some interest about that kind of geometry stuff due to DXF importing and such, such as B-Splines (already supported by gEDA and Altium).

[Fungus]

Fairfax will already have read all our comments and posts with fact-checkers doing their homework. They'll walk into the interview armed with knowledge, just as Dave will.

LOL!

I assume by your "LOL" you think the reporter will have just plucked a story out of their ass, done no research at all and have decided to contact Dave because they're bored?

I'm sure they saw Dave's video. How much "homework" or "fact checking" they did isn't clear.

Question: How much homework or fact-checking did all those other sites do before they published their Batteriser article? Any at all?

they don't like to be proven wrong or made to look like fools.

All the web sites that ran the Batteriser story have hundreds of "This editor is an idiot!!!" and "Check your facts before publishing crap like this!" comments.

Do they look like they care? Has a single article been retracted or a follow-up posted?

[Godzil]

At least, this new video is much more difficult to attack, apart from the fact that most device won't fail on the fist voltage spike, there is no the crap "you have to take the whole square for remaining capacity" or that poor snail that no one ask if he was happy to be there.

Still quite a few errors.
00:44 Significant number of batteries thrown away only used 20% of their capacity. Debunked.
00:48 80% still trapped inside. Debunked.

The keyword is "Significant number". For me even 5 over 100 battery trashed with 20% only used is a significant number. That term is not a statistical term and really mean nothing.

(and both are linked, if a battery is used only at 20%, 80% is remaining inside that a fact)

01:39 "The first time one of these glitches goes below the minimum operating voltage of the device, the device stops functioning (showing a chart with a glitch at about 20% of the discharge curve" Debunked.

But that's also true that some badly designs product behave like that. *SOME*

02:00 Shows a 2 hour battery life for Garmin Approach G3 on allegedly new Duracell? Debunked.

As always, they are playing with words, their graph is stopping when the device show a "battery warning" or "shutdown". As with their setup, the battery warning is displayed after 2hr...
The only "debunked" thing there is that their setup and play with word, is wrong and misleading, at best.

02:10 Claims that UL have replicated and verified their result. And that UL found that batteriser improved battery life in the Garmin by nearly 600% over new batteries. Debunked.
02:13 Claim that the full UL report is at batteriser.com. It is not. No one has ever seen an official full UL report on this. Debunked.

The UL "report" is not a clear thing for now, there is nothing debunked about that. What they show is not a real report for sure, but there is a real high change that the used some services from UL.


For the study they use, we can do what we want with number, and especially make them tell what you want. It's just marketing in the batteroo case, it is true that a certain number of battery is trashed when they are not fully used, and that some device are badly designs and does not use the full battery capacity.

In this video they carefully chose the word they use, they don't give any real information any real number making this video much more difficult to "debunk" than the other one, because this one is mainly only marketing stuff, andcorrectly worded (apart from some typos) to be enoughly vague so that it's hard to counter attack it.

[Fungus]

I don't think they are interested for the product. Only for the fact that a company (allegedly) "attacked" a video blogger with dislikes for busting their product.

People attacking each other on the Internet is a juicy story.

Be careful that they don't make it look like Dave attacked them first.

[Fungus]

In this video they carefully chose the word they use, they don't give any real information any real number making this video much more difficult to "debunk" than the other one, because this one is mainly only marketing stuff, andcorrectly worded (apart from some typos) to be enoughly vague so that it's hard to counter attack it.

No it isn't.

It is NOT true that devices only use 20% of the power in batteries. The batteries in the "20%" report weren't thrown away because people thought they were empty. Devices do not shut down because of current spikes.

It is NOT true that people can expect Batteriser to extend their battery life (see previous point).

These basic premises are wrong.

Possible follow up to the current spike argument: Build a device to mimic the effect of current spikes (ie. short voltage drops) and feed it in to the GPS. Vary the pulse heights, pulse widths and baseline voltages. Find out what the actual limits of the device are. How big of a spike would it take to shut it down?

(PS: Don't you think a device crash is more likely than a nice clean shutdown?)

[jippie]

I've been approached by the SMH/Age newspaper tech section (Australia) to do a story on the Batteriser Dislikes. Should I dare be involved with Fairfax media?
Straw poll....

You'll reach an entirely different kind of public, for a large part non-EE, which can certainly be a good thing. Some of the readers may eventually even visit your website out of true interest. You'll have to gear down for expected technical background though. I think you should not allow yourself to mention Batteriser, neither the product claims, nor suspect for arranging the dislikes. Try to make clear agreements on the article scope, maybe see if you can review it before publication.

I am not familiar with SMH/Age newspaper or Fairfax media, so I can't really say do or don't.

[GNU_Ninja]

I've been approached by the SMH/Age newspaper tech section (Australia) to do a story on the Batteriser Dislikes. Should I dare be involved with Fairfax media?
Straw poll....

Dave:

Since you've already gone 'public' regarding this issue in your Dislikes Video; I don't see why you shouldn't do an interview/article for the press.  They'll probably run with the story regardless, so you might as well go 'on the record' in a press statement or interview too.

The story they're looking at here, presumably, is the manipulation of social media by individuals or corporate entities. Such as buying likes or dislikes on YouTube. Go for it. 

Edit: Minor grammatical niggle 

[EEVblog]

Oh dear, Batteriser aren't content with flogging their own stuff, but are now flogging others:
They sent a backer email update plugging this campaign:
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/aftershokz-trekz-bone-conduction-headphones#/story

Because our team dug the Trekz Titanium™ headphones so much, we coaxed the good folks at AfterShokz into putting together a special package just for our community. How cool is that?! Here’s the deal: all Batteriser backers can now access AfterShokz’s ShokzStar Special Edition Perk for only $99 (even though it’s listed at $129!). That means you get (1) Trekz Titanium™, (1) activity belt and (1) limited edition t-shirt for nearly 30% less than everyone else!

Tacky.

[Galenbo]

... Should I dare be involved with Fairfax media?
Straw poll....

I was twice in the media, and 2 times, I didn't recognise any of the sentences they wrote, and didn't understand what 'the guy' was telling.
Wouldn't do it again without full revision rights.
It's my story, they have the right to type it, not to change it.

[Wytnucls]

Time to expose the Batteroo Indian shills for posterity:

'We tested the Batteriser sleeve in our lab and we confirmed that the Batteriser taps into the 80 percent of energy that is usually thrown away.' Dr Kiumars Parvin

'How to make your batteries last 8x longer' video
Lakshmi Narasimhan

[EEVblog]

The story they're looking at here, presumably, is the manipulation of social media by individuals or corporate entities. Such as buying likes or dislikes on YouTube. Go for it. 

Actually, it seems to be an article on the Batteriser debunking in general:

We'd like to run a piece on your take-down of the Batterizer, and the company's subsequent response (rumours it bought dislikes for your page, quietly changed its claims etc).

[Galenbo]

All the web sites that ran the Batteriser story have hundreds of "This editor is an idiot!!!" and "Check your facts before publishing crap like this!" comments.

Do they look like they care? Has a single article been retracted or a follow-up posted?

Generally they don't care, but I remember one of the seen-on-pages on the batteriser-page retracted the article.
The title still appears when you search on that site, but clicking on it generates an error.
Wasn't it engineering.com? Sorry, too lazy to check (again)

[Rasz]

Oh dear, Batteriser aren't content with flogging their own stuff, but are now flogging others:
They sent a backer email update plugging this campaign:
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/aftershokz-trekz-bone-conduction-headphones#/story

Because our team dug the Trekz Titanium™ headphones so much, we coaxed the good folks at AfterShokz into putting together a special package just for our community. How cool is that?! Here’s the deal: all Batteriser backers can now access AfterShokz’s ShokzStar Special Edition Perk for only $99 (even though it’s listed at $129!). That means you get (1) Trekz Titanium™, (1) activity belt and (1) limited edition t-shirt for nearly 30% less than everyone else!

Tacky.

they "exchanged" support, those 'cheap shitty chinese already manufactured and ready to buy on aliexpress headphones' IGG campain posted same BS about Buttsexizer on their site.

The story they're looking at here, presumably, is the manipulation of social media by individuals or corporate entities. Such as buying likes or dislikes on YouTube. Go for it. 

Actually, it seems to be an article on the Batteriser debunking in general:

We'd like to run a piece on your take-down of the Batterizer, and the company's subsequent response (rumours it bought dislikes for your page, quietly changed its claims etc).

Nice. Its AU outfit so its bloody unlikely they would throw fellow Austrian under the bus. As long as they let you authorize it its cool.

[Galenbo]

...Be careful that they don't make it look like Dave attacked them first.

As they did from the start. Payed by the battery industry. EE dropout with an arts degree.
New to come: Payed himself for the dislikes, look here, his own video where he admits it (link to the video)

[dexters_lab]

Nice. Its AU outfit so its bloody unlikely they would throw fellow Austrian under the bus. As long as they let you authorize it its cool.

in my experience the press would throw their own mothers under a bus for a good story

they should be considered untrustworthy at all times

[Galenbo]

Actually, it seems to be an article on the Batteriser debunking in general:

We'd like to run a piece on your take-down of the Batterizer, and the company's subsequent response (rumours it bought dislikes for your page, quietly changed its claims etc).

What's the % of the audience that understands Ohm's law?
I hope it doesn't become another believer-nonbeliever thing in the end.

[edy]

The story they're looking at here, presumably, is the manipulation of social media by individuals or corporate entities. Such as buying likes or dislikes on YouTube. Go for it. 

Actually, it seems to be an article on the Batteriser debunking in general:

We'd like to run a piece on your take-down of the Batterizer, and the company's subsequent response (rumours it bought dislikes for your page, quietly changed its claims etc).

DAVE, be careful!     Call me paranoid, but this may be a set up. How did they get your name? Why do they care about this topic now? Could there be any legal ramifications once you are in print that Batteroo and their lawyers can use to go after you for affecting their company business? Remember, you STILL have no Batteriser in your hand, and they want you to write about the Batteriser. They could use that $300,000 in IndieGogo money to sue you into the ground, just to make you rack up your legal fees. Even if you win, the financial costs can bury you.

As much as it would be AWESOME to see you in a major news publication, you need to ask what reasons you have for doing it, what back up you have for saying things in print (maybe some LEGAL advice is in order), and what risks you will face.

Plus, the campaign is still in the middle...... there is no product. I can see a desperate Batteroo trying to get out of their obligations and using a ScapeGoat like Dave to blame for why their product is delayed, or why they have lost some funding, or other such nonsense.

[GNU_Ninja]

The story they're looking at here, presumably, is the manipulation of social media by individuals or corporate entities. Such as buying likes or dislikes on YouTube. Go for it. 

Actually, it seems to be an article on the Batteriser debunking in general:

We'd like to run a piece on your take-down of the Batterizer, and the company's subsequent response (rumours it bought dislikes for your page, quietly changed its claims etc).

Hmmm. In that case I'd be a lot more wary. This could end up being a mountain out of a molehill situation 

[Godzil]

Please Fungus, calm down, I'll explain my point of view:

In this video they carefully chose the word they use, they don't give any real information any real number making this video much more difficult to "debunk" than the other one, because this one is mainly only marketing stuff, and correctly worded (apart from some typos) to be enoughly vague so that it's hard to counter attack it.

No it isn't.

Yes it is, the first thing they say is at 00:37 "Significant number of dead battery you throw away" what is a "significant number"? For some situation, one over 10000 is significant for other, 99/100 is significant. The wording they use here is absolutely ambiguous.

It is NOT true that devices only use 20% of the power in batteries. The batteries in the "20%" report weren't thrown away because people thought they were empty. Devices do not shut down because of current spikes.

There are unfortunately some device that badly work like this, but *SOME* not all.

It is NOT true that people can expect Batteriser to extend their battery life (see previous point).

These basic premises are wrong.

I never say anything about that, because I completely agree with the fact that the basic premises are wrong. (apart from the fact that most of the people that backed this product though that they would extent their battery life with it)

I'm just saying that this specific video has been better made than all the other, there are some sort of fact, be told in a really ambiguous way ("is wrong and at least misleading")

Possible follow up to the current spike argument: Build a device to mimic the effect of current spikes (ie. short voltage drops) and feed it in to the GPS. Vary the pulse heights, pulse widths and baseline voltages. Find out what the actual limits of the device are. How big of a spike would it take to shut it down?

(PS: Don't you think a device crash is more likely than a nice clean shutdown?)

Of course this is not something we want, and it's something I already raised in this topic before, what is the device need to store things before the battery die, and use the battery voltage/remaining capacity to trigger this?

So as I say I'm absolutely not trying to say the batteriser is a good (or bad product), but just saying that the latest video has been carefully made to be hard to attack on all the point we raised earlier, and that they would have plenty of way to say that what they say is somewhat true in some situations. This video is not giving fact and trying to prove them, it just give some vague facts.

(And by the way, I've been paid by the Big Probe Monkey Corporation)

[Galenbo]

...There are unfortunately some device that badly work like this, but *SOME* not all.

It would be a false assumption that these badly engineered 'some' devices will work better with batteriser.