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

[Fungus]

Has anyone a better 6-pin boost converter for this kind application?

Try Analog Devices ADP1607... as discussed at length earlier in this thread.

It won't give you any extra battery life though. The actual chip doesn't matter if the basic premise is wrong.

[WattSekunde]

Has anyone a better 6-pin boost converter for this kind application?

Try Analog Devices ADP1607... as discussed at length earlier in this thread.

It won't give you any extra battery life though. The actual chip doesn't matter if the basic premise is wrong.

Thanks. Yes, you are right. I think the batteriser is (in this forum) 100% demystified. But I never played around with step-up/down converters in general. Now I get interested in. Especially in low energy harvesting and ultra-low power ICs. (Of course not for another batteriser scam.)

[Wytnucls]

The basic premise is right and it does work (after all, that's what these ICs were designed for), but the harvested remaining battery energy will be minimal, except for a handful of old devices with high cut-off voltages.
The sleeves present problems of their own, like defeating the usefulness of battery life indicators and physical dimensions that can make it hard to fit in existing tight battery compartments.
The current output they're looking for (~1A) is ridiculously high for something that has to fit on the tip of a AA/AAA battery. I don't think they'll ever get that right.

[WN1X]

I think the batteriser is (in this forum) 100% demystified.

Let me fix that for you...

I think the batteriser is (in this forum) 800% demystified 

[WattSekunde]

I think the batteriser is (in this forum) 100% demystified.

Let me fix that for you...

I think the batteriser is (in this forum) 800% demystified 

 

The basic premise is right and it does work, but the harvested remaining battery energy will be minimal, except for a handful of old devices with high cut-off voltages.
The sleeves present problems of their own, like defeating the usefulness of battery life indicators and physical dimensions that can make it hard to fit in existing tight battery compartments.
The current output they're looking for (~1A) is ridiculously high for something that has to fit on the tip of a AA/AAA battery. I don't think they'll ever get that right.

Totally agree. If you look in the data sheets and try to match it to the batteriser fantasy conditions (voltages, size, ...) the step-up converter efficiency gets so worse. I guess under 70% with less than 100mA max.

The pictures of the "production run" look like early prototypes to me. For example why did they glue or solder the PCB to the frame before the chip was soldered? Why solder the thing with only two caps? If they ever deliver one of these things I'm sure they grind the chip marking away. I wonder and don't know if they try to get most out of indiegogo or sell the crap on every supermarket around the globe? I am not sure. .

[Fungus]

If they ever deliver one of these things I'm sure they grind the chip marking away.

No need.

It's fairly safe to say they're using either their own chip or a tweaked version of a commercial chip.

Either way: Putting a picture of Probes the Monkey on it won't be a problem. Chip makers will happily put your logo on a chip if you order enough of them.

[LabSpokane]

Anyone want hazard a bet that if the IC is truly custom that is in the form of chip on board rather than an IC?

[Mr.B]

Anyone want hazard a bet that if the IC is truly custom that is in the form of chip on board rather than an IC?

Anyone want hazard a bet that they aint got either...
They cannot show us pictures of production in China because there simply is no device to produce.
Their level of communication is a clear indicator.

[Delta]

The basic premise is right and it does work (after all, that's what these ICs were designed for), but the harvested remaining battery energy will be minimal, except for a handful of old devices with high cut-off voltages.

That is not their basic premise though, is it?  Their basic premise is that battery operated products only use 20% of energy contained in a cell.  That was almost immediately shown to be bollocks.  Everything else follows from there on in...

Boost converters do of course "work", ie produce a higher output voltage, but that's not a "premise" for a commercial product.

[LabSpokane]

Anyone want hazard a bet that if the IC is truly custom that is in the form of chip on board rather than an IC?

Anyone want hazard a bet that they aint got either...
They cannot show us pictures of production in China because there simply is no device to produce.
Their level of communication is a clear indicator.

True. The absence of even one selfie in Shenzen is conspicuous.

[Wytnucls]

The basic premise is right and it does work (after all, that's what these ICs were designed for), but the harvested remaining battery energy will be minimal, except for a handful of old devices with high cut-off voltages.

That is not their basic premise though, is it?  Their basic premise is that battery operated products only use 20% of energy contained in a cell.  That was almost immediately shown to be bollocks.  Everything else follows from there on in...

Boost converters do of course "work", ie produce a higher output voltage, but that's not a "premise" for a commercial product.

'It won't give you any extra battery life though. The actual chip doesn't matter if the basic premise is wrong.'
That's not what Fungus was alluding to. We know that the '80% and up to 8x' is marketing hype.

This is the premise and the basis of their patent application:
Significant number of batteries thrown away still has a lot of energy left in them. Using proprietary circuitry to maintain an optimal output voltage, Batteriser allows the end device to access the untapped energy in the battery and makes it last longer.

[EEVblog]

The basic premise is right and it does work (after all, that's what these ICs were designed for), but the harvested remaining battery energy will be minimal, except for a handful of old devices with high cut-off voltages.

That is not their basic premise though, is it?  Their basic premise is that battery operated products only use 20% of energy contained in a cell.  That was almost immediately shown to be bollocks.  Everything else follows from there on in...
Boost converters do of course "work", ie produce a higher output voltage, but that's not a "premise" for a commercial product.

Correct. The only carrot and stick Bateroo have is their supposed "fact" that products typically only use 20% of a batteries capacity. Their last "technical" video goes to great lengths to try and explain how this is the case (and they fail of course). Because if they don't show that "fact" to be true then they haven't got a viable commercial product that can be marketed.

[Fungus]

Correct. The only carrot and stick Bateroo have is their supposed "fact" that products typically only use 20% of a batteries capacity.

They based their number on a study that shows that some people only use 20% of a battery's capacity.

eg. There are people that put a fresh set of batteries in their camera when they go away for the weekend no matter if the old batteries are still good or not. There's security people that put new batteries in their radios at the start of every shift and throw the old ones away, etc.

Of course Batteriser can't fix the 'people' problem and it turns out that most devices use 90+% of the energy in batteries (if you leave the batteries inside them until they run out).

[EEVblog]

Correct. The only carrot and stick Bateroo have is their supposed "fact" that products typically only use 20% of a batteries capacity.

They based their number on a study that shows that some people only use 20% of a battery's capacity.

And they only did that after that study was pointed out on this forum, which we of course know they read.
And they didn't even interpret the data correctly 

[EEVblog]

More refunds

[digsys]

Are these people really getting refunds ?? How do we know that they're not just a setup to quieten the masses ??
IF we assume that they painted themselves into a corner, and were caught out, why bother giving a few refunds ?? Did IGG put pressure on them ??
Surely there'd have to be 100's and 100's wanting refunds ?? Soooo many questions.

[LabSpokane]

At this point, the smartest thing Batteroo can do is issue refunds. Refunds are always cheaper than manufacturing at a loss.

[station240]

Correct. The only carrot and stick Bateroo have is their supposed "fact" that products typically only use 20% of a batteries capacity.

They based their number on a study that shows that some people only use 20% of a battery's capacity.

It's more like:
"..a scam that shows that some people only use 20% of their brain capacity."

If people are throwing away disposable batteries with only 20% discharge, and buy enough of said batteries to justify buying a Batteriser, then they are morons.
For the same cost, they could buy some high capacity rechargeable batteries and a charger.
If the high capacity rechargeable cells only last 100 cycles, that's over 3 months.

[mikerj]

If people are throwing away disposable batteries with only 20% discharge, and buy enough of said batteries to justify buying a Batteriser, then they are morons.
For the same cost, they could buy some high capacity rechargeable batteries and a charger.
If the high capacity rechargeable cells only last 100 cycles, that's over 3 months.

Think about it a bit, how can the average user tell how much capacity is remaining in an alkaline cell with reasonable accuracy?  If they need to depend on something working correctly for a period of time, then they put fresh cells in.  This is hardly unreasonable.

Low self discharge NiMH are a good alternative for many applications, provided you remember to charge them, and that your device is ok with the lower voltage.

[Brumby]

Think about it a bit, how can the average user tell how much capacity is remaining in an alkaline cell with reasonable accuracy?

... and with the Batteriser, they will have even less of an idea - and an instantaneous death.

If they need to depend on something working correctly for a period of time, then they put fresh cells in.  This is hardly unreasonable.

Will Batteriser change this behaviour?  I don't think so.

[samgab]

Quote from: mikerj on Yesterday at 09:44:00 PM

...Low self discharge NiMH are a good alternative for many applications, provided you remember to charge them, and that your device is ok with the lower voltage.

That "NiMH cells have lower voltage than Alkaline cells" thing is a bit of a common misconception. The STARTING open circuit voltage of a fresh Alkaline is higher, but depending on current draw, throughout much of the discharge curve the NiMH maintains a higher voltage than the Alkaline. Very few, if any, modern devices designed for Alkaline AA cells have any issues running on LSD NiMH AA cells. Sometimes if the device has a battery status readout it will show 3/4 capacity as soon as you put the NiMH cells in, and will remain at 3/4 capacity showing for a long time, but that's about the only negative effect of running the NiMH cells.

[ez24]

You forgot to mention the area above the curves that the Batteriser can tap into.

[f4eru]

True. The absence of even one selfie in Shenzen is conspicuous.

Selfies have been strictly forbidden in Shenzen

Correct. The only carrot and stick Bateroo have is their supposed "fact" that products typically only use 20% of a batteries capacity.

It's not carrot and stick. It's monkey and probe : )

[samgab]

You forgot to mention the area above the curves that the Batteriser can tap into.

LOLZ 

[Marcel_X]

Guess what I got in my inbox. An update from Batteriser! It is not posted at the Indiegogo site (yet), so I thought I'd share it with you ;-)

Dear Supporters,
 
First of all, we would like to thank you for being patient with us as we have been trying to get our products shipped to our customers. To that end, we would like to share some important information with you.  Energizer has initiated a lawsuit against our company arguing that the name Batteriser is similar to Energizer.  In their opinion, we are taking advantage of Energizer’s reputation.   Batteriser is a unique name we chose to emphasize the rise in the voltage of a Battery, hence Batte-Riser. The name Energizer does not contain the words battery or riser, and is derived from just one verb: Energize. The only similarity is the "ER" suffix in both names and that to them seems to imply we are taking advantage of their reputation.
 

Although our legal team believes that Energizer’s does not have a case they can win, there are other realities we must consider. We are a small startup with limited resources, and Energizer is a huge corporation. We do not want to waste our resources on a lengthy legal battle, so we have decided to change the Batteriser product name.  To be clear, this litigation from Energizer is only related to the naming of Batteriser and has nothing to do with our technology and IP portfolio.
 

We are working to expedite the negotiation process with Energizer so that we may continue with the more important work of shipping our orders to all of our customers. At this point, we already have the Batteriser name and logo design on all of our packaging, cases, wrappers, and brochures as well as the Batteriser product itself. As a result, we will now have to redesign and retool all of these items with our new product name and logo.  We are working on minimizing the effect this change has on our shipping schedule.  As mentioned in our last communication, our CEO Bob Roohparvar is currently in East Asia working to resolve these issues as quickly as possible.
 

Recently, we were also notified that many customers had problems accessing certain features on our website. Upon further investigation, we realized that our website had been hacked. Someone had entered a few lines of code that blocked our customers from seeing the videos and Q&A section of our site, as well as blocking them from placing orders. That issue is now resolved, but It is very obvious to us that we are under attack. Given that we plan to disrupt the $15 billion/year battery industry and drastically reduce the number of batteries in landfills, we are not surprised.  We are grateful that we are not fighting this fight alone, and that these delays have not deterred our supporters. To be clear, we are not saying or implying that Energizer had anything to do with the hacking of our website; but merely that we are being attacked on many fronts.
 

We will be announcing the new product name, unveiling our new logo and supplying further details in the coming weeks. We want to sincerely apologize for the delays and want to assure you that we are doing everything in our power to get the product to you. We appreciate your continued patience and look forward to delivering our product that will make the planet a better place for our children. Thank you so much for your continued support!
 

Yours truly,

The Batteroo Team