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

[dcac]

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/batteriser-battery-life-extender-launches-on-indiegogo-raises-more-than-300-percent-of-funding-goal-in-day-one-300120225.html

raising more than 3x of its goal in the first 24 hours of the 30 day campaign and is now looking for support to increase this sum over and above 1 million dollars in the remaining 28 days of the campaign.

4 days left now and they're only up to about $260,000, seems a bit short, or will there be a race to the finishing line.


http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/batteroo-names-three-new-members-to-its-board-of-directors-300131651.html

today announced that David Martin, Min Park and Bob Pavey have joined its Board of Directors to provide governance and oversight of the company

"As we move Batteroo forward from conceptual stage to one of production and market placement of our innovative Batteriser technology, it is important to have respected and experienced Board members ensuring this transition happens as smoothly as possible," said Frankie Roohparvar, inventor of the Batteriser technology and Batteroo's Chairman of the Board. "

Just some more marketing maneuvers. I guess.

[LabSpokane]

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/batteriser-battery-life-extender-launches-on-indiegogo-raises-more-than-300-percent-of-funding-goal-in-day-one-300120225.html

raising more than 3x of its goal in the first 24 hours of the 30 day campaign and is now looking for support to increase this sum over and above 1 million dollars in the remaining 28 days of the campaign.

4 days left now and they're only up to about $260,000, seems a bit short, or will there be a race to the finishing line.


http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/batteroo-names-three-new-members-to-its-board-of-directors-300131651.html

today announced that David Martin, Min Park and Bob Pavey have joined its Board of Directors to provide governance and oversight of the company

"As we move Batteroo forward from conceptual stage to one of production and market placement of our innovative Batteriser technology, it is important to have respected and experienced Board members ensuring this transition happens as smoothly as possible," said Frankie Roohparvar, inventor of the Batteriser technology and Batteroo's Chairman of the Board. "

Just some more marketing maneuvers. I guess.

That is major news. SK is the VC backing Batteroo. They obviously want direct authority over how things are being run from here on out. 

Brothers Roohparvar clearly have lost credibility. You have to wonder if they aren't consider refunding everyone on Indiegogo and pulling the plug.

[firewalker]

About the capacitor of the power supplies. I don;t believe that good designed power supplies will have any significant capacitance on the output. It would render the current limiting capability useless (upon connecting the load).

Alexander.

[LabSpokane]

And at this point, I'm not sure who's reading this if its Bob, Frankie, or Min Park, but it's also time to dispense with the "toxic battery" claim. Common alkaline batteries have not used mercury for a long time. Here is Duracell's statement on the matter:

Alkaline batteries can be safely disposed of with normal household waste. Never dispose of batteries in fire because they could explode.

Due to concerns about mercury in the municipal solid waste stream, we have voluntarily eliminated all of the added mercury from our alkaline batteries since 1993, while maintaining the performance you demand. Our alkaline batteries are composed primarily of common metals—steel, zinc, and manganese—and do not pose a health or environmental risk during normal use or disposal.

[Godzil]

About the capacitor of the power supplies. I don;t believe that good designed power supplies will have any significant capacitance on the output. It would render the current limiting capability useless (upon connecting the load).

Alexander.

Yep, Dave gave a comment about that on the design of the Rigol DP832 if I remember correctly (or it was the Atten power supply? can't remember)

[dcac]

http://elektrotanya.com/hq_ps3003l_power-supply.pdf/download.html

I think this is the PSU used in Batteroo's monkey video, and it has a 470uF capacitor directly on the output terminals.

[PeterL]

(at least I think it was you)
 

Yes that was me.

And my message is still there, but only I and 'BatteriserBatteroo' (-> I'm gonna call him YTBB from now on) can see my message. And only you and YTBB can see your messages. That is until YTBB makes our messages public, then everyone can see them. But by posting there we are now part of this conversation on Youtube, so that's why we get a copy of new messages in this thread on gmail, even though these messages are not made public by YTBB. At least so it seems - and I hope I explained it well. It's a bit weird this way, but it's Google, not much we can do about it. Let's wait if YTBB will respond on our comments.

The Indiegogo backers will receive their Batterisers.  Probably about 20-25% of them will fail within 2-3 batteries' worth of use.  The rest will go into devices like remote controls that will see almost no benefit from the Batteriser (in fact I think it the Batteriser will have a detrimental effect due to losses in the converter)

Don't forget the quiesent current of the batteriser. Putting the batteriser in a remote is a bad idea, I think Bob even said something this in an answer on IGG.

A few devices may actually make it into old cameras (such as the one from 2001 mentioned in the above paper) that have a poorly designed battery management system that prematurely triggers the shut off mode (a camera I have appears to be such a poorly designed POS) and the Batteriser actually will extend the apparent life of those batteries, although probably by about 10-20% or so

With 'poorly designed' you mean "not on par with 2015's technology" right? I mean I know the camera's from that era, and remember the horrible battery life you got on those with alkaline's. But that's the nature of the alkaline's with their relative high ESR. The camera has to be nice to NiMH cells as well, so it can't go below 1 Volt. The batteriser can load the alkaline's a bit more, so the voltage on the cell drop's down to 0.7V But by that time you are putting just as much power in the ESR as in your camera -> you heat up your batteries, and drain them twice as fast. But you will get to a point where the battery still has energy in it, but it cannot deliver it fast enough to power the camera.

nobody will actually be keeping track of how long they last compared to before.  And because they spent good money on the devices, they will convince themselves that they got so much more life out of their batteries.

That's my thought as well, although they might get annoyed eventually because their devices always die without any warning.

[EEVblog]

Finally the show how to measured what energy is left in a battery: Measure the voltage While loading the battery with 10R or so!

Of course. Every single engineer and hobbyist on the planet knows this, except the Roohparvar's and their cohorts it seems.

[apis]

Don't forget the quiesent current of the batteriser. Putting the batteriser in a remote is a bad idea, I think Bob even said something this in an answer on IGG.

Yep, they've admitted they measured battery voltage unloaded  , and that they've admitted it will not be good for low power devices . So even by their own admission it will only be marginally usefull in a few high power devices (remains to be proven).

[SL4P]

My mom will see them and buy me one for Christmas 2016 (because they buys all that crap she sees on TV), so in early 2017 I should be able to do my own scientific analysis of how crappy these things are in real-world practical devices that people actually use (and not clapping monkeys or old fashioned incandescent flashlights).

Whoa there Sherlock!
I like those clapping monkeys!

[LabSpokane]

Wait no longer, for Batteroo has finally released the video explaining in great technical detail the Batteriser's principles of operation:

[pickle9000]

Wait no longer, for Batteroo has finally released the video explaining in great technical detail the Batteriser's principles of operation:

I love that vid

[SL4P]

"Inverse reactive current for use in unilateral phase reactors."

Where can I buy one?
Oh yeah, Dr Bob makes them.

[EEVblog]

Haven't seen this article before:
The title says it all:
http://fudzilla.com/news/37954-batteriser-falls-flat

[HighVoltage]

The 800%, or 80% or whatever the figure is, it is just in the funny math:

[EEVblog]

Someone pointed me to this:
Looks like the board of Dr Bob's previous company DigitalOptics of which he was Preseindet & CEO weren't happy with him and gave him to boot:
http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1261694/000092189513000602/prec14a06297103_03152013.htm
He started Batteriser that same month.

We Are Concerned that Current Board Leadership Will Continue to Prevent
Effective Management of the Company and a Constructive Dialogue with Stockholders
 
Tessera has experienced continued turnover of its top-level managers in recent years, including a number who joined the Company only recently, yet received a handsome severance package or lucrative consulting arrangement.  Two examples are discussed below:
 
Farzan (Bob) Roohparvar, who joined the Company in March 2011, was terminated from his position as President of DOC on September 4, 2012.  The Company and Mr. Roohparvar entered into a settlement agreement on December 4, 2012, pursuant to which the Company agreed to pay him and his attorneys $500,000 as an initial separation payment and $440,000 in additional severance payments.  In connection with the settlement agreement, a subsidiary of the Company and Mr. Roohparvar entered into a consulting agreement pursuant to which he will provide up to five hours per month of advice through December 31, 2013 for total payments of up to $60,000.

So sounds like he had plenty of cash to pour into Batteriser.

[eilize]

what??

don't make a joke from technology send by raptor jesus  !!!  O0
the batteriser 'll free your soul for only 2.5$





seriously

there is a simple principle..
in a ideal case where  there is no loss
the power is constant  on both side of a converter, it can only decrease.

so if you increase the voltage to ruin your jauge power...you ruin your current source
usefullness of a voltage source where you drasticlly decrease the current  ??

a simple boost

     _________L    __  \___________
    !                         |            |            |
-------                    \              |            |
!  u  !                      |            C           R
!------                      |            |            |
    |_____________|______|______|

IR= IL(1-alpha)

where alpha is the duty cycle

and i forget the loss by switching


raptor jesus know  you need it^^

[Halcyon]

Dave, well done. It looks like evidence proving that the Batteriser is a total scam (or failure at best) is mounting almost daily (certainly faster than "Bob" Roohparvar can generate crappy bullshit videos) and it seems EEVblog was the catalyst. I haven't seen much from his "fan" either. Do you think they might have actually conducted the same tests you did (albeit off-camera), then turned to each other and said "oh shit..."?

Note to Batteroo: Leave the EE to the EE's (that's Electronics Engineers). Maybe you guys could get a job at Apple, what you designed looked great but wasn't very useful and cost too much ;-)

[Godzil]

Dave, well done. It looks like evidence proving that the Batteriser is a total scam (or failure at best) is mounting almost daily (certainly faster than "Bob" Roohparvar can generate crappy bullshit videos) and it seems EEVblog was the catalyst. I haven't seen much from his "fan" either. Do you think they might have actually conducted the same tests you did (albeit off-camera), then turned to each other and said "oh shit..."?

Note to Batteroo: Leave the EE to the EE's (that's Electronics Engineers). Maybe you guys could get a job at Apple, what you designed looked great but wasn't very useful and cost too much ;-)

Apple hire real EE, not fake one so I really doubt that they could even afford to get a job there.

[Halcyon]

Dave, well done. It looks like evidence proving that the Batteriser is a total scam (or failure at best) is mounting almost daily (certainly faster than "Bob" Roohparvar can generate crappy bullshit videos) and it seems EEVblog was the catalyst. I haven't seen much from his "fan" either. Do you think they might have actually conducted the same tests you did (albeit off-camera), then turned to each other and said "oh shit..."?

Note to Batteroo: Leave the EE to the EE's (that's Electronics Engineers). Maybe you guys could get a job at Apple, what you designed looked great but wasn't very useful and cost too much ;-)

Apple hire real EE, not fake one so I really doubt that they could even afford to get a job there.

That was my dig at Apple ;-)
What Apple make look pretty (including all the packaging) but, yeah... nahhhhh....
The amount of Apple hardware I've thrown out vs. PC hardware -- Apple wins hands down. There is a reason toddlers have their own iDevices these days: they are just toys.

[EEVblog]

Do you think they might have actually conducted the same tests you did (albeit off-camera), then turned to each other and said "oh shit..."?

There had to be at least several "oh shit" moments, that was very obvious in the way they have changed their story and claims bit by bit after everyone takes them to task over every new thing. All this has been documented.
I suspect they might have learned their lesson by now, as it seems there isn't a single EE on the planet who will back them. If they are the least bit smart they won't bother to release their "technical" video for engineers, they must know they don't have a technical leg left to stand on any more. There was a hint of that with the "Troops" delay excuse.
The only reason left to do it or say any more at all is to appease their financial backers, and if they do do it, it'll likely be done very reluctantly, which will likely make the video even worse. Imagine a young earth creationist who comes into a creation debate trying to hedge their bets and weasle around things, it'll be awkward and fail. You either don't turn up at all, or you go full Ken Ham. Of course you still fail either way 

[apis]

Meh, if there is a video/interview, etc, I expect it to be totally fake and scripted. There is no way they are going to let real EEs question them.

It would have been so easy for them to just put the butteriser in one clapping monkey and normal batteries in another and make the two run until the battery is drained like a Duracell bunny test. Yet they didn't, I wonder why.

[Godzil]

Yeah, even the bunny test ad is much more scientific than their videos

[janekm]

Yeah, even the bunny test ad is much more scientific than their videos

Well, at least the Duracell bunny was just as misleading, by comparing an alkaline Duracell battery against zinc-chloride batteries from other brands (in 2014!), and then giving the impression that it was outlasting 12 other batteries in sequence, when it wasn't even doing that: http://www.thegrocer.co.uk/buying-and-supplying/advertising-watchdogs-silence-duracells-drumming-bunny/373910.article

A nice parallel to the 800% claim really

That's almost as misleading as "look! The battery status is showing 100%!"...

[ccs46]

And at this point, I'm not sure who's reading this if its Bob, Frankie, or Min Park, but it's also time to dispense with the "toxic battery" claim. Common alkaline batteries have not used mercury for a long time. Here is Duracell's statement on the matter:

Alkaline batteries can be safely disposed of with normal household waste. Never dispose of batteries in fire because they could explode.

Due to concerns about mercury in the municipal solid waste stream, we have voluntarily eliminated all of the added mercury from our alkaline batteries since 1993, while maintaining the performance you demand. Our alkaline batteries are composed primarily of common metals—steel, zinc, and manganese—and do not pose a health or environmental risk during normal use or disposal.

Well it depends whether your using Chinese rip-off batteries, like they are.