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

[GoneTomorrow]

So theoretically in 2 months a bunch of people here will have units in hand for analysis. We'll see; if it actually ships on time I'll eat my hat.

The only crowd funded project I had ship on time was the uArm, by a group of (perhaps stereotypically ironic) Chinese engineers. They busted ass and worked the project around the deadline they'd set, rather than slipping the dates half a dozen times. Rather impressed to get the product 100% as advertised and on time (we already know Batteriser failed on one of these  )

Anyway, kind of actually hoping it DOES ship soon so we can get some proper scientific data on it.

[robby1995]

I found these in some old PC hardware I got...

Made in Australia, haven't leaked, and appear to be dated the 5th week, 1993...

And each cell is still sitting at 0.8volts...

Now, do they work in my led torch?

With batterizer they will 

Energy left in the batteries for 0minutes of operation
Times 8 with batterizer = 0 minutes

[AmmoJammo]

I found these in some old PC hardware I got...

Made in Australia, haven't leaked, and appear to be dated the 5th week, 1993...

And each cell is still sitting at 0.8volts...

Now, do they work in my led torch?

With batterizer they will 

Energy left in the batteries for 0minutes of operation
Times 8 with batterizer = 0 minutes

They actually run the LED torch fine, probably only get a few minutes from each, but I reckon these are bloody brilliant quality cells!

[SeanB]

Made back when Eveready actually made good cells. That they have not leaked means you had the ones made just after the machine maintenance cycle, where everything was perfect in assembly.

[EEVblog]

They said November for the backers

They also said a few weeks for "press kits". What's the bet they don't send me one...

[samgab]

They said November for the backers

They also said a few weeks for "press kits". What's the bet they don't send me one...

I'm guessing you're not their most favourite individual just at the moment; if Daisy Dukez/Davey Jonez/etc is anything to go on... 

You know a thing or two about product design and bill of materials etc, so help me out here:

I just can't add it up. Promotion and marketing, plus designing and having an integrated circuit manufactured from scratch, plus say minimum 2 resistors, 2 capacitors, and 1 Inductor, plus at least a diode for reverse polarity protection, plus a custom PCB, plus the metal shell, plus anodising or coating in the red coating to prevent shorts, plus the manufacture of that snazzy plastic case they come in, plus shipping...
They've GOT to be losing money at less than $2.50 per SKU...

[LabSpokane]

When are they going to ship? Around Xmas?

Alexander.

If they're smart, never. The only units that seem to exist at the moment are the AA version. Those are the only ones that have been submitted for test. That means that they will need to spool up the AAA, C and D versions from scratch between now and the first week of November to have any hope of getting on a container that will make it in time. This is exceedingly unlikely.

These guys are angry and lashing out for a reason: because they are going to have to effectively tape money to everything they sell.  I'm sure that there are some heated internal discussions about just how much more money will be consumed before profits arrive.

[Psycho]

These guys are angry and lashing out for a reason: because they are going to have to effectively tape money to everything they sell.  I'm sure that there are some heated internal discussions about just how much more money will be consumed before profits arrive.

A funny thought. 

[EEVblog]

They've GOT to be losing money at less than $2.50 per SKU...

Yup, but like I said, that doesn't matter. They are looking to create a company they can flip for a profit. Well, that's what the VC's are in it for anyway.
The BOM cost does come way down once you start talking millions of units though. It could potentially be made quite cheap given enough investment in tooling.
And their current advertised price isn't necessarily what you'd buy it in Walmart for.

[EEVblog]

If they're smart, never. The only units that seem to exist at the moment are the AA version. Those are the only ones that have been submitted for test. That means that they will need to spool up the AAA, C and D versions from scratch between now and the first week of November to have any hope of getting on a container that will make it in time. This is exceedingly unlikely.

And that's the trick. They have packaged AA and AAA versions in a lot of the backer deals. Unlikely they'd ship the AA first then the AAA's as that's double postage and handling.
They have sold both "Early Bird" AA and AAA packages, so will be interesting to see what they ship first.
It's likely the AAA prototypes don't even exist yet, otherwise I'm sure they would have been proud to show off such a miniaturisation feat.
So I agree that in that case it's very unlikely to see any AAA's shipped on time.

[lampbus]

Yep. If they can get it into Walmart then it'll sell millions no matter how many bad reviews it has on the 'net.

They have the former CEO of K-Mart on their team for a reason.

Walmart isn't stupid, they'll test it of course.

They plug it in and it'll "work" of course. They'll look at the UL and FCC reports and tick, approved.

Here in the UK we have a massive supermarket chain called ASDA, owned by Walmart...I purchased a small weather stationthat was heavily discounted - I think it only cost £4.00.
Anyway - it is junk - the batteries in the outside radio transmitting part die in days, and the internal receiver is not much better.
It may or may not have UL, CE, TuV (I have not checked) but it now has a small solar panel and schotky diode powering the rechargeable battery in the outside part (mounted on my roof)

So it worked - and provided me some interest, but basically for anyone who was not able to mod it - it would be a useless battery guzzler five min toy.

[Wytnucls]

They are supposed to produce and deliver before the end of November 2015 to 6,815 people (last count):
61,446 AA sleeves
27,766 AAA sleeves
3,824 C sleeves
4,542 D sleeves

or a total of 97,578 sleeves and matching carry case! 

[miguelvp]

Even if they lost $1 per unit ($100K) it would be enough for them to get a big deal. $100K spent for targeted advertising is nothing compared to their burn rate.

[edy]

I just can't add it up. Promotion and marketing, plus designing and having an integrated circuit manufactured from scratch, plus say minimum 2 resistors, 2 capacitors, and 1 Inductor, plus at least a diode for reverse polarity protection, plus a custom PCB, plus the metal shell, plus anodising or coating in the red coating to prevent shorts, plus the manufacture of that snazzy plastic case they come in, plus shipping...
They've GOT to be losing money at less than $2.50 per SKU...

Yes, it has been brought up many times in this thread. We have all doubted even the $300k they have is enough to do anything, and even with $1 million VC funding, it takes a massive effort to set up a completely new manufacturing line to fabricate the thousands of Batterisers they need to fulfill just their IGG campaign (not to mention stocking retail stores). Never mind the actual BOM and costs to finish and package and ship the products.

So unless they just make a "sleeve" with a chip on board (may be cheaper) or just fake the entire thing like those Calculators with "solar cells" which are actually plastic look-a-likes, you will probably see the cost in stores increase substantially. Not only does Batteroo need to make money, but also the retailers. Or this is all vapor ware and nothing will ever be delivered, as they were hoping somebody would have bought the company already.

[Godzil]

For 100k pieces the storage box, and the metal piece would not cost a lot, especially is the plastic storage piece is made to accommodate all the batteriser version. If not of course that's a different story, but even for 10k pieces molded plastique is not that expensive, (apart maybe for transparent one)

[Fungus]

even for 10k pieces molded plastique is not that expensive, (apart maybe for transparent one)

The Batteriser one is transparent...

[Godzil]

That's why I add this point

[5ky]

The plastic is cheap but the dies are what are expensive

[SeanB]

Blow moulded plastic for a cover is very cheap, once you have the tooling in place. Then you just heat, step and blow and cut out from the scrap.

[Godzil]

Transparent plastic need more attention than normal because lots of parameter will make your plastic fragile, not at the correct transparency level etc...

It quite hard to make.

Anyway, I've just found that I have that IKEA stuff running on double AA since at least last February, (under load) one battery is at about 1.0 the other at 1.5.. And it takes about 0.6mA.....

With its 800x power expansion, a batteriser would make it run for years! As it has run for merely 9 month and is still working in a good shape!

[LabSpokane]

These plastic cases are injection-molded, not blow molded.  I'm guessing that the AA case costs in the neighborhood of $0.50 USD each  based on a two-cavity 200 ton press with a 30 second cycle time and clear HIPS material.  That's assuming there is no wastage, no setup charge, no shipping, no tool amortization, etc.  Just press time and material time.  And I'm assuming that it's an optimized tool with nice, thin-walled plastic. 

That is *not* "cheap."  That is at least $1.00 to $1.50 in product price by the time you factor in distribution and retail markups.  You have to realize that they have this expensive case *ON TOP* of the retail packaging.  I have no idea of what they were thinking with that.  Packaging is already expensive. 

Then there's the type of tool that needs to be purchased.  This is where they're really going to feel pain.  They surely budgeted the part price with a multi-cavity hot-nozzle tool for no waste and no trimming.  Well, kiss that plan goodbye if they aren't planning to dig deep in their own pockets.  Now, they're down to a cold-runner tool with sub-gates that generate maybe 25% of the part weight as scrap that they don't dare regrind back in if they don't want black specs showing up. 

China used to basically give their machine time away for free.  I don't think they can do that any longer.  I think that a quality molded part will be cheaper there, but not half or 1/4 price like it used to be during the bad old days of the Asian financial crisis. 

For anyone that hasn't done it, running clear plastic at a custom molder that runs every other kind of plastic through the same machines ...
...  well ... it's a nightmare.  An absolute nightmare.  There will be black specs everywhere.  The scrap rates just go through the roof.  You need a molder that has machines dedicated to clear resins that have a very strict cleaning regimen for the extruder.  There are also a lot of cleanliness considerations in order to prevent contamination.  I won't bore you with them all. 

And to me, it looks like the case for the Batterisers are model-specific.  There's no way they're stuffing a D-cell in the AA  model they have shown.

Like I've said before, the worst punishment there is - is for Batteroo to actually have to manufacture and ship.   

[LabSpokane]

For 100k pieces the storage box, and the metal piece would not cost a lot,

The tooling and the scrap rate on the metal are what's going to bite Batteroo ... hard.  That little clip is stainless, which is OK when you're laser-cutting, but not on a progressive die.  I'll leave it to Batteroo to find out why their scrap rate will be so high. 

[ludzinc]

Regards the stainless strip - could Batteriser be using that as the boost inductor?

[edy]

Regards the stainless strip - could Batteriser be using that as the boost inductor?

Unlikely. Unless there's a coil inside there with a ferrous core to increase the magnetic flux. If the sleeve was designed to go completely around the battery, a coil could be made wrapping around the battery. However, the amount of inductance would be likely low due to the core being a battery... not exactly a good magnetic material. Also it would vary greatly between batteries of different types, and even the same type, depending on how it is made and what materials are used.

Anyhow, the sleeve is unlikely to do anything except act as a conductor from the positive to negative terminal through the boost converter.

[g.lewarne]

Hello everyone! 

(my first post!)

I'm not much of an EE any more but I dabbled a bit when I was younger and have always liked tinkering with stuff, and I really enjoy watching Dave's videos!

Anyway, I have been following the batteriser shenanigans closely and have a some thoughts I wanted to share.  Having worked in electronics retail I can already see device manufacturers stance on batteriser if it ever gets released - they will not offer any warranty or accept refunds/exchanges on products that exhibit "faulty" battery reporting.  And customers are going to get angry.  Why do I think this?  Lets take their Mac Bluetooth keyboard in the promotional video as an example.  How long do you think Apple will tolerate "the battery guage is faulty" claims from customer? especially if it goes 100% (with the boost converter) to 0 and turns off with no in-between?

It will not take long for manufactures to issue "warranty void if used with batteriser" claims on products that have battery monitoring functionality....and 99.9% of customers will genuinely believe the product IS faulty as it will exhibit unusual behaviour.  Retails will notice the uptake in returns / exchanges very quickly.  I expect that itself will lead to some product verification, testing and then withdrawal from retail stores first, with manufactures following shortly after.  If batteriser sales really take off, this could actually lead to inflation of prices as manufacturers perceive lower yields and higher losses due to returns.

It will be chaos

Sorry if i'm not adding much to the discussions,
G