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

[PA0PBZ]

One thing that does not fit, all the radio system I know, even old one (early 2000) use Li-Ion/Li-Po battery and not D/C/A/AA/AAA/AAAAAAAAA batteries so...

The weird thing is that the original article says:

The warehouse contains millions of dollars of inventory waiting to ship out on demand. Of the most popular items to be shipped, number one is AA batteries. More than 850,000 of those went out of here last year, mostly to power hand-held radios.

[chris_leyson]

680,000 LESS batteries in landfill, I think maybe more batteries in landfill because the batterizer will drain them faster, rapidly followed by a lot of batterizers, that's assuming the batterizer ever gets buit.

[FrankBuss]

Sounds plausible. Wikipedia says "Bureau of Land Management" has 11,000 employees. Not everyone needs batteries for their work, but maybe needs to be replaced for some devices every few days, and it would result in 850,000. They could save lots of tax money, and save the nature, by using rechargeable batteries.

[Godzil]

Sounds plausible. Wikipedia says "Bureau of Land Management" has 11,000 employees. Not everyone needs batteries for their work, but maybe needs to be replaced for some devices every few days, and it would result in 850,000. They could save lots of tax money, and save the nature, by using rechargeable batteries.

Or device with proper Lithium battery.

The last company I was working for was making trunked radio, and some used by police, they use lithium battery. I don't get the use of AA battery, there are more problem using them than benefit. Rechargeable battery can be recharged using so many ways that the fact you can buy nearly anywhere AA battery is not really relevant, and to be honest, on the field, I doubt you find a lot of shop with AA/C & co batteries (but, sun, wind, or even hands, yes for sure)

[chris_leyson]

They could save lots of tax money, and save the nature, by using rechargeable batteries.

Exactly, use rechargeable batteries. But come to think of it I don't remember seeing AA batteries in hand held radios, they're all rechargeable now. Had a 70cm hand held in the 80's and that may have had a battery holder for three or four AA cells, but that was 30 years ago.

[FrankBuss]

But come to think of it I don't remember seeing AA batteries in hand held radios, they're all rechargeable now. Had a 70cm hand held in the 80's and that may have had a battery holder for three or four AA cells, but that was 30 years ago.

I've heard some organizations here in Germany (police) are still using very old hand held radios. The good thing is that they can be repaired easily (if you have some surplus devices for spare parts), but often they use just mobile phones because it is more reliable.

[Godzil]

But come to think of it I don't remember seeing AA batteries in hand held radios, they're all rechargeable now. Had a 70cm hand held in the 80's and that may have had a battery holder for three or four AA cells, but that was 30 years ago.

I've heard some organizations here in Germany (police) are still using very old hand held radios. The good thing is that they can be repaired easily (if you have some surplus devices for spare parts), but often they use just mobile phones because it is more reliable.

I though that German police was switching to Tetra network some times ago, I doubt there is any tetra device using AA battery...

[ez24]

Just curious so here are some approved radios

https://www.nifc.gov/NIICD/docs/approved_radios.pdf

I traced one and it used lithium batteries with optional alkaline battery power pack add on (I assume AA)

so I would say everyone is right 

[ez24]

Is it possible that a battery booster could work?

I assume I could find the answer by reading 5,000 messages but it is faster to ask.

Here are the voltage specs for a Midland STP105B  approved radio

http://midlandusa.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/STP-Series-P25-Operation-Manual_Ver6_0.pdf

Operating Voltage Range is 7.5 Vdc ± % 20 (6.0-9.0 Vdc)

Here is the alkaline battery pack  (no other info)

https://midlandusa.com/product/90-1015-p25-portable-battery/

Lets assume the following:

- The operating time needs to increase by 80% (not 800%)
- The max voltage with AA batteries is 9v and they run down to 6 v

so there are 6 AA batteries in series (unknown parallel) so each one starts at 1.5 v
and the radio stops working when each cell reaches 1.0 volts

Is there enough energy below 1.0 v to be boosted to 1.0 or above to provide more energy ?

Lets disregard physical size.

[Brumby]

There are several 'Ifs' and 'Buts' which include current requirements and when the Batteriser is inserted, but the fundamental is this: We all agree boost circuits have the potential to hold voltages up - but the question is for how long?

From Dave's video (original post): https://www.eevblog.com/forum/blog/eevblog-751-how-to-debunk-a-product-(the-batteriser)/msg687387/#msg687387

Red = Used battery energy
Green = Wasted battery energy


When you consider a lot of gear has been checked to still operate down to 1.0V (and lower) that green area shrinks even more dramatically.

Nobody here sees 800% in any real world application and you'd be lucky to find anyone who feels that there is any real practical benefit.

[ez24]

Nobody here sees 800% in any real world application and you'd be lucky to find anyone who feels that there is any real practical benefit.

They are saying 80% now not 800%.

There does not look like there is much left under 1.0v

thanks

[AmmoJammo]

In case someone didn't read the Facebook entry from yesterday and their recent answer of a question, that the UL test proves that the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management needs only 170,000 batteries instead of 850,000 with the Batteriser. Hilarious as always:



Isn't this against the UL lab rules that they are not allowed to use the UL name, except when citing the full report?

PS: this is fun, how can I follow the Facebook page without clicking "like"?

PPS: the original article about the 850,000 batteries: http://nwnewsnetwork.org/post/amazoncom-wildland-firefighting-keeping-crews-fed-and-supplied

I don't math so good, but 80% longer run time does not equal 80% less batteries in land fill...

[SeanB]

Perhaps they all have 2 wall clocks in each room of each office. Those all being the nice continuous movement type that use an AA cell at a rate of one per month or so. 11000 employees, 22000 batteries per month and thus 264000 per year per employee. Assuming they grab a pack of 4, and often take the 2 they need to use and the other 2 home, then they might get to 850000 per year.

Otherwise they have a warehouse with 2000000 AA batteries in it, and because they throw away around half a year because they have expired, and the order system simply replaces them again because they are stock lost in system this probably amounts for it.

[amspire]

Is it possible that a battery booster could work?

..
Here are the voltage specs for a Midland STP105B  approved radio

http://midlandusa.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/STP-Series-P25-Operation-Manual_Ver6_0.pdf

Is there enough energy below 1.0 v to be boosted to 1.0 or above to provide more energy ?

Looking at the specs of that device, it uses perhaps 200mA when receiving and perhaps 1.5A when transmitting. The batteriser boosts to 1.5V, so even if it were 100% efficient, that would need 2.25A at 1V cell voltage for transmit and 3.21A at 0.7V. Now, if you look at the typical battery boosting inverter chip, its efficiency usually falls off dramatically at low voltages so it is common to get maybe 65% efficiency at 1V and maybe 40% at 0.7V.

Using these guestimate figures, that would mean that to counteract the inefficiency, you would need 3.5A at 1V cell voltage and 8A at 0.7V. Anyone who has ever tested an AA battery knows that if the battery is at 1V and you try and draw these currents, the battery voltage will be in freefall. You might get 5 seconds out of it. Basically with these radios, you will get less life with the Batteriser as the higher battery voltage probably means the transmitter runs at a higher power but for a shorter time. The Batteriser will also lose maybe 10% of the power through converter losses when the batteries are still fresh so that will shorten the life further. Without the batteriser, the transmitter will keep working for longer but the transmit power will be a little lower.

The story actually gets worse since there is no way the Batteriser can seriously maintain input currents of 3.2 A at 1V or 8A at 0.7V. Again, if you look at typical battery boosting ICs, the peak output current drops of quickly as the battery voltage drops. So even if the converter can do 2A at 1.4V, it may only do 1A peak at 1V and 500mA at 0.7V.

So the end result is the batteries will not last as long, you cannot really use the energy when the battery voltage gets near 1V, and worse of all, the battery meter on the radio will indicate a full charge until the random point in time that the radio goes dead. No warning of the radio shutdown to the emergency workers who may be in a dangerous and critical situation at the time.

If these services are using so many batteries, it is probably because they have a policy to always send emergency workers out with a new fresh set of batteries, and the Batteriser would have no effect on a policy like that.

[FrankBuss]

I though that German police was switching to Tetra network some times ago, I doubt there is any tetra device using AA battery...

They planned to use it in 2006, but in 2014 it still didn't work for all regions in Germany:
http://www.welt.de/politik/deutschland/article131472860/Deutschland-versagt-beim-Digitalfunk.html
Maybe this year it works

[EEVblog]

Nobody here sees 800% in any real world application and you'd be lucky to find anyone who feels that there is any real practical benefit.

They are saying 80% now not 800%.
There does not look like there is much left under 1.0v

They are still claiming only 20% of a batteries capacity is used in a typical product.
The reason they use is pulse currents causing products to drop out at 20% of used battery capacity 
See their latest "technical" video for all that waffle.

[AmmoJammo]

Nobody here sees 800% in any real world application and you'd be lucky to find anyone who feels that there is any real practical benefit.

They are saying 80% now not 800%.
There does not look like there is much left under 1.0v

They are still claiming only 20% of a batteries capacity is used in a typical product.
The reason they use is pulse currents causing products to drop out at 20% of used battery capacity 
See their latest "technical" video for all that waffle.

"80% increase in energy" doesn't mean 20% is being used, it means 55% is.... then the batteriser gives an "80% increase in energy" yielding 100% of the batteries capacity being used...

But their claims can change all they want really, because it isn't going to happen anyway, no matter the claims!

[Fungus]

Isn't this against the UL lab rules that they are not allowed to use the UL name, except when citing the full report?

Yes.

[Fungus]

My reply:



PS: The Batteriser post is a good example of "making people think past the sale" - it creates the image of some life-or-death Firemen using Batterisers in his equipment even though: a) Said firemen don't know Batteriser even exists, and b) Not a single Batteriser has ever been shipped or been tested.

It shows Bob is a good salesman if nothing else.

(Donald Trump is master of this sales technique - it's why he has loads of followers even though his whole campaign is garbage if you analyze it)

[EEVblog]

Isn't this against the UL lab rules that they are not allowed to use the UL name, except when citing the full report?

Yes, and I bet UL will come to regret doing that for them. IIRC UL already had to respond to reports about Batteriser doing this and said they would take them to task over it.

[PeterL]

Umm, they don't have an IC yet... 

produced and tested to meet our highest quality standards.

See what they did there? Thanks to a strategical placed 'our' this whole sentence means nothing. But the believers (are there any left?) now get 'Batteriser= High quality' programmed in their mind.

To me it seems they are more busy trying to get more buyers than with the actual ongoing campaign. And they probably have to. I think the current IGG outcome of around 150k batterisers is the worst they could have gotten. The amount is just big to go as a trial batch, but to low for mass production at the price they targeted at.

[amspire]

Yes, and I bet UL will come to regret doing that for them. IIRC UL already had to respond to reports about Batteriser doing this and said they would take them to task over it.

Batteriser also got UL to test to check if passed the FCC RF noise specs. I was surprised they were allowed to have the test done with a 1K resistor as the load. Batteriser claim to be able to output as much power as the battery can output, and that means amps so you are not going to have much noise at under 1000th of the supposed maximum current.
http://batteriser.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Batteriser_Report_FCC.pdf
It could be worse then that. I think the Batteriser generates a voltage it adds to the + terminal and if the battery is over 1.5V, it is not generating any power. If the battery is 1.2V, the Batteriser generates 0.3V and adds it to the 1.2V. If they gave UL new batteries  and a 1K load, the converter oscillator may be running, but it is not switching power. I would think a proper noise test would be with a 2A load when the battery is 1V.

Why I am suspicious is it looks like the converter switches at 1.5MHz, but there little noise at 30MHz and above. 30MHz is only the 20th harmonic and the Batteriser doesn't have room for great filtering. Any switching noise current is travelling along the stainless clamp and that looks like a pretty good RF radiator. One test did have noise at 30MHz that was 20dB below the limit, and if that unit was running at full power instead of 1.5mA, it probably would have been over the FCC limit.

[EEVblog]

To me it seems they are more busy trying to get more buyers than with the actual ongoing campaign. And they probably have to. I think the current IGG outcome of around 150k batterisers is the worst they could have gotten.

It was a bad result, and I'm sure they and the investors were not happy. They extended the campaign for a few extra weeks to try and rake in some more doh, but it didn't work.
The money they got is chump change to a professional VC funded start-up like this.
The whole plan went to crap on them. They didn't count on the poor funding result, and they most certainly didn't count on being challenged by the entire engineering community, how annoying!

[SeanB]

Clamp is only separated from the battery positive by 2 thin plastic sleeves, so it might get a benefit from the small capacitance. Though I do agree that a 1k test load only means the converter will run in a hiccup mode, so it likely only was emitting a few short pulses of energy, which integrate to a low emission as the test is not too sensitive to low frequency impulse noise as it scans the band.

[PeterL]

Clamp is only separated from the battery positive by 2 thin plastic sleeves, so it might get a benefit from the small capacitance. Though I do agree that a 1k test load only means the converter will run in a hiccup mode, so it likely only was emitting a few short pulses of energy, which integrate to a low emission as the test is not too sensitive to low frequency impulse noise as it scans the band.

This FCC test was for marketing purposes only. They needed a test report with the words "Batteriser", "FCC", and "Passed" in it, just to react on comments made by these nasty EE's

And since they designed a whole new IC for the batteriser (ahum) this FCC test is now useless anyway.