5ky is using two boost converters, one per battery. I supplied to the boost converters to 5ky.
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Here is a picture of 5ky test:
Ahh well, you see, that is the magic of this new custom designed IC from the genius Rooparvah brothers... They've managed to design a custom IC that none of the big IC manufacturers, TI/Maxim/Fairchild/etc were able to achieve. Using Patents, genius, and MAGIC!
This is the test data from Batteriser's Video:
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The upper trace (red) shows that as the test continues the battery current rises. This is a characteristic of a switching power supply. The switching power supply is drawing constant power from the batteries. The step is when the Garmin GPS reduces the brightness to prolong battery life.
5ky test results show that the time scale on this graph is wrong. The GPS should run for about 10 hours.
While I think that their claims of up to 800% are a bit difficult to justify, I can see some applications where it might help.
Case in point.
Many years ago I used an original Garmin Etrex whilst gliding. It would run for about 22 hours on Energizers. If I put in NiMH with a higher nominal capacity than the Energizers, I was lucky to get 2 to 3 hours from them. While I never bothered to check the terminal voltage that the Etrex expired at, it was obvious that the lower terminal voltage to the rechargables caused the Etrex to die. It would have been interesting to try such a device and see how long it would have run. Even today using Eneloops, 4 hours is about as much as I can get from the Etrex.
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The most useful kind of "Batterizer" would be one which changes the discharge curve of a NiCd or NiMH to mimic an alkaline battery to make them a drop-in replacement for an alkaline. The rechargeable battery companies could even build that INTO these special rechargeable cells without any problem (they could shrink the actual cell size to make room for the electronics) kind of like a typical rechargable Lithium chemistry battery pack will have control electronics in it. It can include short and deep-discharge protection, adjust the voltage output to vary like an alkaline so battery meters would still function, etc, etc.
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800%, even 80%, my arse!Are you Probe?
I found another product that I have at home that doesn't play well with rechargeables: my hand soap dispenser.
I found another product that I have at home that doesn't play well with rechargeables: my hand soap dispenser.
You have a battery powered soap dispenser??
I found another product that I have at home that doesn't play well with rechargeables: my hand soap dispenser.
You have a battery powered soap dispenser??
Yes. Stick your hand to break the IR beam and you get soap. Black magic!
I found another product that I have at home that doesn't play well with rechargeables: my hand soap dispenser.
You have a battery powered soap dispenser??
Yes. Stick your hand to break the IR beam and you get soap. Black magic!
Until the sensor gets gummed up and it empties all the soap over the floor.
You have a battery powered soap dispenser??
Until the sensor gets gummed up and it empties all the soap over the floor.
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the sensor is smart, it only dispenses once with a hand approach, it does not carry on till empty.
My name is Probes T. Monkey.
Pleased to meet you!
Until the sensor gets gummed up and it empties all the soap over the floor.the sensor is smart, it only dispenses once with a hand approach, it does not carry on till empty.
Like SeanB says, they won't just continuously squirt soap.
Until the sensor gets gummed up and it empties all the soap over the floor.the sensor is smart, it only dispenses once with a hand approach, it does not carry on till empty.
Like SeanB says, they won't just continuously squirt soap.
Maybe you meant you've never seen one continuously squirt soap. Not yet.
Perhaps 5ky can shed some light on that for us as to what might have been happening there.
5ky, Does the unit eventually shut itself off or go into some sort of standby mode if you don't press the OK button when the backlight reduction notice appears? According to their graph it looks like it took about 25 minutes from the reduction in current point. (If anything on that graph can be believed, that is...)
The difference between the sum of both battery voltages versus my doubling method would be negligible. (good news is--I found an excuse to go pick up a second bench DMM to avoid problems like this in the future)
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5ky, Does the unit eventually shut itself off or go into some sort of standby mode if you don't press the OK button when the backlight reduction notice appears? According to their graph it looks like it took about 25 minutes from the reduction in current point. (If anything on that graph can be believed, that is...)
From what I can tell (it's sitting on that warning message as we speak and it's been 20+ minutes), it's just a warning or reminder that the screen is being dimmed and that you should consider lithium or nickel batteries. It has not shut off (yet), and I don't imagine that it will. (it would be annoying for it to shut off in the middle of your golfing round just because you didn't click "ok" to confirm that you read the warning message)
Maybe you meant you've never seen one continuously squirt soap. Not yet.
(or at least any reasonably well desgned one )
A few op-amps rigged up to be two (or more) differential amplifiers that buffer the two (or more) cell voltages at unity gain across the + and - terminals and then added together (which could easily be extended to n number of cells) would easily give a reasonably accurate sum of the voltages of the individual cells.
I don't think I've ever thought about that one before but that actually sounds like a handy apparatus to have around. I think I just might solder one up with, say 8 differential inputs, on some proto-board with some junkbox op-amps just to have one around for adding (or subtracting, if you reverse an input +/-) things on the bench. As long as the op-amps have a reasonably small offset voltage with the inputs shorted (any unused inputs can be disabled by shorting them, preferrably to ground, I suppose) the resultant output should even be fairly accurate.
My wife is making me go to the dog park with her since it's nice out today...