Author Topic: Batteroo testing  (Read 265173 times)

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Offline AndyC_772

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Re: Batteroo testing
« Reply #275 on: December 29, 2016, 11:28:32 am »
There might be some worthwhile science to learn here. Why, if the dc-dc converter is (say) 80% efficient, are the run time and lap count reduced by as much as they are? Why are the results with the Batteriser so bad?

Perhaps I missed it, but do we have a characteristic plot of current draw and velocity vs voltage for Dave's train? Can we show from these characteristics why we might expect the Batteriser to have such a negative effect?

Offline digsys

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Re: Batteroo testing
« Reply #276 on: December 29, 2016, 11:40:13 am »
Quote from: AndyC_772
  ... Why are the results with the Batteriser so bad?
... do we have a characteristic plot of current draw and velocity vs voltage for Dave's train? Can we show from these characteristics why we might expect the Batteriser to have such a negative effect?
I'd suggest, a more logical base test would be to first find out how much energy was left in each battery. 1 with batterpoo (bp for short), 1 without
I'd suspect there are higher peak currents w/bp, which result in the very early demise. I'd wait at least an hour to drain the remaining, at a low rate !
Then we could calculate efficiency / internal impedance / yadda yadda
If this was the case, a lithium cell comparison should be MUCH closer.
Hello <tap> <tap> .. is this thing on?
 

Offline Brumby

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Re: Batteroo testing
« Reply #277 on: December 29, 2016, 11:48:23 am »
Would a camera flashgun, a big one like a NIKON SB-700, be a worthwhile test? They are a pretty high drain device but also one that is not a continuous drain so the battery chemistry has some recovery time. It would test a device that photographers would use in a cold climate outdoors so the temperature effect on battery life could be included to see if Batteroo can add some benefit.

Alkaline batteries in flashguns tend to be removed because recycle time gets too long. So the Batteroo would be tested in circumstances where the battery isn't already completely exhausted.

Interesting idea.  Automating it would be interesting.
 

Online chris_leyson

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Re: Batteroo testing
« Reply #278 on: December 29, 2016, 12:20:54 pm »
Quote
There might be some worthwhile science to learn here. Why, if the dc-dc converter is (say) 80% efficient, are the run time and lap count reduced by as much as they are? Why are the results with the Batteriser so bad?
Given that when driving a 3-pole brushed DC motor the peak currents are a lot higher than the RMS current, all depending on gear train friction and stiction, then there could be a peak current limiting effect. Also, the motor back EMF during commutation might effect the boost converter dynamic regulation. Motor current is not constant but pulsed at a few hundred Hz depending on gear box ratio and friction.
« Last Edit: December 29, 2016, 12:34:08 pm by chris_leyson »
 

Offline bktemp

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Re: Batteroo testing
« Reply #279 on: December 29, 2016, 12:29:06 pm »
There might be some worthwhile science to learn here. Why, if the dc-dc converter is (say) 80% efficient, are the run time and lap count reduced by as much as they are? Why are the results with the Batteriser so bad?
Because the available amount of energy from a battery depends on the discharge current: If you draw more current, you get less energy out of it. That is exactly what a Batteriser is doing when it is trying to keep the output voltage at 1.5V.
 

Offline EEVblog

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Re: Batteroo testing
« Reply #280 on: December 29, 2016, 12:46:03 pm »


From a side-by-side testing of the toy train, the velocity was pretty constant due to the Batteriser.
But surprisingly the train without the Batteriser was constant too.

« Last Edit: December 29, 2016, 12:50:57 pm by EEVblog »
 
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Offline AndyC_772

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Re: Batteroo testing
« Reply #281 on: December 29, 2016, 12:55:48 pm »
Because the available amount of energy from a battery depends on the discharge current: If you draw more current, you get less energy out of it. That is exactly what a Batteriser is doing when it is trying to keep the output voltage at 1.5V.

Agreed, sounds entirely plausible - though I'd be interested to see some more quantitative evidence to back up that theory. We all knew that the sleeve couldn't possibly meet the original claims made for it, but I for one am surprised at just how much worse the battery run time seems to be with it fitted.

There's material here for quite a good technical video here, IMHO. Start with a refresher about how the open-circuit voltage of a battery varies with remaining energy capacity. Plug in what we know about the characteristics of the load and of the Batteriser, then work out what we might theoretically expect in terms of the discharge rate of the battery in each case. See if theory and practice agree.

Offline CaptCrash

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Re: Batteroo testing
« Reply #282 on: December 29, 2016, 01:00:04 pm »
rom a side-by-side testing of the toy train, the velocity was pretty constant due to the Batteriser.
But surprisingly the train without the Batteriser was constant too.

Im confused by your graph.

The graph is showing that both with and without the batteriser, that the train did 351/314 laps (numbers from video and approx in the graph), but in 540 minutes (from the graph) video shows 1:35 hours, 95 minutes.

Is the axis data screwed up?
« Last Edit: December 29, 2016, 10:11:22 pm by EEVblog »
 

Offline Ysjoelfir

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Re: Batteroo testing
« Reply #283 on: December 29, 2016, 01:15:44 pm »
My simple light bulb test mentioned here

Thanks to Frank I got a Batterizer in the mail today. Testing with two incandescent light bulbs side by side right now.

showed unexpected problems. The light bulbs powered by the batteriser keep on failing. I thought about a bad batch but until now the batterised bulbs died five times while the non-batterised bulb is not affected at all, keeps glowing as it should. I swapped the bulbs to see if I was just lucky with the still working bulb at the normal battery, but no, the bulb that has never been used on a batteriser blew up after around an hour being used on the batteriser, while the former "batterised" bulb is still glowing. strange. Has already somebody measured the noise coming from those things? are there major switching spikes that could potentially blow up the bulb?
Greetings, Kai \ Ysjoelfir
 

Offline bktemp

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Re: Batteroo testing
« Reply #284 on: December 29, 2016, 01:25:53 pm »
My simple light bulb test mentioned here

Thanks to Frank I got a Batterizer in the mail today. Testing with two incandescent light bulbs side by side right now.

showed unexpected problems. The light bulbs powered by the batteriser keep on failing.
That is not a problem, but a result showing the Batteriser isn't even useable for the old incandescent light bulb lamps!

Quote
Has already somebody measured the noise coming from those things? are there major switching spikes that could potentially blow up the bulb?
I don't think switching spikes will affect a light bulb, because of its large thermal mass.
But the higher output voltage can be a problem, because many light bulbs are only rated for 1.2V or 2.4V instead of 1.5V/3.0V.
 

Offline EEVblog

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Re: Batteroo testing
« Reply #285 on: December 29, 2016, 01:27:38 pm »
Im confused by your graph.
The graph is showing that both with and without the batteriser, that the train did 351/314 laps (numbers from video and approx in the graph), but in 540 minutes (from the graph) video shows 1:35 hours, 95 minutes.
Is the axis data screwed up?

Yep, forget the minutes X axis, I was not thinking straight (don't work after midnight).
X axis is actually 30 second increments of x10 sped-up footage
 

Offline EEVblog

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Re: Batteroo testing
« Reply #286 on: December 29, 2016, 01:30:34 pm »
My simple light bulb test mentioned here
Thanks to Frank I got a Batterizer in the mail today. Testing with two incandescent light bulbs side by side right now.
showed unexpected problems. The light bulbs powered by the batteriser keep on failing. I thought about a bad batch but until now the batterised bulbs died five times while the non-batterised bulb is not affected at all, keeps glowing as it should. I swapped the bulbs to see if I was just lucky with the still working bulb at the normal battery, but no, the bulb that has never been used on a batteriser blew up after around an hour being used on the batteriser, while the former "batterised" bulb is still glowing. strange. Has already somebody measured the noise coming from those things? are there major switching spikes that could potentially blow up the bulb?

That's not unexpected. The constant 1.5V (maybe slightly higher) output voltage is too high for the bulb. It's probably a 1.2V rated bulb. In a normal battery the 1.5V drops pretty quickly hence not a problem.
Another way the Batteriser can be detriment instead of a benefit.
 

Offline Hensingler

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Re: Batteroo testing
« Reply #287 on: December 29, 2016, 01:33:01 pm »
My simple light bulb test mentioned here

Thanks to Frank I got a Batterizer in the mail today. Testing with two incandescent light bulbs side by side right now.

showed unexpected problems. The light bulbs powered by the batteriser keep on failing. I thought about a bad batch but until now the batterised bulbs died five times while the non-batterised bulb is not affected at all, keeps glowing as it should.

Incandescent lamp life is about inversely proportional to the applied voltage raised to the 13th power. A lamp running on 1.5v would have about 5% the life of the same lamp running on 1.2v. Another way for the batteriser to fail.
 

Offline SeanB

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Re: Batteroo testing
« Reply #288 on: December 29, 2016, 01:34:57 pm »
My simple light bulb test mentioned here

Thanks to Frank I got a Batterizer in the mail today. Testing with two incandescent light bulbs side by side right now.

showed unexpected problems. The light bulbs powered by the batteriser keep on failing. I thought about a bad batch but until now the batterised bulbs died five times while the non-batterised bulb is not affected at all, keeps glowing as it should. I swapped the bulbs to see if I was just lucky with the still working bulb at the normal battery, but no, the bulb that has never been used on a batteriser blew up after around an hour being used on the batteriser, while the former "batterised" bulb is still glowing. strange. Has already somebody measured the noise coming from those things? are there major switching spikes that could potentially blow up the bulb?

No, it is just that a regular bulb for a 1 cell torch is designed for 50 hours at 1V2, and using 1V5 will give a life of around 10 hours at best, from the consistent overvoltage. Will kind of suck big time if you use it in a Maglite with the $20 bulbs, as they will have a very short and merry life. You will need to use a 2cell bulb in your tests, so that the lifetime is not affected, though they will be dimmer.

Torch bulbs are designed ( and have been that way for at least the last century since the first hand lamps were introduced) for a rated life at the voltage of a partly discharged battery, and the original designs were meant for use on a standard zinc carbon cell, with a reasonably flat 1V2 plateau over a large part of the discharge curve into the lamp load. This is from the internal resistance, and when you run the bulbs from a 1V5 voltage source, with a low internal resistance they get really overrun, and this increases evaporation of the filament at the weak spots, causing the failure.

If you have halogen lamps try them, they will last longer with this kind of load, but will still have a shorter life, but at least the high pressure and chloride fill will rebuild the hot spots on the filament and give a longer life.
 

Offline JonF

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Re: Batteroo testing
« Reply #289 on: December 29, 2016, 01:46:20 pm »
Would a camera flashgun, a big one like a NIKON SB-700, be a worthwhile test?

I was thinking the same but then I remembered that the cheap flashguns are unreliable and even the expensive ones, when fired repeatedly, can melt :-)
 

Offline FrankBussTopic starter

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Re: Batteroo testing
« Reply #290 on: December 29, 2016, 01:52:13 pm »
From a side-by-side testing of the toy train, the velocity was pretty constant due to the Batteriser.
But surprisingly the train without the Batteriser was constant too.
That's something Batteroo could have posted, leaving out the flat line after the battery with the sleeve died, I'm sure they will quote you. It shows clearly that it is much better with the sleeves. Breaking news: "famous blogger David Jones admits that the Batteroo sleeve increases the performance, see the video and the the graph he created". How much did they pay you for this? :)
« Last Edit: December 29, 2016, 10:11:41 pm by EEVblog »
So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish
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Offline dr_frost_dk

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Re: Batteroo testing
« Reply #291 on: December 29, 2016, 02:10:08 pm »
They closed their Facebook and Twitter in the last hours !!!!!!!!!!!!!
I bet they received LOTS of bad posts and tweets hehehehe

100000% this is due to dave's video on the train.

 :-DD :-DD :-DD :-DD :-DD :-DD :-DD :-DD :-DD :-DD :-DD :-DD :-DD

https://www.facebook.com/Batteriser
https://twitter.com/gobatteriser
EDIT: Must be old links they had on their Indiegogo campain....., well now we can see all the people wanting refund :)

EDIT: Good Live show dave, was up to about 05:00 last night hehehe

EDIT: Just posted the 45min timelapse video on their facebook page, but it will be posted if they "like" it hehehehehe, so no chance of that happening.
« Last Edit: December 29, 2016, 02:39:03 pm by dr_frost_dk »
 

Offline cgroen

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Re: Batteroo testing
« Reply #292 on: December 29, 2016, 02:16:14 pm »
 

Offline Ysjoelfir

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Re: Batteroo testing
« Reply #293 on: December 29, 2016, 02:25:46 pm »
That's not unexpected. The constant 1.5V (maybe slightly higher) output voltage is too high for the bulb. It's probably a 1.2V rated bulb. In a normal battery the 1.5V drops pretty quickly hence not a problem.
Another way the Batteriser can be detriment instead of a benefit.

Sure, lightbulbs suffer greatly from overvoltage, nothing new here, but the ones I used were rated at 1V5 and the batterizer is outputting 1.51V RMS. So that SHOULD be ok, at least if those bulbs are definitely 1V5 rated and not "to use with 1V5 batteries", as I can only read the marking on the bulb itself which states 1,5V.

Even if they were not designed to run at a constant 1V5, they shouldn't just fail after around half an hour, should they? Also, I had two batches, three came with the package from frank, and just for comparison I bought another set of four at the local conrad store.

Either way, just for curiosity I digged out the scope (as I said, lab is being restructured right now, so just a few quick measurements...) and looked at what we have here.
First, no load connected. The Batterizer is switching between battery voltage (~1.48V) and around ~1.64V with around 10 kHz.


another one with bandwidth limitation


Switched on, measured directly at the load, connected with short cables: around 200mV of "noise"


Let's zoom in a bit: switching between battery voltage, which breaks down to 1.39V under load and 1.61V with a frequency of around 40 kHz.


there are tiny spikes reaching up to 1.67V


A bit closer to measure the frequency: 40.48 kHz.


A last one without the cursors, just for curiosity. Interesting waveform with nice tiny spikes at the rising edge.
Greetings, Kai \ Ysjoelfir
 

Offline 6581

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Batteroo testing
« Reply #294 on: December 29, 2016, 02:32:08 pm »
Regarding flashguns
http://cdn-10.nikon-cdn.com/pdf/manuals/Speedlights/SB-700.pdf
Page 32 / B7: 10 minutes of cooling after 15 continuous firings...

I know from experience that's a bit over careful, but they're not designed to be fired continuously for long periods (at full power). So probably not ideal for battery life testing but could be interesting and quite easy to test "recycle" time with and without batteroos. If it fits.

(Edit: after seeing scope captures in previous post, I think no flashgun should suffer such nasty spikes and over voltage - I highly doubt that any manufacturers guarantee would cover damage caused by "modified" batteries.)
« Last Edit: December 29, 2016, 02:43:28 pm by 6581 »
 

Offline SeanB

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Batteroo testing with flash gun
« Reply #295 on: December 29, 2016, 02:33:30 pm »
Would a camera flashgun, a big one like a NIKON SB-700, be a worthwhile test?

I was thinking the same but then I remembered that the cheap flashguns are unreliable and even the expensive ones, when fired repeatedly, can melt :-)

Most flash guns draw a large current ( well over 2A for a short time, like 4 seconds or so) when charging the capacitor up again, so probably after 5 flashes the batteriser sleeve will blow up, even with new cells, as the concrol circuit likely cannot handle this load.
 

Offline amspire

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Re: Batteroo testing
« Reply #296 on: December 29, 2016, 02:53:44 pm »
That's not unexpected. The constant 1.5V (maybe slightly higher) output voltage is too high for the bulb. It's probably a 1.2V rated bulb. In a normal battery the 1.5V drops pretty quickly hence not a problem.
Another way the Batteriser can be detriment instead of a benefit.

Sure, lightbulbs suffer greatly from overvoltage, nothing new here, but the ones I used were rated at 1V5 and the batterizer is outputting 1.51V RMS. So that SHOULD be ok, at least if those bulbs are definitely 1V5 rated and not "to use with 1V5 batteries", as I can only read the marking on the bulb itself which states 1,5V.

Even if they were not designed to run at a constant 1V5, they shouldn't just fail after around half an hour, should they? Also, I had two batches, three came with the package from frank, and just for comparison I bought another set of four at the local conrad store.

Either way, just for curiosity I digged out the scope (as I said, lab is being restructured right now, so just a few quick measurements...) and looked at what we have here.
First, no load connected. The Batterizer is switching between battery voltage (~1.48V) and around ~1.64V with around 10 kHz.
These waveforms are expected.

The actual switching frequency will be high - perhaps 1.5MHz. It would be good if you can see what the frequency actually is. I don't think anyone has actually measured it yet. It is almost certainly between 1MHz and 2MHz and it will probably be most noticeable at a high load.

But the way they get the low idle current is that at low loads, they charge the output cap and then the converter goes to a near zero-current sleep until the voltage has dropped by 200mV. Then the converter wakes up again and runs at 1.5MHz again. It would probably normally have a sawtooth at a much lower frequency then 10kHz, but you had the load of the oscilloscope probe on the output.

One of the other things I am interested to see is how quickly the converter wakes. If you switch a high load on suddenly, how low does the voltage drop?

I don't even have a clue how much current the Batteriser can output yet so I don't know if a high current is 100mA or 1A. Due to the very low quiescent current, the wake up circuitry may be very slow, and if the voltage can drop to zero when the load is switched on, that would be a pretty big disaster.

If they did not have this sleep mode, the no load quiescent current would be quite high - probably 100's of uA or even several mA.
 

Offline bktemp

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Re: Batteroo testing
« Reply #297 on: December 29, 2016, 03:17:43 pm »
These waveforms are expected.

The actual switching frequency will be high - perhaps 1.5MHz. It would be good if you can see what the frequency actually is. I don't think anyone has actually measured it yet. It is almost certainly between 1MHz and 2MHz and it will probably be most noticeable at a high load.
The converter seems to run always in PFM/burst mode (that is the 10Hz to 40kHz burst rate) using a much higher switching frequency (if I count correctly, the small spikes are about 0.8us apart -> 1.25MHz).
Because of the PFM mode the response to load changes is probably rather fast, because it only uses a comparator with hysteresis, therefore does not require any compensation network.
 

Offline PeterL

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Re: Batteroo testing
« Reply #298 on: December 29, 2016, 03:21:28 pm »
That's not unexpected. The constant 1.5V (maybe slightly higher) output voltage is too high for the bulb. It's probably a 1.2V rated bulb. In a normal battery the 1.5V drops pretty quickly hence not a problem.
Another way the Batteriser can be detriment instead of a benefit.

Sure, lightbulbs suffer greatly from overvoltage, nothing new here, but the ones I used were rated at 1V5 and the batterizer is outputting 1.51V RMS. So that SHOULD be ok, at least if those bulbs are definitely 1V5 rated and not "to use with 1V5 batteries", as I can only read the marking on the bulb itself which states 1,5V.

Even if they were not designed to run at a constant 1V5, they shouldn't just fail after around half an hour, should they? Also, I had two batches, three came with the package from frank, and just for comparison I bought another set of four at the local conrad store.

A last one without the cursors, just for curiosity. Interesting waveform with nice tiny spikes at the rising edge.

This last waveform shows how the batteriser switches, which is 7 times in this instance during the rising edge. After that de DC-DC converter goes to sleep, because the output voltage got to high.
During the rising edge, between the spikes you see little dents. That is clearly the point where the inductor is charged. The dents are slightly less then 1 us apart, which gives a switching frequency of 1.2Mhz or so.

Try zooming in further on the rising edge, and is should become clearer.
 

Offline Watth

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Re: Batteroo testing
« Reply #299 on: December 29, 2016, 03:24:38 pm »
Does the Batteroo "work" with rechargeable batteries? Anybody planing on testing it with rechargeable batteries?  That would be interesting...

And what kind of fiery death would happen if Average Abbie would try to recharge said rechargeable batteries while leaving the bateroo on?
Because "Matth" was already taken.
 


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