Debunking the Batteriser's Claims 172
An anonymous reader writes: Last week we discussed news about the "Batteriser," a small device that fits around a battery and extends its lifetime. Many of us were skeptical, particularly with the claim that it could extend battery life up to 8x. Now, David L. Jones at the EEVBlog explains exactly why the device won't be as good as its creators claim. The technology itself, he says, does actually work at extending battery life, and has existed for a long time. What this company seems to have done is just shrink it down to a more useful size. Unfortunately, their claims about when a battery stop working and how much energy is left don't really hold up. Batteroo, the company making the Batteriser, claims products stop working when a battery's voltage drops below 1.3v, but a simple test of common household gadgets finds that to be untrue. Further, the percentage of energy left in the battery after this cutoff can vary wildly. Sometimes it will be 80%, but most of the time it won't, and it's frequently 20% or lower for Alkaline batteries. Jones writes, "I'm genuinely baffled as to why Batteroo would need to resort to claims like 8 times life. This thing would still sell like hot cakes if they claimed realistic practical figures. 50% increase in your battery life? – great, countless people would still buy it at the super low price point it's at."
Baffled? (Score:4, Funny)
"I'm genuinely baffled as to why Batteroo would need to resort to claims like 8 times life."
Really? You are genuinely baffled why a company might exaggerate their claims? Really?
Re:Baffled? (Score:5, Insightful)
To be fair, there is a difference between a realistic-yet-slightly-exaggerated claim like most companies give, and Billy Mays 'as-seen-on-TV' territory...
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Re:Baffled? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, I am. Because if people go into it expecting an 8x increase and only get a 50% increase they write terrible reviews for it everywhere and the idea spreads that it's snake oil. If they go into it expecting a 50% increase and get it, they'll be quite happy.
One shoots themselves in the foot by going too far with their claims. Often it's better to underpromise and overdeliver.
Anyway, I can think of some applications where you might get 8x, or even more. I've owned electronics which don't run on alkalines at all and require NiMH because regular alkalines suffer too much voltage drop under high peak current loads and thus you can't turn the device on at all. In such a case the battery life increase of a voltage booster could be basically "infinite", in that useful life goes from "zero" to "nonzero". I've also had electronics that work with alkalines, but just barely. In such cases you might get 8x (or 2x, or 50x... it all depends on the device).
On the other hand, if people use one of these in, say, a TV remote or flashlight, yeah, they'll be really disappointed with the 8x claim.
Re:Baffled? (Score:5, Insightful)
He needs to sell as many of these as he can in as short a period as possible - there will be no repeat customers because it will take almost no time at all for other companies to copy this thing and undercut his price. There is not much IP here - just a slick miniaturization.
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Yeah, good luck with "same thing, only smaller".
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*shrug* it's at least as good as stuff that gets patented now.
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While that is certainly true (even I have a patent), no amount of IP protection is going to keep knockoffs at bay when the process is literally a miniaturization using a contract manufacturer - probably in China.
Re:Baffled? (Score:5, Informative)
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All the 10 year (and similar) disposable fixed-cell sealed smoke alarms use lithium batteries.
These are probably the best bet to use if you are at all worried about battery management. They come with silencer buttons also
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I think you have a bigger problem at that point, like, say, the FIRE?!
Re:Baffled? (Score:5, Funny)
1 star review: Smoke detector stopped sounding alarm when fire finally reached it and destroyed it.
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3 star review: got five of these news fangled triple sensor (heat, gas, particulates) jobs dotted around my house, I still have a better nose for when my wife makes toast than these bloody things.That don't go off if I hold a bit of smouldering paper directly underneath them. I've just tried it, they're fucking useless.
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they should go off if two sensors are tripped. Gas & particulates are two sensors that should be making the alarm go nuts.
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they should not go off when burning a small bit of paper
Clearly GP needs to do a proper test by burning his house down.
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Well, lithium fire is almost impossible to extinguish without specialized equipment (class D extinguisher).
A single battery in a house fire probably won't make a difference but it certainly won't help.
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smothering it with sand or anhydrous sodium chloride is the only safe way.
I have a small bucket of sand under my desk for just such an eventuality. I have many laptops and other gadgets with lithium batteries. I'd rather look silly with a bucket of kitty grits under my desk than wake up from a catnap with my hair on fire.
Extra Safety Measure (Score:2)
Well, except when the smoke detector catches fire, like in a fire.
In that case if you are still around then clearly the beeping did not wake you up so perhaps the sound of the exploding battery might. See, it's really just an extra safety measure.
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I can sympathize, Granted, I live in a house, so I've always just unplugged the smoke detector with the low battery. But for some reason, they always seem to do this in the middle of the night. It's annoying as hell trying to get back to sleep after you find the one that's chirping and then unplug it, remove the battery and put it someplace you won't hear it until it finally stops chirping.
Get some 10 year "smoke detector batteries" [amazon.com] My smoke detectors are hard wired, and the batteries are only there in cas
Re:Baffled? (Score:5, Informative)
But for some reason, they always seem to do this in the middle of the night.
The reason is that the house is colder at night. The lower temperature slows down the reactions in the battery and the voltage drops slightly. When it warms up, the reactions speed up and voltage increases again. So it's not you imagining it, there's actually a reason for the annoyance!
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A shame you posted anonymously, would like to congratulate you on a technically correct and sensible post.
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"I'm genuinely baffled as to why Batteroo would need to resort to claims like 8 times life."
Really? You are genuinely baffled why a company might exaggerate their claims? Really?
Smiling Bob is their ad agent. And, I'm sure the "shipping and handling" charges will be quite reasonable.
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Two words: Because marketing.
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Well that's units of energy per charge, so not too bad a phrase for lay reading
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Batteries are commonly rated with a "capacity," (often in milliAmp-hours, mAh) which is neither voltage nor energy, but a measure which assumes a constant current draw, with varying power delivery. That doesn't apply in this situation, since the draw on the battery would increase as the voltage drops.
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It is energy per unit charge as I said; a volt is joules per coulomb. The mAh is just measuring charge. An amp has units of charge per unit time. Multiply that by time and you get purely charge, we're essentially back to coulombs times a constant.
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Play your games with units all you want, but once you understand them you'll know that one cannot determine the energy contained in any random battery from only its voltage.
Lay schmay. (Score:2)
A volt is indeed equivalent to a joule per coulomb, but where do they say how many coulombs it can hold? It's still garbage.
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Not at all, the problem this product attempts to address is the cessation of function for many applications purely due to voltage under load becoming too low even though the battery has plenty of "charge" left.
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The 3V button battery will indeed give each electron twice as much energy as the D cell. That is indisputable. The charge capacity and internal resistance of the batteries will differ.
Voltage under a known load will indeed tell how much charge is left in a given type of battery,
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I read it as "Most new batteries contain enough energy that internal resistance doesn't lower potential below 1.5 V."
Re:Baffled? (Score:4, Insightful)
Just go with it. I'm an EE and if I tried to over-pedant everything wrong I encountered in a day I'd starve to death.
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Well as far as I understand from reading some battery charger spec sheets, many modern chargers actually provide a constant current rather than voltage for charging, stopping when the voltage required to maintain that current rises too high, which indicates its level of charge.
So while voltage is not charge, its entirely possible, and common, to measure the charge in the battery by relating it directly to a particular voltage, so in that context it is actually a measure of charge because it has a known rela
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Marketers and jouranlists exaggerating? (Score:5, Funny)
What is the world coming to?
Re:Marketers and jouranlists exaggerating? (Score:5, Interesting)
To be honest to the marketers this is a dog of a product. It is extremely hard to sell people a product that gives them some kind of mild intermittent benefit that is not immediate and in their face all the time. The other problem is that the product self-selects penny pincher type 'economy' customers, and these are just horrible horrible people to attempt to sell anything too.
I imagine it would be easier to sell batteries wrapped in cat stickers than a product like this.
Re:Marketers and jouranlists exaggerating? (Score:5, Funny)
I imagine it would be easier to sell batteries wrapped in cat stickers than a product like this.
Sir, you are a genius. All they have to do is remodel this device so that it looks like a long, slinky cat has itself wrapped around the battery. Call it the "battery cat". It'll be like printing money.
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Your name is all wrong ... it should be CATTERY (tm)
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Your name is all wrong ... it should be CATTERY (tm)
Well obviously the laziest good name would be CATTERIZER. s/B/C/ and you're in there.
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Oh, and thanks, I send you pictures of my new Lambo....(:
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If the summary is accurate, they're promising sixteen times the typical benefit. That's well beyond exaggeration.
Longerer (Score:3, Funny)
> It will last 8x as long!"
That'll learn ya to cut-and-paste boilerplate from an ExtenZ ad.
I still want one (Score:3)
I have a battery tester and when batteries stop working, I sometimes check and easily see they still have some power left, if not enough to run the device.
Even if this device extends battery life only 10% it is probably worth it.
Of course, the real question is why don't they build it into the batteries/devices in the first place?
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My thoughts exactly. I fully expect that getting one of these is going to be a waste of money. But, I'm going to buy a pair of AA sized batteroos, for testing. I want to see for myself if it works. THEN, I'll write a review or ten, on Amazon and other places. If I see a 10% improvement, my review will say so - if I see 800% improvement, or a 0% improvement, my reviews will reflect that.
And, yes, your trailing question is a damned good question. If the battery manufacturers can improve the life of thei
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Obviously, doing so wouldn't "double the price". You may have something if you just say "cost increase", but not with "double the price".
Re:I still want one (Score:5, Informative)
That means a 10% increase in battery life is saving you 2.4 cents per cell, so you'd have to run 104+ cells through each Batterizer you need to buy before you first break even. (And most products, in my experience, use at least two cells, suggesting that you'll need multiple Batterizers and will have to run multiple hundreds of cells through them before you break even.)
Add in the fact that despite Batterizer's claims, the deeper you drain a battery, by far the more likely it is to leak, coupled with the fact that the kinds of things that are likely to leave any significant power in the cells in my experience tend to be those which drain power very slowly, and the chances of you saving any money with Batterizer are zip. This is a product for morons who lack the ability to think critically: No more, no less.
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This is a product for morons who lack the ability to think critically: No more, no less.
You don't know anything about what you are talking about! I'm using these batterisers with my CD rewinder device right now and it allows to rewind 5 more CDs using a single battery! How great is this?
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Of course, the real question is why don't they build it into the batteries/devices in the first place?
Doing this efficiently is expensive, per amp anyway. A cheap boost converter is wasteful. It would make batteries much more expensive, or they would only be efficient near maximum output.
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That's it! (Score:2)
This is their secret marketing plan. Make outrageous claims, and all the do-gooders on the Internet will HAVE to buy one to debunk the claims!
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Your question is answered several times in the article. Well designed devices probably DO use a DC-DC boost converter, but they design a cutoff at around 1V to avoid damaging rechargeable batteries. This also means the batteriser will probably not produce significant gains in those devices because the devices -don't- stop working at 1.3V (under load) as claimed by batteriser.
That, and the fact that this device kills the battery meter. Your gizmo's internal battery meter is going to read 100% right up until the point it reads zero.
TANSTAAFL
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Even worse, they specifically show someone putting a Batteriser on a battery that is running low, and magically the battery meter is full again!
Well yeah of course it is, since battery meters go by remaining voltage. So if you boost it back up to 1.5V, of course it's going to read full. Massive marketing red flag right there.
Debunking the debunker (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't work for the company, but to give some support of the claim that some electronics stop working at 1.3V. I've removed a lot of "dead" batteries from kids electronic toys and when testing them with a volt meter found that many of them were still putting out between 1V and 1.4V. I save anything that is over 1V because I sometimes use them with hobby electronics projects. Sometimes its only one battery in a set that has died as well, but of course that can just be fixed by finding the dead battery and only replacing that one.
My question about the batteriser is if its reusable or not. Also, I could see this thing causing quite a few more battery leaks than usual.
Re:Debunking the debunker (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Debunking the debunker (Score:5, Informative)
Even worse, if you watch their promo video - Dave mentions this at the end of his vblog [youtu.be] - it goes actually says:
Did you know that every dead battery you've every thrown away had only used up to 20% of battery life.
That's an out and out lie.
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Re:Debunking the debunker (Score:4, Funny)
Even worse, if you watch their promo video - Dave mentions this at the end of his vblog [youtu.be] - it goes actually says:
Did you know that every dead battery you've every thrown away had only used up to 20% of battery life.
That's an out and out lie.
Not true. According to E=MC^2, a single AA battery contains 0.023 kg * c^2 = 2x10^15 Joules of energy. When have you ever used more than 20% of that!!?!?!
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Did you read the article? Simply because the battery measures 1.4V or 1.3V doesn't mean that the voltage under load is anywhere near that high.
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Actually there is a rather hillarious video out on youtube, don't have time to find it now, I suppose someone else will and besmirch my upbringing for not posting it.
The entire video is based on people not understanding the concept of load. Basically the guy builds this massive (and by massive I mean "compared to its output") electrical generator in a basic config like you might do in order to demonstrate the princible of electrical generation rather than actually produce power.
Anyway, the entire thing boil
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I've removed a lot of "dead" batteries from kids electronic toys and when testing them with a volt meter found that many of them were still putting out between 1V and 1.4V.
He directly addresses that in TFA. Voltage will measure higher when the battery is not under load. He even speculates that this is how they got the 1.3V figure in the first place: the battery was putting out 1.1V or less under load in the device, but when removed it measured at >=1.3V. In that situation this device will probably be able to extract a little more energy and keep the high-load device running a little longer, just as you extract a little more energy by using them in a lower-load hobby device
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Leaks or overheating is something that would concern me. If you're compensating for reduced voltage by drawing more current then that means more ohmic heating.
How much of a problem this would be in the real world, I really don't know. I assume (or at least hope) they have limits on their product to prevent overheating.
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And yet any rechargeable battery puts out 1.2V (the average voltage of a 1.5V alkaline under load) and most devices allow rechargeables to be used.
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You are probably just seeing the voltage rise once the load is removed. Battery voltage falls with the current draw, so the cell might only produce 1.1V in the device when being used, but as soon as you turn it off and take the battery out it comes back up to 1.1V.
That's why testing with a volt meter is fairly pointless. You need a proper battery tester or at least a load resistor.
Most work fine though (Score:2)
A good way to tell is with nickle metal hydride rechargables. They have a 1.2v cell voltage. So does a device work with them? Then it'll work on less than 1.3v. Of the things in my house that take batteries, all but one have worked with them. That device, a swifer wetjet, specifically says no rechargables so I haven't tried.
NiMH batters work well in devices including, but not limited to, remotes, wireless microphones, EOTech sights, laser pointers, cordless phones, headphone amplifiers, and wireless mice.
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Yet rechargeable AAs work at 1.2V and most products don't have problems with them...
It makes more sense for this tech to be installed in the devices that require that 1.4V+ supply rather than be external.
And in that case, the tech needs to be cheap, and we talking cents for a device cheap here.
And just stop buying non-rechargeables already!
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Toys are a bit of a special case. Motorised ones draw a LOT of current and so you're better off with something with low internal resistance like NiCad or NiMH. This device probably won't do much since the limiting thing is how much power you can get out of the battery in those cases and that's determined by the internal resistance.
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but to give some support of the claim that some electronics stop working at 1.3V. I've removed a lot of "dead" batteries from kids electronic toys and when testing them with a volt meter found that many of them were still putting out between 1V and 1.4V.
I won't. The single most popular rechargeable chemistry produces cells which have a nominal voltage of 1.2V. The number of devices on the market which refuse to work on a NiMH battery are minuscule.
Now one thing that may be of interest is the concept of internal resistance, and no load voltage. When you pull batteries out of the device and then test their voltage you're reading no-load voltage. This will be higher than the voltage under load due to the internal resistance of the battery. Different chemistry
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That is largely because your voltmeter has an incredibly large internal resistance. Try putting the battery under load to test it's actual output.
NiCd (Score:2, Insightful)
Considering that a standard NiCd AA cell has a voltage of 1.2V, , the notion that most devices will stop working with a voltage below 1.3V is rather obviously false.
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And NiMH as well. That's because the average voltage of a 1.5V alkaline under load is only around 1.2V.
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Electric circuits aren't that simple. When you put a load on a battery there's a voltage drop. NiMH have much lower internal resistance than alkaline and experience much less voltage drop and are thus able to handle higher current loads much better. When you see a figure of "1.2V" or "1.5V", that's in a no-load state. A "1.3V alkaline battery" will yield a much lower voltage in almost any realistic load state than a 1.2V NiMH.
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Strange. I've used NiCD and NiMH for years.
The only problems I ever see are that they don't hold charge as well so they are useless for clocks and similar low-draw, long-duration items. I've yet to see a product refuse to work with them.
And, I mean, seriously - hundreds of devices, everything from electronics kits as a youngster (where I discovered that NiCD short-circuit quite beautifully to become tiny heaters), every toy for my daughter, every gadget I own (Wii remotes, TV remotes, obscure handheld co
Internal resistance (Score:3, Informative)
Something smells fishy... (Score:5, Interesting)
IIRC, didn''t they have some article about someone breaking into their company and stealing product samples? Please correct me if I'm wrong.
However, lets be real here. This voltage booster is just a mini autoformer, using a coil, a transistor, and a capacitor. This technology isn't new. MPPT controllers for solar units use this.
What is new is the form factor. However, to boost volts, there has to be a trade... and what is trades is amperage, so that a battery with a voltage drop now has to put out more current, which only accelerates the discharge process.
Of course, there is the downside... high amps being demanded, without some form of fusing or limiter can result in leakage, or even worse, fire, as a potential failure mode.
I vote no on this. Instead, my recommendation is just to spend the 30 bones and get an Apple Battery Charger or something similar, and some rechargeable batteries. This is a far safer option, and no part of the system is being driven past its engineered tolerances.
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An autoformer is a device used often by RV-ers here in the US which turns lower voltage at an outlet into a usable one, around 120 VAC. The cost is higher amperage, since it is a voltage multiplier, but given the choice between using more amps versus burning out compressors and appliances due to low voltage, the former is a lot more palatable.
NiMH starts at 1.2V (Score:2)
The old NiMH rechargeables start at 1.2V fully charged. If devices stop working below 1.3V, then they can't use these rechargables at all.
However, a "1.5V boost converter sleeve" on a NiMH does make an interesting case....
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The old NiMH rechargeables start at 1.2V fully charged.
All my chargers will overcharge all of these cells to a reasonable amount, any good charger (most aren't) will decrease the charging voltage differential when the charging current drops so that they don't overcharge. And more complicated things I don't understand :)
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This is true for lithium and lead-acid cells but NiCd and NiHM cells tolerate discharge to 0 volts just fine.
EEVblog at YouTube (Score:3)
Joule Thief (Score:5, Interesting)
(oops accidentally posted A/C)
I've coincidentally been running a battery experiment using a joule thief on a 1.5v Energizer battery (starting voltage 1.621v)
The LED and resistor I use would normally draw about 20mA from a battery, but run at 3v, requiring 2 AA batteries, and running for around 5 or 6 days in total.
Through the joule thief (similar, I am guessing the to guts of the device), I know that I can run the same LED down to 0.450mV (with a much larger current draw)... but since it basically consists of spikes of power (which can reach 5-12v) with a very short duty cycle, I can run off a single AA battery for some time.
As I use the thief in my own battery experiments (think edison cells), I decided to run an AA down and chart the voltages. I'm currently on day 10, and have made it down to 1.257v I think it will drop off quite quickly around 1.0 or 0.9v, but you can see I've easily doubled the servicable life span. At this point it has only dropped ~20mV per day, so I could possibly get 10 more servicable days out of this battery for the purposes of running an LED... so we're up to around 5X the service life.
I did not major engineering to make my thief, and it isn't particularly well made.. so I think 8X life for an LED is very possible with the data I have.
EXCEPT... I'm just making light, for a human, who can't see that it's not actually "ON" all the time. This is a very simple circuit and can easily handle the duty cycle. I have some concerns about running a microprocessor or similar toy with the device without damage.
ADDITIONALLY.. batteries can swell when they get very low voltage, and all sorts of nastiness can occur. I'd be cautious to drain one to the minimum voltage for my thief... or at least keep it on a glass plate in case of leakage.
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Linear Technology had ads in ED and EDN when they released their low voltage boost converters which could start at 1.2 volts and operate down to 0.65 volts. Their advertising phrase was "how to suck a battery dry" with a picture of the battery rolled up like a toothpaste tube.
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Correct: 0.450V
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Hence the concerns.
Now, this does open up an interesting thought about creating microprocessors that can work with spikes of power, holding state... much more complex, but able to run on frighteningly small pulses of energy.
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Kinda like I said: Great for an LED flashlight, and that's about it. (possibly a motor driven as well - think old-time casette player or *ahem* personal "massage" device).
build your own (Score:2)
It's pretty easy to make your own one of these, you can make it a voltage doubler too so that you can drive LEDs.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=joul... [duckduckgo.com]
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And, amazingly enough, the marketing literature even agrees with you. Their secret sauce is the packaging - getting it to slip over an AA cell so it can be used anywhere.
They even point out that most battery powered devices actually have this circuit built into them. The batterizer just adjusts the parameters differently - optimizing battery life over perhaps some battery longevity factors and the inability to use an internal battery meter to gauge capacity.
Still useless... (Score:5, Interesting)
Most modern electronics already do what this does. For example Xbox 360 and Xbox One controllers will suck nearly every last drop of power out of the batteries.
If your device shuts off when they claim, it's either from the 80's or is poorly designed.
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Yeah well my wireless mouse doesn't suck every drop. Instead it will start randomly freezing,etc at well above 1.1v. Gigabyte M7700B.
I'd like to know what you call sucking every last drop.
And how about a cite for most modern electronics. My Dish remote certainly doesn't suck every last drop. The drivers in my flashlights have voltage cutoffs well above whatever you define as every last drop.
Furthermore, IMO, if you're using electronics that handle lower voltages well, you should be using rechargeables. The
I call bullshit (Score:2)
NiCd recharcheables are 1.2v, so clearly they're talking bollocks.
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Uh, they're referring to alkaline batteries. I'm pretty sure you would just recharge a NiCd. On the downside, most the NiCd's I've seen are AAA size and even if they are their voltage makes them unusable in things like wireless mice.
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No they aren't. Is there some part of "products stop working when..." that's giving you particular problems here?
Claims (Score:1)
Not sure why he is blaming Batteriser for the claims.
This comes straight from a blog post at phys.org.; "When we get a new battery it is 1.5 volts, when we use it in a device it goes down to 1.3 volts under load condition, at that point we consider it to be dead and throw it away," said Dr. Kiumars Parvin, professor of physics at San Jose State University.
It seems that the claim is from a physics professor, not Batteriser. Or maybe Batteriser started using making the claim based on the comments of a profess
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in contact with Prof. Parvin right now, will update.
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That's the problem you found with this?
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I've started taking complaints about bad grammar, spelling mistakes and the like as implicit agreement with the post - obviously the complainer can't find a logical error and has to resort to complaining about the delivery. I'm not a fan of spelling mistakes, but I make enough of them myself so it'd be hypocritical to call people out.
On the other hand, I tend not to even bother reading vast posts or those without punctuation - I make the assumption that the argument is likely to be as incoherent as the writ
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Mine is AAA, thank you.