Gadget Show Battery test in Porth Yr Ogof

[dudley bug]

The Gadget Show recently did a comparative test of disposable batteries in Porth Yr Ogof.

Video and results here..

http://gadgetshow.channel5.com/gadget-show/blog/episode-1-wales-aaa-batteries

 

[Burt]

annoying music, but an interesting test and particularly the "price per minute" thing.

 

[potholer]

There was a pretty decent test of UK-available AA cells at:

http://www.batteryshowdown.com/index.html

(I guess AA cells might be more relevant to more people since few main lights will be AAA powered.)

In summary, in both 200mA and 1A discharges, the Kodak Xtralife from Poundland in 6-packs came off best in terms of capacity-per-penny.

Most alkaline cells performed pretty similarly in terms of runtime at 200mA discharge.

There was more variation in performance at a 1A discharge, but to be honest, alkalines are not the right kind of cell for high rate discharge anyway since they'd often only give between a third and a half of their nominal capacity before getting exhausted.

Decent NiMH cells would be much better for high rate discharge.

 

[simonsays]

Interesting data, thanks Potholer

 

[rhychydwr1]

Gosh! There are parts of PyO I have not seen before. 

Don't thow you old batteries away.  Give then to me and I will re-activate them.  OK, they might leak eventually, but I will still get years of use out of them.

 

[Huge]

It's interesting when you know something about a place/subject on a TV program to be able to pick up on the 'artistic licence' in the show.

At the start of the quad bike section, Jason Bradbury says that they are in the Brecon Beacons and later on states that they are in "Deepest, darkest Wales" but in the background, the University of Glamorgan at Treforest (were I started my caving when it was the Polytechnic of Wales) is clearly visible. In other words, they are a couple of miles outside Cardiff and about 10-15 miles from the National Park. My guess would be that they were at Taff Valley Quads!

Then, on the battery test at Porth yr Ogof, it was made to sound like they were on an hours long caving trip. More like "There's another torch dimming so lets pop into the cave for a few minutes to do a little filming." After all, it's hard to be more than 5 minutes away from one of the 15 entrances! (Unless you're diving, of course.)

I'm sure all their product tests are trustworthy.

Do I sound like a geek?

 

[Burt]

I'n sure many folk on the forum will confirm this, but when filming and any remote location / technically challenging area is involved, assume a good dollop of artistic license.

 

[Fulk]

Yeah, Burt:

but when filming and any remote location / technically challenging area is involved, assume a good dollop of artistic license.

Not so long since 'they' (telly people) did a bit on a cave 'on Dartmoor' . . . but it was obviously Swildon's.

They went on to say how horribly tight (not to say dangerous, of course) it all was, totally ignoring the fact that there's a lovely stream passage down to sump 1 . . . sad, isn't it? (Oh ? I nearly forgot the 'big pitch' )