batterys 800x better

[Cartwright26]

here is a piece on a new device and if it works it coud be amazing for the likes of the duo

An incredible new gadget claims to increase the life of any disposable battery by 800%. It's going on sale later this year for just ?1.60, and it could save us a fortune in batteries.

The gadget is called a Batteriser, and according to The Metro, it fits around ordinary batteries like a metal sleeve. It kicks in when the battery gets near to the traditional end of its life.

How does it work?

Normally a new battery gives off 1.5v, but as soon as its output gets down to 1.4v, it's not powerful enough to run many devices, so we throw batteries away when only 20% of all their power has been used.

The Batteriser boosts the voltage back to 1.5v, allowing you to access the last of the energy - so your batteries last up to eight times longer. In fact, PC World reported that batteries can last around five times longer in things like remote controls and nine times longer in electronic toys.

The man behind the invention is electrical engineer Bob Roohparvar, who uses the metaphor of the toothpaste tube. How we normally use batteries is the equivalent of squeezing them from the top. Using a Batteriser is like switching to squeeze it from the bottom.

Battery boosters have been around for quite some time, but where this differs is that it has been scaled down so much that the sleeves are thin enough to fit into most battery compartments. It's also robust enough to be used a number of times.

 

[Filter]

While I'm certainly not poo-pooing this device (I think it's neat), a set of rechargeable batteries is probably a cheaper investment

 

[Maj]

My first thought was "Is it April 1st".

So I googled "Batteriser" - The website http://www.batteriser.com/ I thought would be the most informative site, even having a heading of "How It Works" didn't really tell me anything and I'm thinking it goes in the same box along with claims of perpetual motion.

But then this website  http://www.pcworld.com/article/2928997/batteriser-is-a-250-gadget-that-extends-disposable-battery-life-by-800-percent.html proved much more informative.
The trick seems to be just the miniaturization of existing voltage boosting circuitry/technology.

It's a long shot, but it might just work.

While I'm certainly not poo-pooing this device (I think it's neat), a set of rechargeable batteries is probably a cheaper investment

But what it might provide is longer run time for rechargeables, meaning less batteries required for long trips eg. Darren Camps & expeditions.

Could this circuitry be built into lamps?

Maj.

 

[Amy]

Total farse. You can read a more in-depth report here http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/batteriser-cool-tech-or-scam/

But the TL/DR is simply that these only regulate output. But wait for it....the vast majority of modern technology is already regulated! Very little is still direct drive/unregulated. And these won't do anything for rechargeables, since NiMH already has a very flat discharge curve. So spend your $2-$2.50 for a good eneloop cell (this "battery saver" is $2.50 usd) and get 2000x the life of an alkaline, with a proper discharge curve already!

The "batteriser" is marketed to people who have no knowledge of such things, and are easily separated from their money for a useless gimmick they don't know they don't need.

By the way, these devices will actually reduce total available output by 5-10%...

If you look at the patent it is hard to tell if the "inventor" isn't a deliberate scammer, but...Hanlon?s Razor: Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

 

[Olaf]

I absolutely agree that rechargeables are a much better investment and every time I go caving, I'm shocked that virtually none of the cavers using AA batteries have rechargeable ones. Usually they claim they are "too disorganised to recharge them", which I think is a really lame excuse.

Apart from that, the rule of thumb for AA batteries is that their voltage is somewhere between 1.0-1.5V, and as Amy says, most of the devices regulate their internal working voltage based on that range. Most of the devices I know and in particular most LED lights would internally regulate the voltage *down*, though, not up, so once the batteries are below 1.0V or something, they'd stop working, and the "batteriser" could indeed get a little more charge out of them. If you search for a typical discharge curve of an AA battery, you'll find however that whatever is left below 1V is not much, and definitely nowhere near the claimed 800x, but rather somewhere around 10% if at all. I would think it's a nice idea to drain the last bit of juice out of the batteries at "unknown state of charge" that accumulate in large quantities around certain cavers, but most people would do that at home with a wall clock rather than underground with their main caving lights.

Of course most people will notice soon enough that their devices determine the "how much charge is left" state from the battery voltage, and that will be slightly confused if you measure the voltage after a boost converter...

One thing you have to give them credit for is their marketing department, though, that's really good. If this "startup" gets acquired, then it's probably for the marketing, not for the technology.

 

[Cartwright26]

I think i will buy some just to test in my duo, i use rechargables i think they are 2500mah so what i will do is fully charge two  new sets and then use one with and one set without and then take some notes, even if you get another 30 minutes out of a set thats better than nothing, i only use my duo for digging and as a spare as my nora2 has its own pack but i can get a AA converter for it even though im not sure on performance with the AA on that lamp

 

[Fulk]

I absolutely agree that rechargeables are a much better investment and every time I go caving, I'm shocked that virtually none of the cavers using AA batteries have rechargeable ones.

I agree, Olaf (I always use rechargeables) but some of my friends claim that rechargeables aren't as good as 'one-off' batteries ? their voltage is too low, or something. But I've never had a problem with them.

 

[MarkS]

It wouldn't surprise me if, in the context of caving lights, these just reduce the battery life...

Roughly speaking, most AA-powered lights will probably require 3-4 V, and tend to run off 4xAA batteries, so tend to work fine when batteries are at anything >1 V. Efficiency is likely to be slightly better when the battery voltage is closer to that of the LED voltage, i.e. when the batteries are slightly discharged. Adding a batteriser would reduce the energy capacity of the battery by boosting the voltage to a level that is then likely to reduce the efficiency of the light.

Also, good lights will detect low battery voltages and step down to a lower brightness with a power consumption to make sure there's still some light being emitted. These batterisers will trick a light into thinking that the batteries are full, and there will likely be little or no warning that your batteries are about to die completely...

 

[Cartwright26]

Also, good lights will detect low battery voltages and step down to a lower brightness with a power consumption to make sure there's still some light being emitted. These batterisers will trick a light into thinking that the batteries are full, and there will likely be little or no warning that your batteries are about to die completely...

this is a good point

 

[Amy]

Literally all this "magic device" is doing is regulating voltage. You cannot cheat physics and get something for nothing. Take s look at the curve below. All the device is doing is taking the alkaline battery and changing the curve to be flat, like the eneloop, but it still won't have the longevity (aka keep area under the alkaline curve the same, just shift it so it is flat).

That is it. That is the "magic". So you pick an arbitrary cutoff point and say it lasts 8x longer at said voltage. Okay sure. But you are not fixing battery tech, nor are you improving what is out there, and most devices regulate /already/. The circuitry is built in to the device to do so, already! Very few things are direct drive.

And no, most alkaline batteries do not drop In voltage so badly that you don't "get all the juice". Go back to basic physical chemistry and do the calculations yourself if you don't believe me. So this magic devices might help SHIT cells that no one had any business using anyway, but any decent cell, and especially eneloops like cavers should be using anyway since they do much better under load and last much longer (and no, this bateriser won't help them be longer, they are already working optimum!). So. Just spend $2.50 on a good cell like and eneloop, get 2000x the battery life of a alkaline that's chemistry is made to work under load, and forget this crap magic device.

 

[ChrisJC]

I saw these in the press earlier in the week.
I was going to rant, but Amy has eloquently summit up already.

Well said Amy.

Chris.

 

[NewStuff]

As everyone seems to have already sussed out that this is marketing at it's finest, I won't add anything, but Dave at EEVblog has a detailed  "sniff test" that this fails badly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4iEshd6izgk

 

[potholer]

Bottom line is that these devices seem likely to reduce runtimes on many (possibly most) devices, and are very likely to do so in anything which happily runs from NiMH cells.

And except possibly for the odd specialist or ultra-low-drain device, practically anything which takes AAs or AAAs and doesn't run perfectly well on NiMH could best be described as poorly-designed.

As far as use in a Duo goes, in an LED-based Duo, I'd suspect that runtime would be unlikely to imporve and could well get meaningfully worse - the electronics driving LEDs is likely to be either a switching regulator or a constant-current linear regulator, and while the first is only quite likely to have overall worse efficiency using batterisers, the second seem pretty much guaranteed to have significantly worse efficiency, not only because the 'extra' voltage provided by the batteriser is going to be pissed away as heat, but because the batteriser itself is far from 100% efficient, especially at lower cell voltages, as the patent application points out.

http://www.candlepowerforums.com/vb/showthread.php?402188-Batteriser-Wonderful-Alkaline-Helper-or-This-Weeks-Smoke-amp-Mirrors
may be worth a read for anyone interested.

 

[caver.adam@outlook.com]

I agree with everyone else, but if someone's willing to test our hypothesis (that this is smoke and mirrors) then they can provide physical evidence to demonstrate what we are saying.

Interestingly enough, the alkaline materials have an energy density of about 50% more than NiMH. But even ignoring the drain from the electronics doing the work it would still be better for the buyer and for the environment to buy some good rechargeable batteries.