Batteriser: a gadget that extends alkaline battery life

347 点作者 chris-at将近 10 年前

33 条评论

jwr将近 10 年前

One should be careful evaluating the claims.A good boost converter will be ~90% efficient (it can be more efficient, but not miniaturized like the pictures show). So, to begin with, you'll discard ~10% of your energy.Now look at AA alkaline discharge curves: <a href="http://www.powerstream.com/AA-tests.htm" rel="nofollow">http://www.powerstream.com/AA-tests.htm</a>Indeed if you gadget reports the batteries as dead at 1.25V, you can still get ~40% more usage. But most gadgets don't work that way. 1.25V is the normal voltage of a fully charged NiMH rechargeable AA, so if you gadget works with those, the real cutoff point is likely closer to 1.15V or so.The booster will boost the voltage (at the expense of current, obviously, plus losses) so that even though the battery will be below 1.15V, output voltage will be at 1.5V. Looking at the graphs, this buys you less than 1/5th, and if you consider the losses in the boost converter, probably half that.The "800%" claim seems totally bogus. Perhaps with a gadget that stops working when the voltage falls below 1.45V per cell.I'm not saying it's not a useful gadget (and I'm very impressed by the miniaturization: where is the inductor? This thing must run at several MHz at least!) — just that the claims should be taken with a large grain of salt.

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throwaway434317将近 10 年前

How can other posters take this article at face value? This reads 100% like a fake ad (I mean stylistically and in terms of presentation, like the kind of thing you see "Advertisement" written in small text over the top of while it's run in the New Yorker or wherever. I read them. I like it. Because they're amusing.) The only thing that keeps it from being one is that it's on macworld.com. Like, really? Industrial espionage, a real "professional job"? "Big Battery"? Everyone here has worked on way more interesting technology than a metal sleeve and a farfetched tale - which is all this is - and who breaks into our offices to steal our tech? It doesn't happen. Nobody would do it even if the device works exactly as stated.Do these prototypes look to you like something that came out of a test lab? The only work put into them is the branding, "Batteriser" a word that is mentioned 43 times in 2000 words, including the first word of the title.I'm not calling this native advertising but if it isn't, it seems the only one more gullible than this journalist is everyone else who swallows this hook, line, and sinker.You could have written the same article but with some doohickey that lowers gas mileage by increasing oxygen mixture, and gets stolen in a brazen act of industrial espionage, a real professional job.come on. we're adults here. this article is insulting. Where are the details of the break-in, such as date or what precisely was stolen, or where it happened - you know: journalism?

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userbinator将近 10 年前

Batteroo says the sleeve and its boost circuitry doesn't introduce any extra risk of chemical leakage.From <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alkaline_battery#Leaks" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alkaline_battery#Leaks</a>The reason for leaks is that as batteries discharge — either through usage or gradual self-discharge — the chemistry of the cells changes and some hydrogen gas is generated. This out-gassing increases pressure in the battery. Eventually, the excess pressure either ruptures the insulating seals at the end of the battery, or the outer metal canister, or both.In other words by extracting more energy, there is more hydrogen evolved and it will increase their tendency to leak.This was also posted on an EE forum I frequent, and the opinions on it so far have been mostly negative:<a href="http://www.eevblog.com/forum/reviews/'batterizer'-claims-to-increase-disposable-battery-life-8x/" rel="nofollow">http://www.eevblog.com/forum/reviews/'batterizer'-claims-to-...</a>IMHO rechargeable lithium is the way to go. An 18650 has several times the energy of an AA while being not much bigger, and can be recharged. They're still not all that common in the West, but equipment like torches, power banks, and portable fans which take 18650s are gaining in popularity.

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pdx将近 10 年前

Back in 2001 I was designing mp3 players with boost converters in them that could start switching from a battery as low as 0.9V. It was hard to find boost converters in 2001 that worked down to 0.9V. It's obviously not hard to find them in 2015.Any product that is evaluated on it's battery life already has very efficient boost converters built into it. Battery life is priority #1 for any battery powered product design team. It's agonized over in every design decision from the very 1st schematic.About the only products that don't seem to give a shit about battery life are toys. Toy designers know that you are not making buy/don't-buy decisions based on battery life, when you're looking at a toy in the store. Toy designers cost optimize their circuits aggressively, at the expense of battery life. They deserve a special place in hell for that. This product would benefit many toys. Not much else, though.

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drodgers将近 10 年前

"Batteriser can continue to deliver a 1.5 volt charge in batteries that have discharged down to 0.6 volts. There are more than eight 0.1 volt steps between 0.6 and 1.5 volts, so, in grossly simplified terms, the Batteriser can extend operational battery life somewhere around a factor of eight."...No. That's not how maths works.

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afandian将近 10 年前

If this is such a great idea why isn't the circuit integrated into the devices that use batteries? I'm sure it wouldn't be difficult monitor the discharge rate and kick in the circuit when it's needed and the battery has demonstrated that it's an alkaline by its discharge profile.

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michaelt将近 10 年前

<pre><code> “The time it takes for the battery voltage to drop by 0.1V is longer at lower voltages versus at higher voltages. That means that if a constant current was drawn from the battery, it would take the battery a lot longer to discharge from 1.2V to 1.1V than it would from 1.5V to 1.4V. This means that the extent to which the battery life is increased could be even higher.” </code></pre> Sure, but if you're drawing 20mA at 1.5v, you only need to draw 20mA from a 1.5v battery. If the battery drops to 1.2 volts, for constant power output you'll need to pull 25mA into the boost converter.

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Confiks将近 10 年前

I do think that the claims made by Macworld are somewhat exaggerated. This kind of journalism always needs to be taken with some grains of salt. The paragraph in which the 800% extension is described, sounds messy, and doesn't cohere with some other claims made in the article.The motivation of the story, namely that of a robbery of private documents, seems odd, and I can understand that it will immediately raise red flags among readers.Some other points in the article did seem plausible to me. Modern electronics need stable voltages to keep working properly. The working of voltage regulators is well understood. Only the miniaturization is the invention, which is patented (<a href="https://www.google.com/patents/US20120121943" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.com/patents/US20120121943</a>), and has a very verbose application compared to other patents. There can of course be issues with the technology, of which theories are offered by some commenters.Another patent by "Frankie Roohparvar" (and not Bob as in the article), can be found here: <a href="https://www.google.com/patents/US6717853" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.com/patents/US6717853</a> , and Mr. Roohparvar can be seen talking (presumably; I only skipped around) here: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1V6IKoFhBtQ" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1V6IKoFhBtQ</a>For some theories that commenters are offering, an elaborate conspiracy would be required, building up references and trust, only to mislead absolutely and quite likely not get away with it.Of course, conspiracies exist, but please don't think so lightly about arguing them.

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pjc50将近 10 年前

This is a very nifty commercialisation and miniturisation of the "joule thief" circuit, a type of switchmode power supply.

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cryodesign将近 10 年前

Why would I want to buy this gadget compared to investing my money in rechargeable batteries? I would probably use non-rechargeables for smoke detectors only.Also the environmental impact is less with rechargeable batteries[1][1] <a href="http://ec.europa.eu/environment/waste/batteries/pdf/battery_report_june2010.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://ec.europa.eu/environment/waste/batteries/pdf/battery_...</a>Edit: fix typos

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bobwaycott将近 10 年前

So, the same exact article appears on PCWorld, at the exact URL (just change the domain's 'mac' > 'pc'). Is that normal? I never visit either site, so I'm unfamiliar how much cross-posted content it/they feature across both domains.[0]Oddly (to me, at least), the company's domain (<a href="http://batteriser.com" rel="nofollow">http://batteriser.com</a>) redirects to a single page on another domain. That page & domain is <a href="http://comingsoon-tech.com/batteriser" rel="nofollow">http://comingsoon-tech.com/batteriser</a>.Curiously, <a href="http://comingsoon-tech.com" rel="nofollow">http://comingsoon-tech.com</a> (sans path) redirects to <a href="http://agency20.com" rel="nofollow">http://agency20.com</a>, an agency that describes itself as offering "bespoke crowdfunding strategy ... as a way for creative professionals and entrepreneurs to successfully fund & grow their projects, while retaining 100% ownership and creative control."[2][4]Looking at the page one lands on via the redirect trip from <a href="http://batteriser.com" rel="nofollow">http://batteriser.com</a> > <a href="http://comingsoon-tech.com/batteriser" rel="nofollow">http://comingsoon-tech.com/batteriser</a>, I can't help but notice an insane amount of nearly identical wording as that which appears in the PC/MacWorld articles.Something is quite fishy here.---[0]: I found this via the Batteriser Twitter account[1], which made its first tweet 12 hrs ago--declaring they've launched--with a link to the PCWorld endpoint.[1]: <a href="https://twitter.com/gobatteriser" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/gobatteriser</a> [4][2]: i've combined direct quotes from their home page & "our story" page[3][3]: <a href="http://www.agency20.com/our-story/" rel="nofollow">http://www.agency20.com/our-story/</a> [+][4]: someone at agency|2.0 really ought to fix the Twitter description by adding a "with" or "using" or some other such coordinating helper verb, preposition, phrase, what-have-you. one expects a bit finer fit and finish with bespoke goods. [+][+]: footnotes for footnotes are fun[EDIT: formatting screwups]

jacquesm将近 10 年前

That's clever. I used a similar trick to boost the output of my windmill during low-wind days when the voltage from the alternator would not be larger than the voltage of the batteries.I don't understand this bit:> The next step is an Indiegogo campaign in late June, and then delivery in late September.If they already have a working product and a price set and they're going to ship in September they should be well into mass production right now and such a campaign would not make much sense.If made cheap enough the circuitry could possibly be internalized in the battery sleeve.

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ferongr将近 10 年前

You won't get much power (Wh, as opposed to mAh) from a cell at a low state of charge. The initial lower voltage of the almost empty cell, combined with the increased voltage sag under load due to the converter pulling increased amounts of current will result in dubious amounts of actual extra energy. In any case, many complicated electronic gadgets already use some kind of voltage regulator that maximizes the runtime of the device, this gadget (if it works as advertised) would be useful only for some direct-drive lights or motors

mschuster91将近 10 年前

How is this supposed to work w/ rechargeable batteries? Deep-discharging can permanently kill a battery.

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skyshine将近 10 年前

Could these be used to boost NiMH to 1.5 volts?Could I finally stop throwing money at my smoke detector which always throws a fit at about 2AM if I try and put NiMH in it?

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PythonicAlpha将近 10 年前

I just wonder, if the video is part of a new, clever (or not) marketing strategy?At least at my computer (tried with two different browsers), the video stops after 17sec or so and is interrupted in midst of a sentence by a form to enter my email address. I just wanted to view the video to the end, but have to enter my email instead??Either an error in the page (?) or a clever marketing strategy?? In my case, not so clever, because I will not adhere to such tactics.It could also be, that the whole thing is similar to that tactics? As jwf also pointed out, the claims are a little over the top. I don't think, that 800% are really achievable. Maybe 20-30% in real life applications. That of course could be still good, when the gadget will not be to costly and is unlimited reusable. Still the question remains, if simple rechargeable are not still better (for your economy and the environment) in cases where you have battery-intensive applications. I try to limit the usage of non-rechargeables to cases where the battery is swapped really seldom -- and in such cases, additional gadgets just make life more complicated.

noipv4将近 10 年前

I am guessing it's a miniaturised charge pump boost (uses a few capacitors and an electronic switch) converter, similar to ones produced by Maxim. <a href="http://www.maximintegrated.com/en/app-notes/index.mvp/id/725" rel="nofollow">http://www.maximintegrated.com/en/app-notes/index.mvp/id/725</a> Nowhere in the article I see an alkaline battery discharge curve. <a href="http://www.powerstream.com/AA-tests.htm" rel="nofollow">http://www.powerstream.com/AA-tests.htm</a>Battery discharge curves are never linear. Most capacity is lost between 1.5V and 1.3V. I am afraid this device might be snake oil.

IanDrake将近 10 年前

Certainly a neat gadget, but here's the part that blows me away...>They’ll never out-sexy the Apple Watch or Surface Pro 3.That, coming from macworld.com, has me wondering if hell just froze over.

jellicle将近 10 年前

As people have already discussed, voltage boosters for things like LED flashlights are already in wide use (usually called a "voltage regulator"). The tradeoff appears to be something like:-- longer life at full rated voltage-- when the battery dies, it dies suddenly and completely, no tapering down - one second it's on, the next second it is dead as a doornail-- parasitic current drain drains batteries even when they're not in use-- more expensiveThey most definitely do NOT increase usable battery life by 8x.

spiritplumber将近 10 年前

<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joule_thief" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joule_thief</a> Here.

chrisBob将近 10 年前

One issue I don't see addressed is that I appreciate the warning I get as my batteries die. In an apple trackpad, like the one in the "article", I get a few weeks notice when my batteries are dying. With this am I more likely to have devices just give up suddenly?That, plus the safety concerns and the fact that their math is bogus will probably keep me from using one.

joosters将近 10 年前

Where are the published 3rd party test results? If all they say is true, it would be simple & cheap to get an independent test done showing a range of devices and the run times with & without the batteriser.Their one-line statement from Dr. Kiumars Parvin is worthless on its own. Show some confirmed test results on real life items, or you are just selling snake oil.

noonespecial将近 10 年前

Strange that he picked a mac keyboard for the demo. Mine works until the batteries reach 0.8v each. Batteries that are long "dead" in my kids toys make my keyboard work for weeks. (Of course the Mac starts alerting me of impending doom much sooner. Is this just a clever way to lie to the power meter and get it to shut up?)The trackpad on the other hand...

liquidcool将近 10 年前

Dumb question: do most battery meters (internal to the device) test voltage? If so, does that mean using this would give you no warning that your batteries are dying? From the demo, it sounds like they might go from 100% straight to dead, at least from the device's perspective.

josefresco将近 10 年前

I got about 3 paragraphs in before my browser succumbed to the atrocious ad/JS bloat on this site. I'll hunt down a mirror/print version.

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powera将近 10 年前

OK, this article is hopefully getting spam upvotes - it's clearly a terrible article promoting some (probably terrible) product through lies.

jhallenworld将近 10 年前

I wonder how noisy it is.. I mean if I use one in an old AM radio, does the radio become useless from switching noise?

lttlrck将近 10 年前

I would be surprised if most /electronic/ gadgets don't have circuitry that already do this.

fugyk将近 10 年前

If we now use 20% energy of battery as batteriser claims, how can it extend the life of battery by 800%.

tlrobinson将近 10 年前

Why aren't voltage boosters built into more products? Cost? Will they destroy rechargeables?

kabouseng将近 10 年前

I'm not sure if it is a good idea to use this device with your rechargeable batteries...

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fiovio将近 10 年前

Can I actually buy this gadget already?

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ankitgarg43将近 10 年前

We need this out as soon as possible. I personally think so because then we will manufacture less alkaline based batteries and save the environment. Also then things will be more efficient. We as people should protect this invention against the big company giants. Who will definitely try to kill it.I request you all to get it out there and make the best of it.Mr. Bob RoohparvarI STAND BY HERE IN THIS AMAZING INVENTION'S PROGRESS