
The Batteriser Explained - MrBuddyCasino
http://www.eevblog.com/2015/06/07/the-batteriser-explained/
======
userbinator
_Saying “1.5V of Energy” is incredibly embarrassing for a company that is
trying to market a product like this. Perhaps they are just trying to dumb it
down for the masses?_

I think they're being intentionally misleading - and counting on the "dumb
masses" to not understand that - so they can claim that 8x improvement, since
it comes entirely from the also-misleading "more than eight 0.1 volt steps
between 0.6 and 1.5 volts" statement. (It's technically true, but irrelevant.)

As an aside, do schools today teach power, energy, voltage, and current in the
standard curriculum? I know I was taught that (and Ohm's law) somewhere
between elementary and middle school, but that was many decades ago...

Also those discharge curves are constant-current, but devices which already
have boost converters in them will be drawing constant _power_ , i.e. as the
voltage goes down the current will go up. That means the discharge curve will
look even steeper at the end, with less "wasted" energy.

At least they didn't claim "up to 8 times _or more_ ".

~~~
com2kid
> As an aside, do schools today teach power, energy, voltage, and current in
> the standard curriculum? I know I was taught that (and Ohm's law) somewhere
> between elementary and middle school, but that was many decades ago...

I got it in my second level of engineering physics in college. Before that I
had learned some of it independently for my senior project.

This was in the early 2000s.

I guess the answer is "depends on the curriculum".

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wumbernang
As much as I like Dave Jones, I think he's concentrating on the wrong bits
here.

The idea is completely bad. Sorry. It's a pile of crap. It shouldn't be on the
market.

Sure you can build a boost converter that gives you a constant 1.5v. That's
not a bad idea. I've actually designed a couple of these myself on a larger
scale over the years (professionally, for military radio equipment, not Joule
Thief hacks). That's not under debate. The following points are:

1\. Even the best alkaline batteries leak if you discharge them too much so
you'll end up destroying your equipment and the Batterisers that you invested
in at the same time. Seriously, take a 220 ohm resistor and stick it across a
Duracell AA battery and leave it for a few days. You will come back to a
rancid mess.

2\. There is a cost. So you're going to need 4 of these for your average
device that requires a 6v supply. now my 12v radio packs are 8xAA batteries so
imagine the incidental cost over the top of the batteries there. To power kids
toys you could have tens of these in the house. Over the top of disposable
batteries, it's a poor investment.

3\. 8x is simply horse shit, as DLJ points out. Even with a fairly efficient
conversion ratio, and I haven't done the figures, just a finger in the air
estimate based on the amount of energy your average alkaline AA has, you're
looking at 1.2-2.0x the life.

4\. Wonderful things like AA batteries are terribly variable in the tail end
of their discharge curve. Not all batteries in a pack are going to still be
kicking out current or even have a suitably low internal resistance compared
to their immediate colleagues. If one of these fails early, it will take the
advantage away from the rest of the cells instantly.

5\. Noise. Boost converters usually generate a lot of electrical noise in the
signal paths. If you have any analogue parts, particularly audio that are
expecting to have a relatively noiseless power supply (batteries are quite
noise free) then the design will perform worse with these.

Now the killers:

1\. If this was such a great idea, why is it not built into the equipment?
(because it represents a risk to the equipment)

2\. Why the hell would you bother with this when Sanyo (well Panasonic now)
Eneloops represent a better investment than both alkaline batteries and these.
They handle over 1000 charge, discharge cycles no problems at all, have a good
very good shelf life due to low self-discharge characteristics, don't leak and
have a decent peak current capacity and discharge curve.

It's just a waste of time.

~~~
minthd
Good post.

But why 1000 charges is useful for most home equipment where batteries last a
relatively long time ?

~~~
wumbernang
Only because they are then fungible. Once you dispose of that calculator that
takes 4xAA batteries and lasts 6 months, you can whack the cells in a Furby's
butt and charge them up once a week until your children get rid of the damn
things :-)

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subudeepak
Thanks for sharing. I was wondering, why do we need the sleeve ? Can the
voltage boosting module be part of the remote itself ? Isn't that what a dc-dc
module does ?

~~~
DrStalker
There's no reasons you can't put a voltage boost circuit into a device other
than it would be cheaper not to and consumers will blame the batteries, not
your device, if you don't. (also, if your device functions fine with low
voltage batteries there is no need to.)

~~~
ableal
> if your device functions fine with low voltage batteries

Probably not a good idea. Really spent batteries tend to leak and damage the
device.

Not working makes the owner change the batteries.

~~~
deutronium
Even with a boost converter, it'll still stop working

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pkaye
Isn't this just a DC-DC converter? How can they have a patent for something
that was invented decades ago? I used to read a lot of IC datasheets in my
previous job and such battery extenders are given as reference designs in the
datasheets.

~~~
tzs
Their patent is on the mechanical design, not the electrical design.

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blueintegral
Dave Jones can be a little dramatic during videos like this. I wish he spent
more time talking about ways you could actually achieve the claims of the
product and less time just cutting down the designers. It's easy to point out
all the things you see wrong with something, but it's much harder to try to
answer the question, "how could we make it work anyway?".

~~~
cnvogel
> talking about ways you could actually achieve the claims of the product

The thing is, you fundamentally _cannot_ achieve the claims of the product, or
rather: you can only fulfill the claim for an area of application which
consists of badly designed circuits to begin with.

Would you (rightly...) call bullshit on me if I claim that I developed a patch
to gcc that makes all software 800% faster? You probably would start
explaining to me that typical software is limited by memory bandwidth, or
might wait for disk I/O... and that one might achieve 800% speedup only at
some hot-spots in exceptionally rare cases of particularly badly coded
programs.

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bagosm
What I wanted to read about but couldn't find it was the actual ROI of this
product. How many batteries must I use so that it would make financial sense
to buy the product? (So that we could compare with actual results and see if
they match)

~~~
joosters
The makers haven't given enough information for anyone to calculate this.

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Maxious
A similar (although as the article says, not identical) way to get more life
out of a battery
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joule_thief](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joule_thief)

~~~
userbinator
The guy who invented the term "Joule thief" incidentally also has lots of
videos on LED lighting and other miscellaneous stuff:

[https://www.youtube.com/user/bigclivedotcom](https://www.youtube.com/user/bigclivedotcom)

~~~
robzyb
Hey, I've been watching that guy on youtube recently, I didn't realise that he
was the guy behind the Joule thief!

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MrBuddyCasino
What I don't get: I stopped using alkalines long ago, and have since settled
for Eneloop rechargeable batteries. They can be reasonably used even in wall
clocks, due to their low rate of self-discharge.

Why do people still buy the regular ones?

~~~
BorgHunter
NiMH cells are expensive compared to alkaline cells. A quick check on Amazon
shows that, when buying a decent amount of AA cells at a time, alkalines go
for about $0.28 each compared to $1.67 each for NiMH cells.[0][1] Add in a
charger (and consider that most cheaper chargers are really crappy--look for
NLee the Engineer's reviews[2]) and many don't consider the benefits to
outweigh the initial capital costs. (Also, alkalines tend to operate at 1.5 V
for a good portion of the voltage curve whereas NiMH cells are usually around
1.3 V. This can cause problems in some devices, although less so today than,
say, ten years ago.)

I absolutely agree that NiMH cells are superior in almost every way, but it's
not irrational to prefer disposable batteries.

[0] [http://www.amazon.com/AmazonBasics-Performance-Alkaline-
Batt...](http://www.amazon.com/AmazonBasics-Performance-Alkaline-
Batteries-48-Pack/dp/B00MNV8E0C)

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/AmazonBasics-AA-Rechargeable-
Batteries...](http://www.amazon.com/AmazonBasics-AA-Rechargeable-
Batteries-16-Pack/dp/B007B9NV8Q)

[2] e.g.
[http://www.amazon.com/review/RMWO7UZ9TAVRF/ref=cm_cr_rdp_per...](http://www.amazon.com/review/RMWO7UZ9TAVRF/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm)

~~~
pknight
Yep, voltage on the eneloops by comparison is 1.2V. Lots of battery operated
toys work better with 1.5V batteries. There are rechargeable alkalines that
provide 1.5V but they are very unreliable and the rest of the rechargeable AA
market is lower voltage. So batteriser would be pretty neat if it works as
advertised.

~~~
ska
You really wouldn't want to use this approach with rechargeables, as they
degrade pretty quickly if discharged too far (which is what this would do)

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johnlbevan2
8 x improvement on a dead battery... that's still a dead battery isn't it?

~~~
StavrosK
Yes, but it's eight times more dead.

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fit2rule
The conclusion reached: hype can be very, very wrong, but nevertheless: it is
hype. Making bold claims nevertheless gets you some eyeballs/ears far and wide
..

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jacquesm
That's a supergood write-up.

In short: the tech probably works, the efficiencies claimed are likely bunk
and there are some possible risks that need to be researched.

~~~
Nursie
The tech probably kinda-works, was what I took away from that.

If you use it on a new battery you're likely to get worse life out of it, if
you use it on a rechargeable it might damage it, but if you use it on a 'dead'
alkaline you might get some more life out of them. How much will depend on the
tolerances of the device you're using them in.

\--edit-- oh, and it will do an end-run around any battery gauge your device
has.

