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from the coming-to-a-store-near-you-within-5-years dept.
From the article:
A completely new alkaline battery is rated to generate 1.5 volts, but once its output drops below 1.35 or even 1.4 volts, it effectively becomes useless to many devices. The battery's chemical cocktail is still loaded with juice, but the circuitry in many gadgets (especially more sophisticated ones, like Bluetooth keyboards and bathroom scales) considers the battery dead.
This is where Batteriser comes in. It's essentially a voltage booster that sucks every last drop of useable energy from ostensibly spent batteries. So, instead of using just 20 percent of all the power hidden inside of your Duracells and Energizers, Batteriser makes effective use of the remaining 80 percent.
Voltage boosters are nothing new, but Batteriser scales down the technology to the point where it can fit inside a stainless steel sleeve less than 0.1 mm thick. Roohparvar says the sleeves are thin enough to fit inside almost every battery compartment imaginable, and the combined package can extend battery life between 4.9x for devices like remote controls and 9.1x for various electronic toys.
"The Batteriser has boost circuitry that will boost the voltage from 0.6 volts to 1.5 volts and will maintain voltage at 1.5—which is a brand new battery," Roohparvar says. "There's actually no IP [intellectual property] in the boost circuitry. Our technology is really a miniaturization technique that allows us to build the sleeve. We have some IP in some of the IC circuits that are in there, but the key is we've been able to miniaturize the boost circuit to a point that no one else has been able to achieve. "
This seems like a great piece of tech, right? Almost too good to be true... When that happens alarm bells ring and it's time to investigate further. Here are articles from theness.com and EEVblog.com that say, "not so fast."
From theness.com article:
But can, then, the Batteriser extract 500% more life out of those AAs? I don't think so, and here's why. While it is true that the voltage of an alkaline battery (and all batteries) drops off as capacity drops, the big drop off doesn't occur until around 82% of the capacity has been drained, and therefore only about 18% remains.
So, can this nifty little device, when released, live up to it's claims? It seems doubtful, but if it's only at $2.50, it might be worth a shot.
Original Submission
(Score: 1) by jummama on Friday June 05 2015, @04:52PM
It seems to me that the amperage output from such a contraption would make it quite useless for a lot of the stuff you'd use AA batteries with. Might work for something like a TV remote, but I seriously doubt it would work well for something like a game controller.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Friday June 05 2015, @05:12PM
With electrical and electronic gadgets, sometimes the voltage is more critical than the amperage. Sometimes, the amps have to be consistent, and the voltage is less critical. My LED flashlight behaves very differently than a more conventional flashlight bulb. The incandescent bulb continues to shine, but it gets dimmer and dimmer as the voltage drops. The LED stays bright, right up until the voltage drops below critical threshold. So - I suspect that these things will be worthwhile in some applications, and suck ass in other applications.
I plan to get a couple to play with. Five bucks, give or take a little? Hell yeah, I'll try them.
(Score: 4, Informative) by gnuman on Friday June 05 2015, @06:01PM
With electrical and electronic gadgets, sometimes the voltage is more critical than the amperage
And those already have their own boost voltage regulators. Yes, including stuff that runs all the way down to 0.5V. For example,
http://www.digikey.ca/product-detail/en/AAT1217ICA-3.3-T1/863-1496-2-ND/4246151 [digikey.ca]
There is really really no excuse for not having a voltage regulator for battery operated devices. Any battery operated device needs to operate down to 0.9V or 0.8V, but with proper voltage regulator, you get down to 0.5V. TFS says 1.4V., which is crap, because fully charged NiMH batteries are at 1.2V and alkalines drop to below 1.4V at 90% capacity.
The incandescent bulb continues to shine, but it gets dimmer and dimmer as the voltage drops. The LED stays bright, right up until the voltage drops below critical threshold. So - I suspect that these things will be worthwhile in some applications, and suck ass in other applications.
Incandescent bulb is a plain resistor device. P=V^2/R, and R is constant. So you are losing power as square of the voltage drop. For LEDs, they are plain current devices. They don't have "resistance" in typical sense, they just have a fixed voltage drop across them. Proper LED lights need a current sensing circuit, but it is all too common for manufacturers to cheap out and just stick a plain resistor in series with the LEDs. This means a cheap LED flashlight will also get dimmer, but at not as fast as an incandescent. And then it will get cut off completely when batteries are about below 1.2V-1.6V combined in series (typically).
I don't know anyone that has a proper LED control chip in a flashlight though. Heck, there are plenty of after market car lights that have nothing but resistors, and that is definitely not up to specs.
(Score: 2) by pogostix on Friday June 05 2015, @06:08PM
R is not constant. R actually goes up as I goes down. Which creates a positive feedback loop that drains the battery ever faster. One of the fun facts about incandescence.
(Score: 2) by pogostix on Friday June 05 2015, @06:14PM
Nope I'm wrong.... as V drops, I also drops. As the filament then cools, it's R goes *down* which increases I, draining the battery ever faster.
(Score: 2) by pogostix on Friday June 05 2015, @06:16PM
End result is a cold filament... which is basically a piece of wire, shorting out the battery.
(Score: 2) by gnuman on Monday June 08 2015, @08:51PM
Sure, temperature affects resistance, but you'd be surprised that it doesn't in the range when filament is actually bright enough to be usable.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incandescent_light_bulb#Construction [wikipedia.org]
http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2004/DeannaStewart.shtml [hypertextbook.com]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black-body_radiation [wikipedia.org]
I have a 250W 40W light bulb from China. When I plug it into my 125V socket, it is redish and much dimmer. Power usage? 1/4 - 10W. Room temperature resistance is 103 ohms, which is far from a short. From the resistance table of tungsten (above) it means that rated filament temperature is about 2500K. So either the light bulb is out of spec and the rated output is less by 20%, or temperature didn't change that much. Oh, and then I have another light bulb (60W) that does the same thing - 15W at 120V.
P = IV = V^2/R
hence R must be more-or-less constant here, irrespective of any tables and theories. Which means that temperature of the filament doesn't change too much either even when total power output drops by 75%.
I'd be interested if you can explain exactly what is happening here!
(Score: 2) by pogostix on Tuesday June 09 2015, @11:23PM
Rated:............ 250V 40 W .... R = V^2 / P =(250^2)/40 = 1562.5 ohms
125V applied:.. 125V 10W ...... R = V^2 / P =(125^2)/10 = 1562.5 ohms
Cold reading:... R = 103 ohm
I can't! For a fixed resistance, running half voltage rightly causes 1/4 of the power output (P = V^2 / R)
So, I imagine once the filament becomes incandescent the R stays rougly the same.
I'd be interested in what the power reading would be at a variety of voltages below the voltage level that causes incandescence.
There is a huge range between 103 ohms and 1563 ohms and I wonder if you could see that down at sub-50V voltage levels?
(Score: 2) by fnj on Friday June 05 2015, @06:45PM
Are you serious? A white LED doesn't even start to glow dimly until it's at 2.5 v. How do you think any of the huge number of single-AA (1.5 v) LED flashlights work? They've got DC-DC step-up, that's how, and if they are any good at all, they have regulation. Mine have constant brightness from 1.5 v all the way down to 0.8 v or so.
(Score: 3, Informative) by TLA on Saturday June 06 2015, @02:25AM
I don't know anyone that has a proper LED control chip in a flashlight
Uh... HELLO? I have several.
I have a drawer full of examples, in fact.
Luxeon Star Tactical, powered by 2xCR123 lithium cells, brighter than the Sun (rated 3W). These are quad element LEDs driven by pulse timed lasing voltage (which is why they go from being LED to Class III Laser Emitter, they only avoid making Class IV because they have diffusers built in and they're not narrowband emitters - they're pure white emitters, albeit at 3W it's definitely not a good idea to look directly at them because they *will* cause semi-permanent retinal damage).
Lenser Tactical: powered by 3xAAA, this is a single-element Cree to 1W, again a Class III laser. This one is always in my pocket for the simple reason that the batteries are a piece of piss to get hold of.
Lenser Pocket: 3 standard "Hyperbright" LEDs through a pulse timer circuit, which makes them even brighter since the pulse kicks just below lasing voltage. Uncomfortably bright (seeing a pattern yet?) yet not classed as a laser. Don't ask me why, it had no laser warning on the packaging like the Cree or Luxeon ones did. Handy in that it runs off apparently dead camera batteries ("N" size x3).
The commonality of all three systems, from several years of experience with all three so I can tell you which is THE one to have (that would be the 1W Cree Lenser Tactical), is that they will all run their batteries until they are completely dead, afore which time you have daylight in your pocket.
I also have a homebuilt made with a low profile 3mm LED and the guts of a Maglite Duo AA. I say guts, I had to widen the neck on the reflector to accommodate the LED. It's not bad, it lets me see around in the dark but I'm not lighting soccer fields with it. Also, and just because, I have a 120-LED 3D flashlight which uses a combi wiring scheme (I think 3x2 concentric parallel rings of LEDs, so each ring runs 1.5V in series with two others, making two sets of three strings). There's no other components in the torch apart from the barrel switch. Ridiculously bright but with an equally ridiculous beam spread, it's great for a floodlight, less useful for a tactical (also because it's awkward to handle when I'm also trying to scope a rifle).
Excuse me, I think I need to reboot my horse. - NCommander
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 06 2015, @12:37PM
Seriously, I'm sure there aren't that many people with the flashlights you own so using them as a counterexample to the AC's claim won't work so well as using more "mainstream" examples.
(Score: 2) by TLA on Sunday June 07 2015, @02:45PM
stay down in -1 zone, AC, just because I've shown a black swan you have to get uppity because I've just disproved you with not just one but SEVERAL EXAMPLES of *mainstream* flashlight technology. IF you want to get badgy, Maglite sell a 5D unit with a 3W Luxeon Rebel cluster, this is used by law enforcement the world over (the base 5D unit has been around since 1979). Rayovac were among the earliest adopters of pulse timed LED tech in their budget flashlights (talking about the 2AA pocket models), we're talking about 2006 and before. Since hyperbrights hit the market around 1999 the hacker community have been switching out Maglite lead units with LEDs.
Excuse me, I think I need to reboot my horse. - NCommander
(Score: 2) by gnuman on Monday June 08 2015, @09:01PM
also have a homebuilt made with a low profile 3mm LED and the guts of a Maglite Duo AA.
Perhaps I've run my mouth too fast on the flashlights then! On the other hand, I have a flashlight that I cannot take apart, and this one probably has a very poor voltage regulator. It has 4 LEDs, but as voltage on the batteries drop, so does the light intensity.
As for car LEDs? well, look at ebay. Tons of tail lights and others where they just have resistors to limit current. These are not limited to ebay either - they are in local stores here in Canada too.