Batteriser: How to Measure Battery Cutoff Voltage | Hacker News Reader

Batteriser: How to Measure Battery Cutoff Voltage

eevblog.com

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Previous discussion of the Batteriser here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9644931

The first debunking:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9677900

It's funny to think of the Batteriser in the context of the recent post about "assuming stupidity" in your competition.

IE "Current device manufacturers are stupid! There's all this energy left!"

This is a good point. If it's so easy to get longer battery lifetimes, why wouldn't device manufacturers just build the equivalent of the "batteriser" circuit into their devices? After all, longer battery life would give them an edge over their competition. But maybe it isn't really that easy...

For reference, here's a link to the recent "Presumption of Stupidity" post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10034883

The Batterizer circuit is more widely known as joule thief [1]. It's a boost converter that produces a constant output voltage regardless of the battery voltage. Some sort of similar switching power supply is standard in things like cell phones and laptops. For cheap toys, cost is key and the circuit would be too expensive.

"5 times more battery life" is kind of crazy though. Alkaline batteries start falling off quickly as they become discharged - in fact, this is a prized feature of the chemistry as the voltage stays pretty level through most of the life of the cell [2].

What surprises me is that they can build the Batterizer for $2.50. That seems awfully low for a completed product like that. How many amps can it handle?

Even at the $2.50 price point, you'd be better off buying NiMH cells. That would do much more for the environment than the Batterizer.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joule_thief [2] http://www.powerstream.com/AA-tests.htm

I think the idea of a "jule thief" basically is a extremely low power boost converter to run a LED as a nightlight on the remaining few % of an otherwise depleted battery.

A standard switching power converter wouldn't be called that way, even when modern chips used for that purpose obviously try hard to be as power efficient as possible.

In a typical circuit nowadays you'd also avoid the use of a two coil transformer, and just have a "one coil" inductor to save on copper. The second winding is needed to control the.transistor in the simple circuit shown on Wikipedia.

Also the simple circuit doesn't provide for any regulation. The more elaborate gameboy schematicsuses mentioned in the parallel comment to mine uses feedback (look for the 4.7v Zener pulling down the transistor) to accomplish that.

But of course nowadays one would use a simple 4 to 8 pin IC integrating almost everything except the inductor.

> standard in things like cell phones and laptops

or 25 year old toys like Game Boy

http://fms.komkon.org/GameBoy/Tech/PowerAndCart.gif

and gameboy color: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuaA-rUBmEc

both cutoff voltage <1v per cell

The founders of Batteriser would know the truth that device manufacturers are not "stupid". The message is targeting the consumers. It's a nice marketing trick. It definitely makes the consumers feel smart because they beat the "stupid" incumbents by buying a Batteriser.

I highly recommend subscribing to EEVblog he's like the EE version of the Applied Science YouTube channel.

I really like watching his videos, but frankly they often lack depth. Take for example the series of videos about the "Batteriser". Three videos, hours of footage, and the same facts repeated all over again. He very often mentions " tricks of the trade", especially when tearing down high quality measurement equipment, and that's something one cannot easily learn from without spending the bucks to buy some yourself. But for actual education about basics, the.information density is much higher in , and time spent more efficiently learning from a good book.

As a physicist I'm much more fascinated by Ben's applied science videos, they explain phenomena covering a much broader field. Also I think Ben chooses his words much more wisely, and therefore in the end is a better educator. The density of information hence is also much higher.

He lacks a Crocodile Dundee's Knife, though... :-)

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