Microsoft – InstaLoad Battery Installation Technology | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft – InstaLoad Battery Installation Technology

microsoft.com

78 pointsUncle_Sam55 comments

Can't we just admire the simplicity of this without starting all the MS-bashing? PLEASE?

Seriously, this is ridiculous. Whatever this is, it is an improvement over the current style. Hell, you know what, label the battery slots with an arbitrary direction if you're so worried about "confusing the user" - and then work in other ways, too.

But all this hating is completely out-of-line with the hacker/engineer spirit. How hard is it to just appreciate a nifty hack when you see it? No matter who it comes from?

While this is great design in isolation from the rest of the world, it will only add more confusion unless it is ubiquitous.

Currently you just have to look for labels like + and - in the battery slot, and with such devices there may be no such labels at all, or instead some text that says "put batteries any way you want", or, even worse, some cryptic graphic that attempts to say it. More processing power required != good.

Disclaimer: not a Microsoft hater, just my thoughts.

My point is, go ahead and put in the current +/- sign. On the box, packaging, site, manual, whatever you can talk about how it'll actually work in any way.

Those that look for the +/- will find it. Those that misread it or are too thick to understand it will put them in wrong and your device will still work. And those that saw the cool picture on your device's package will play around with it and test different ways then say "waaaaay cool!"

This is interesting, but will it work in practice? It seems that this merely relies on the little bump on the plus side of a battery to differentiate between the positive and negative end. But this would make the clearances very small, so I am not sure it will work in practice with different batteries and people jamming them in and out, etc.

This is so obvious, simple and powerful. Bravo Microsoft!

I wish they could rent out Jonathan Ive to show the world how brilliant it is. 63 years of people struggling to read scratches on plastic have past before someone focused on how to make this common but not-often task better. I can't wait to see it deployed in devices.

"The AA battery size was standardized by ANSI in 1947 but had been used in miniature flashlights and electrical novelties for some time before formal standardization." - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AA_battery

I thought Ive worked for Apple?

Interesting that it's a mechanical design and not an electronic solution, which was my first intuition.

One interesting thought: is the lack of battery installation diagram going to cause consternation in consumers who are by now very accustomed to battery installation diagrams?

That was the first thing which came to my mind as well. I thought they've probably got a bridge of schottky diodes for every battery. The mechanical design makes it seem very elegant.If it were a schottky bridge, it'll still have a forward drop of ~0.3 - 0.45 volts, which is pretty big for 1.5 volts batteries.

They can just use a placebo.

While this does do away with one more modal interface in side-by-side battery arrangements, judging only by the pictures, it looks extremely shock-sensitive. It would seem suitable for office/home use as long as it's not in a small child's toy or something like an RC car.

Additionally, "idiot-proof" mechanical contacts like this are commonplace, going as far back as '80s, in high-amp "industrial" battery chargers.

As Seth Godin once said, the layout of batteries is broken and the obvious solution is to very simply rearrange the wires so that both batteries face the same way. Have a gigantic + and - to indicate the correct direction. There's no need to add all the extra parts so the batteries can fit both ways and label the solution InstaLoad.

See: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4101280286098310645...

I don't think this is a completely new idea. Few year ago I saw something similar in my pocket radio. It looks different though.

I see similar concept in Minolta Z3. It's used for protection only though - placing batteries in wrong position just disconnects the circuit.

I'm very surprised there's no prior art here. It seems like something I've seen before, although I can't think of any specific examples. (I've definitely seen old flashlights designed for those big square 6V lantern batteries so that, as long as you put the thing in with the contacts facing up, they would always work...)

If there's no prior art in the wild, then my tendency is to wonder why not -- I find it pretty hard to believe the guys at Microsoft are the first to think of this. I wonder if some poorly-manufactured batteries would short out the contacts, and that's why other designers have shied away from doing it?

It seems like something you've seen before, because it is. There are lots of devices that require batteries to be inserted.

Perhaps there's no prior art, because it's an unobvious advancement to battery technology. Is that so hard to believe? Why do you find it hard to believe the guys at Microsoft were the first to think of it? They create lots of battery operated devices like mice and keyboards and microsoft has a ton of geniuses working for them to boot.

I've never seen anything like this before. I wish all batteries were as easy to insert as this invention makes them.

I'm sure the guys working on Microsoft hardware are a brilliant bunch. I have no doubt that they possess the ability to come up with this type of innovation. The part that amazes me is that with all the other engineers that have worked hard to design battery enclosures no one had thought of this yet. It's so simple. Brilliant, but simple.

A flashlight doesn't care which way current flows through the lightbulb. As long as you insert all batteries the same way (or, at least, not insert them in equal groups each way) it will work.

It depends on the design of the AA or AAA cell. I am not sure how reliable this will be.

I have to wonder - with how many different types of AA or AAA cells did they test it?

I have seen a huge variety of different ones and I am not sure none of them will short the terminals and ruin the other battery in the process.

This is definitely one of those usability things that Microsoft is oh-so-famous for like this:

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/uibook/chapters/fog0000000059....

Basically by trying to make it simpler, they're making it harder. Not only do you have one more part to break, but the first question people immediately ask when opening up a battery compartment is "which way do I insert the batteries?"

Now, there is going to need to be a disclaimer stating clearly that they don't need to put them in any particular way. Next, the user is going to be forced to digest this message. Then, with some unease, put the batteries in without regard to their direction, despite the fact that the hundreds of other times they've used batteries they've had to do this.

Microsoft has introduced another branch in the decision tree: "does this device require I insert batteries in a certain direction?" To answer this, I still will probably have to rely upon information printed on the device, since remembering which device fits this criteria will likely not be memory I can trust since I change batteries rarely. (And, if I mis-remember it, I could break an expensive device, so I will have to check to be sure.)

So, what Microsoft in the end is saving here is not the need to check the indicator on the device. It's still necessary for me to check until the entire world uses this in every device. All they've done is make it so I don't have to physically rotate the battery in my hand (50% of the time :)) after doing so.

Additionally, troubleshooting now becomes harder if the device does not turn on. If it doesn't turn on, are the batteries dead, the device broken, or did the magical asymmetric battery compartment break?

Disruptive isn't always such a bad thing. Give them some credit for coming up with an idea a lot of people will wonder why they never thought of.

A much better idea would be to come up with a battery compartment shaped in such a manner that the direction the batteries go is self evident. This means the user does not have to make any additional decisions. This is a technology hammer applied to a problem that requires a different type of fix. The user now has to make an additional mental leap. It is not simplifying the world for people, despite what it does at first glance. It's making it at worst harder at best no harder than it is now.

All compartments (I could find around me) have the spring which holds the battery on the flat side of the battery... thats the indicator I use, without searching and reading any tiny diagrams

See, there you go. This was never a problem. Microsoft is trading the time you spend rotating the battery with your hand for time in which you have to read the damn instructions on the device.

I would never have thought of it because I've seen many, many different styles of endcaps at the positive ends of 'AA' batteries alone.

The way this would have to work, given the use of 'no additional components', would be by tying the center contacts together at both ends of each cell, and doing the same with the outer contacts. So if a cell's positive endcap isn't perfectly flat, it would be likely to make contact with both terminals at that end, which would short out the whole cell.

IMO, Microsoft's patent attorneys are only the first of many attorneys you'll be paying if you implement this scheme in a mass-marketable consumer device.

I think this is quite a stretch. It seems like a pretty nice idea and someone that goes to the trouble of buying the battery before it is widespread will probably not be confused, and even if they are as long as they put in the battery somehow it will work just fine.

Why is there a need to put a label on the device? If it doesn't have a label, you can put it either way. If it has a +/-, use that as indicators. It doesn't have to be as complex as you're describing.

No, I have seen so many devices with tiny labels or even no label at all that I wouldn't just assume I could insert it in any way.

Yeah, oddly, the intro text says what the problem is:

Users do not have to search for a hard to read diagram to determine how to insert the batteries.

Make the diagram easier to read. Don't make the diagram in thin raise lines embedded into the plastic at an angle that it's hard to shine light on them and look into the device at the same time.

But really, I like it when batteries are keyed so they only go in one way. No directions at all.

Make the diagram easier to read. Don't make the diagram in thin raise lines embedded into the plastic at an angle that it's hard to shine light on them and look into the device at the same time.

That's a nice dream, but taking a lot at most of my children's small toys, I'd say it's an impossible one. At the least, it's an incredibly hard nut to crack.

On the other hand, a small symbol that meant "insert the batteries any way you wish" would do wonders.

Challenge: depict "insert the batteries any way you wish" with a "small symbol" that people will actually understand.

That's a branding issue. You define it once, industry-wide, and blanket products with it. It's a challenge, but significantly different (and easier, in my opinion) than expecting that each separate device clearly labels which way the batteries need to be oriented in that device, in such a way as to be clear, and readable at an angle, like the parent post requested.

The problem is often that the directional indicators are not in a readable place. Often you have to have a light shining on them, but they are in a cavity in the device that you can't look into and easily shine light into at the same time. This is what I meant by "at an angle that it's hard to shine light on them and look into the device at the same time", in case it was ambiguous.

But I really think having them keyed is the way to go. You can put cylindrical batteries in either way, and that's the problem. You can't even reliably attach a 9-volt the wrong way, and often times the 9-volt battery compartment won't close unless the contacts are fully attached.

I was kind of disappointed that it wasn't an active voltage-sensing solution. If it works well with all batteries (even cheap ones) then I guess it's a good hack though.

It would take me way too long to stop looking for the +/- instructions to insert the batteries in the first place. This would only confuse most people who already know how to insert batteries. I have never had any sort of problem, nor have I found inserting batteries a non-intuitive action. Until all batteries can be inserted in a haphazard style, this does not solve a problem.

Maybe they can also invent a new symbol you can learn which indicates that it doesn't matter how you put the batteries in.

Faced with this problem my first reaction would have been to simply make the battery diagram more legible and high contrast but this is a bit more elegant. Maybe there's a language barrier here too. Is the classic -/+ diagram widely understood around the world?

After some learning, yes, you might understand +/-. But the mapping of the batttery poles to those symbols isn't exactly intuitive.

I like their idea.

If +/- is idiomatic is an interesting question. But then, does it need to be? It's a matter of lining up the shapes on the device with the shapes on the battery. You don't need to know what the shapes mean, just what their relative position means.

Some people seem to be unable to get the batteries in the right way reliably. My wife (masters in a science from a top N university) has a significant failure rate on battery changing. Not having to worry about it would be better.

Maybe we could liken it to polarized plugs (for those of us in 110v AC land). We could have labeled plugs with + and -, and then told people to match them to the outlet when they plugged in a device, but over all, redesigning the equipment was more likely to work.

I think everyone should stop prefacing personal assessments of people by quoting their credentials first (MSc/PhD from a top X university), as I feel it should have absolutely no bearing on how intelligent one perceives them to be. I've met some seriously incompetent grad students, and they all seem to get their degrees in the end regardless.

Wait, if Apple can make an Ethernet port that works in either normal or crossover mode, why can't Microsoft make a non-fragile battery solution?

Well, Apple made auto-crossover NICs by buying auto-crossover NICs from Sun. The important part was that nobody else did that.

Seems like you should be able to just handle batteries put in either way, though.

cool, it doesn't care........... wait... on second thought the only time I've hit the problem this solves is when a device has poorly labeled the contacts.

Pretty sure this is more expensive/waste of components versus a big clear [+] icon on one side.

Guess it could help devices for the blind?

Or devices where you have to _throw_ the batteries in from a distance :)

That is a very clever idea, simple and sweet. Too bad it's patented.

This will cause greater confusion than Apple's one-way both-batteries style, or even how most devices are now (through conditioning). I hope they have a good way of explaining "any direction is fine". I would stare at it in disbelief for a few moments.

Maybe, but have you thought that it's not because there is something wrong with the invention, but rather because you have been trained so far in your life to look for the +ve and -ve terminals.

If this catches on, in a few years maybe people will get so used to this that the current way of doing things will seem oh-so-primitive.

This seems like a classic disruptive technology, so simple but so useful.

Of course you have been trained, but what about the fun factor? I mean people love to fit, insert things into other things and feel they fit. Kids feel good when they insert a cube block inside the square hole.

USB cables and Apple batteries design are very good in this regard. No need to look at symbols. It gives you instant sensitive feedback. I'm highly kinesthetic so that is brilliant design for me and a lot of people. Like blind people.

USB plugs/sockets are awful. Sure, you can't insert them the wrong way round, but visually it's hard to see which way round is the right way without trial and error. The position of the USB symbol is supposed to help, and does to some extent.

USB plugs should either work successfully inserted both ways round (like this battery system), or be asymmetrical (and even with asymmetrical plugs, things can get annoying when you cant get a clear look at a socket - eg SCART + the backs of AV equipment)

This can pose some serious problems if the device gets spoilt at some time. However, Microsoft has done an excellent work in creating this totally innovative and ingenious solution to a problem which was more like a way of life than a problem.

Nice hack, but come on, do they really have to license it? What´s next Instaload toilet paper, egg pans, swimming goggles, socks?

This is all fine until kids grow up with a few devices that don't care - then they get a device that's not willing to pay the royalties so the kids try to shove the batteries in the wrong way anyway and damage the device.

Aren't people getting a mini-science lesson to learn +/- anyway?

What happens the first time the kid needs to jump start his car?

Would this just be a full wave bridge rectifier?

I used to do that (4 diodes) for batteries AND powersupplies when I built my own guitar effects board power source. I was tired of either putting things in the wrong way and either a) not working or b) frying some electrolytic capacitor (if was a high current supply).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diode_bridge

Seriously - is it just that or did they find a way to make it have low enough resistance to put in every device ?

It's purely mechanical (look at the diagram). The contacts are shaped so the battery hits the right part depending on which end it is.

It would be if you don't RTFA.

Yes i probably should have. But I am annoyed that I have broken enough electronics that rectifiers weren't always part of it (but that is unrelated to batteries).

Fwiw in the apple magic mouse you can only mechanically out them in one way.

Besides the advantage of being passive and cheap, this solution also avoids the voltage drop of diodes.

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