Microsoft's new Instaload battery technology allows batteries to be inserted into a product either way around.
Is it one of those brilliant "why didn't anyone think of that before" moments, or just another patent on a really obvious idea?
Is it workable in practice?
Can YOU bust the patent by finding prior art before 2006?
DOWNLOAD the full InstaLoad Patent HERE
http://www.eevblog.com/files/Microsoft%20Instaload%20Patent%20US7527893.pdf
You can get Dave's T-Shirt here:
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Is it one of those brilliant "why didn't anyone think of that before" moments, or just another patent on a really obvious idea?
Is it workable in practice?
Can YOU bust the patent by finding prior art before 2006?
DOWNLOAD the full InstaLoad Patent HERE
http://www.eevblog.com/files/Microsoft%20Instaload%20Patent%20US7527893.pdf
You can get Dave's T-Shirt here:
http://www.eevblog.com/store/
this will solve all my polarity problems because i live such a fast life that i can't be asked to spend 5 seconds to check the polarity on my device. i could be using that 5 seconds to not get laid! what a waste of time! every single day i waste hundreds of hours staring at my devices and trying to figure out that the spring side is negative! I am a goldfish with a 30 second memory, and every day i have to pull out the batteries in my TV remote and check to see which side is negative and which side is positive! it keeps me up at night, and when i do sleep, i have nightmares where i'm chased around by AA batteries and little springy contact points. they taunt me.
Just because a company has a patent doesn't mean they will use the idea in a product. RCA used to do this; they'd do a ton of R&D and own loads of patents for technology which could conceivably become popular in the future, and if it does catch on and companies want to manufacture it, they rake in lisencing fees. Microsoft probably thinks there's at least a small chance that this could be a big technology, and if they believe there's no prior art, it's no wonder they grabbed a patent the moment they came up with such a simple idea.
So clearly the solution is to have separate leads from all 4 points (the two rings and the two positive contacts) and use voltage comparators to decide which leads to pass through with like a mosfet or something. Then the two rings are not connected to each other, and you can't get a short. But its 2021 and still I haven't seen anyone use this patent 😉
After almost 12 years it is safe to say that it was a fail. In addition to the issues you detail this technology would have required much tighter tolerances on battery sizes which alone is enough to make it fail. So these are the reasons why nobody patented it (except Microsoft…).
Love that EE shirt!! Non-inverting too
10 years later, nothing there.
ridiculous. 2 diodes for 1.5V cost shit all.
I usually use a simple diode bridge. I will work always and no problem with shorted battery.
Very stupid design actually. It means a battery needs to be perfectly aligned to a fraction of a millimetre else it would short out. Even that plastic+wire terminals (though slightly better) would still need extreme precision engineered sleeves to ensure the battery doesn't move even a hair's breadth and cannot possibly be inserted even slightly off axis. I'm sure this is escalating costs way beyond any possible benefits, not due to the extra complexity of the terminal and wiring, but due to the extreme tolerance escalation and wear avoidance needed for safety purposes.
This is in addition to the issues you mention about variance in the battery "nipple" size!
What's more … 10 years later and even none of Microsoft's own products use this junk idea. Even they know it's a complete failure.
It would IMO even make inserting batteries worse instead. I.e. now it is either so tight that you'd need lots of pressure to push it in or you'd have to be extremely careful to align it properly. Whereas with the standard it's just: figure out which way round and plunk it in even if slightly off axis.
Seems kinda stupid to me. What would you ever need this for? You can just feel where the minus-side is, anyway: it's where the spring is. Every battery-using that takes these type of cylinder cells puts the spring on the minus side so the plus nipple doesn't get caught in it. This design also wastes material as you have to have a wire for each polarity going to each end of the battery, and a spacer between batteries if they're forming a line to fit the contacts for both polarities, otherwise you'd have to put the batteries in the same way as each other, thus rendering the arbitrary direction feature pointless.
Just… why? Who ever wished they could just insert batteries in any arbitrary orientation instead of the right way?
8 years later, still no products accepting this. Even Microsoft products don't have these contacts. This is a legacy problem and is related to design. Accepting this would cost product manufacturers money to change the contacts. Hence the refusal.
( yrs later and havent heard a peep about this anywhere!
Clearly the professional battery producing companies would have no stake in this for good reasons.
It needs a company such as Microsoft to solve and patent a problem that is not a problem.
Batteries have a nipple on it, and you don't get to open a battery compartment with gloves, so you always know which way the positive terminal is on the battery. Also there are tons of cues in the devices themselves telling you which way the battery goes in.
if someone can not figure out how to insert a battery, I'm not sure they should be using the device. After-all, it may have a switch on it somewhere….
This came up in suggested videos… Googled InstaLoad… 3rd hit is this video, every other hit is from 2010. Guess nobody wanted it.
nipple
Why not just throw a full wave bridge rectifier circuit in? Wouldn't that make it so that the batteries can work either way?
How the hell do you get the batteries out of there? I always squeeze in one of my fingernails between the positive side of the battery and the connector, push it backwards (which the spring allows) and lift it up. Without the spring it's gonna be a pain in the ass trying to pull out the batteries.
A good idea for people with vision problems/blind. But I think it's really a solution to what in reality is a non problem
Ironically, Apple used this in their magic mouse. (Not the newest iteration, which has only usb charging…)
6 years later, haven't seen a product using this.
paytent manning
When they first invented batteries, they could have made them slightly fatter at one end, so they would only fit in one way, but they came up with AA, AAA, C & D years ago before the infantilising of ppl, back then you didn't need to write on coffee cup, contents may be hot, as ppl were assumed to have a modicum of common sense. Litigation and political correctness as left us with a world were most things are aimed at an intellect of a 5 year old. YouTube is quite refreshing in that respect, obviously there are a lot of videos made by and for idiots, but there are a lot of videos made by ppl who have to please no one but themselves, they don't have investors, advertisers or producers to please so make their videos at a level that if you can't understand them then tough, go watch pudiepie, Louis Rossman and Dave Jones spring to mind.