Hi. You remember Font Us? but explore nature without worrying about drinking water. The world's first self-sealing water bottle. Look at its solar power.

Look a tiny little solar cell there and it just look refills itself magically. You're in the middle of nowhere. No worries, you can just whack out your solar paddle, get yourself some drinking water even though he rides right through the water. He said little solar panels on it and can generate water.

And of course they ran a very successful IndieGoGo campaign back in 2016. They raised three hundred and forty five thousand Yankee bucks to finish the design and build of this thing. and they made lots of claims on here. Look, they had like a functional prototype.

their right functional prototype you'd think it to be. you know, producing decent amount of water. and they actually even had data down here where you know how much water it actually. Our producers went blank.

all this sort of stuff and you know, look, it looks legit. info, efficiency factors, and all that sort of stuff. It sounded legit and they raised a lot of money. Of course it was all complete and other.

and I in video number 881 I debunked this along with Thunderfoot as well. Who's done? I Don't know. like four or five hilarious videos. Check those out as busting the Font us as well.

From day one, they knew that this thing I They did not have a working prototype that actually produced anywhere near the volume of water that they claimed and I literally did some back of the envelope calculations here. actually on the back of an envelope which I ended up mailing to them by it by the way which I thought was fantastic. There you go I wonder if Christoph actually got he's at the Applied Arts University a department. It was all about energy because this is just a dehumidifier and how much energy is required to pull water out of the air humid air in this particular case And they made some very specific claims and I calculated that you would basically need a rooftop sized solar panel best-case to get the figures that they claimed and they had this little pissant one.

Anyway, it was complete and utter demonstrable with a trivial back-of-the-envelope calculations. They don't know how to do basic engineering calculations, or if they did, they completely and utterly ignore them. Anyway, it was never ever going to work as they claimed, not even close. But you'll be happy or sad to know that it didn't work out for poor fountas because they've filed for bankruptcy just the other day.

Here it is: I'll link it in down below: Bankruptcy Fight this is translated by the way font US Water Technology in Vienna Object of the company research and development of technologies for the extraction of water from air as well as production and distribution of corresponding products Affected Creditors are they actually note the creditors on here the approximately fifteen hundred indiegogo backers that contributed the the three hundred and forty five thousand dollars. And it turns out, the liabilities? three hundred thousand Euros and their assets? They still have sixty four thousand Euros left. I Don't know. Maybe they've got some test gear or they've got other data though they might have like a ton of these plastic molded water bottles sitting around.

I Don't know. They plan to develop a drinking bottle which should be refilled via the humidity. This bottle was designed primarily for use in various outdoor sports. The developer the bottle is said to have far exceeded the playing cost so that the applicant had no sufficient capital for the series production of the water bottle after completion of development work.

Despite efforts, not enough investors could be found for series production. Therefore, the obligation to deliver water bottles to the lenders could not be met. And they've actually been saying this for quite some time. So if you've been following their updates here, they've basically admitted that, look, we're looking for investors.

We can't deliver this. You know where we're running out of money, all that sort of stuff and yet they finally run out of money. Couldn't find any investors cuz I guess you know it's not hard to find investors with this. You know they raised a lot of money.

very high profile they wanted James like a Dyson award and stuff like that, right? Yeah, they getting all the press and all the praise and everything else. and oh yeah, I guess the investors went well. Give us Lotus one of your water bottles and I'll leave it out and if it you know produces the leader of water, tomorrow you've got your money. It didn't produce the water like as I'll show shortly.

It's hilarious. Anyway, backers may get some money back, but as you saw, they've only got sixty five thousand dollars in assets. If that's even worth it's probably not. Cat: don't off.

that's cash, assets or not. Offers insolvency creditors a recovery plan rate of 20% payable two years from the date of adoption. So anyway, yeah, I'm I don't know. You might get a few bucks back if you were foolish enough to invest in Font Us.

But it's over. It's done dusted. but hey, it's not a bad gig. If you can raise like three hundred and forty thousand dollars and then spend a couple, you can work on this full-time for a couple of years and then it goes.

Bust people, Lots of money. oh sorry, didn't work out, you know. have a nice day and just go on to the next stupid invention and crowd. fund it yet again.

A rinse repeat and you can spend your whole career doing this sort of stuff. They only wanted $30,000 and they ended up with three hundred and forty five thousand dollars. Now it's impossible to know whether or not they realistically thought that they could do it for thirty thousand dollars or whatever their goal was, but when something like this goes viral and you get a crap ton of money involved at this, what do you do? They obviously have basically admitted that they didn't have the real functional prototype that produced anywhere near the water that they claimed it did. and they just like kept using that money to run experiments developing new products.

And you know, they did actually do some development. Rather hilarious as it was in various prototype photos over the last two years. That's been a like a hilarious venture in its own right as they come to the realization that this thing isn't really possible. So what do you do? They must have realized at some point that this simply was not going to be practical product.

It works as all these types of things work. be it the font as' the water Siri the batteries are the new beam that, whatever it is, they all work. but they're just not practical and that's the thing. Do you admit that it's not practical and refund whatever money you had back and say sorry and I go away if your tail between your legs and we're not gonna spend anymore your money and give it back? No, of course not.

You know that would be the honorable thing to do. No, you just double down and just keep on going until the wheels fall off. The Billy Carr Foreign. This was actually posted right back in 2016 and it's a reply from Font Us about all the criticism of this crowdfunding campaign.

The Fondest Project started as an industrial design exercise at the University Applied Arts. The concept is one that has been around for thousands of years in various forms and I was out and hours was to modernize it. Originally the calculations for water gathering rate at optimum conditions were just that calculations. However, at that time focus was not on the technology itself, more of the design and concept.

Very important factors been overlooked and the input data parameters from the initial concept will not be representative of the final product that you will be getting so all academics can relax their math muscle for now. Yeah, this just requires money to like overcome the laws of physics. Unbelievable. Fast forward to now and after almost two years of no activity, the product, idea and concept got shared all over social media and became viral without intention or effort.

It has been mentioned that one cooperative. This is the video quality which then could lead some people to think it already existed. At the production level you think all this sort of stuff and the slick video that goes along with it look like the photorealistic renders. everything else.

Look, it's on the back of a backpack that looks real right? This dude riding his mountain bike. He's got his fondest there and it's like you know all this though it's mentioning all these sorts of places as if you wouldn't think this is real like you know I Can't necessarily blaming anyone without a you know engineering background for thinking this might be. you know, a a legit thing and then look, it looks totally real. Looks like it does the business.

You know you've got the data to back it up, prototypes and everything else, and you mentioned that you had a functional prototype and all you need is the money to put it into production. Well, you know, as if people wouldn't think that you're at that stage. While we would very much like that, this is not the case. It is not the case.

it does not exist. However, due to the surge in popularity, we decided to leverage the momentum and crowd and launch crowdfunding a bit earlier than planned. So they saw that this thing went viral and they went. We can get funding for this fantastic without even having a proper functional prototype, just based on some ridiculous calculations.

They tested it in their bathroom with all the steam going and they pulled out a few drops of water. That was their original claim. Its various high-level institutions support the idea and believing they need to develop an innovative technology that combines different techniques of a harvest in water from the air with low energy input. No, it's a Peltier effect dehumidifier, the kind that I showed in my video.

You can buy from Amazon for like a hundred bucks and they're like they pull out. They extract water from the air. What? That's what they do. This is not.

This was never ever going to be that this innovative technology that combines different techniques. What sort of techniques? Apply energy from a solar cell into a Peltier device and you know, hot on one side, cold on the ever. Maybe you could extract a few drops of water from the air and in you know decent conditions. We have been selected as International Top 20 for the James Dyson a war where projects go through a thorough examination by an engineer's team.

So apparently to win that that the Top 20 James Dyson award it was examined by a team of engineers. Yeah again. the graphics and images showing it Our crowdfunding campaign are partly based entirely based on first experiments and severe and serve merely for illustrative purposes. The input parameters are being optimized to get the best performance and we'll publish the test data blah blah once.

The operating range, blah blah blah this that they admitted this back in the thing, but they took people's money anyway with this slick advertising campaign and now they've hit the reality of engineering and physics and it just doesn't work. Even if they could find funding, it still wasn't going to work. And look at this. they knew way back in at least May 2017.

with that, this thing was not going to be practical for the claimed applications is their original claim and from the crowdfunding campaign. Basically one liter of water, ninety percent humidity for two hours, right? with that little pissant solar panel. that's what was employed. you know, like the order of Ten Fifteen Watts absolute tops.

And this is from their update report in May 2017 that basically 1.5 liters of water from a car plug pull in a hundred and twenty watts of power for eighteen hours to get 1.5 liters or a two hundred watts from a wall outlet. This is using their tech system which is the thermoelectric generator 200 Watts Over 24 hours to get two liters. So that's basically a hundred watts for 24 hours to get one liter. And as we'll see, that's pretty much what they got with independent test reports.

They knew this back in May 2017. An 80 watt solar mat for hiking. Like, how big is an 80 watt panel? It's got to be this huge. you've got to have a huge role.

You'd have to unroll it and then it's flat and you'd have to sit there for 12 hours in the Sun Probably tracking the Sun day at your full 80 watts to get your lousy one litre of water. Unbeliev. What they knew this way back in 2017, it's published. If you have a look at their latest update here, they've had it tested by Tu Viii, which is of course, an independent, you know very reputable testing authority.

Where have we seen this before? Oh yeah, the batterer Iser that got tested by you? Well, and that was an absolute joke. They've done the same thing here. last-ditch effort to save this thing and impress the investors. Let's go to earth and spend some money.

Go to the third party independent reputable and I get it independently tested. Well, we have the report. It's not very long because they didn't do much at all. They are completely reputable.

They will do testing that you specify and they will give a report of the results. And in this case it's a dehumidifier for producing drinking water for outdoor use. And look at this. This is hilarious.

Their own requirements for testing this thing at the Independent Test House. More than two years after this IndieGoGo campaign finished and they raised all this money. Two years of development there. This is what they got.

They got it, you know? Okay, it's kind of funky looking, right? You know they've got the plastics and everything else is fine. But look at how much power. As I said in the original video, it all comes down to energy / power. For a dehumidifier, it takes a lot of energy.

a lot of power input into the Peltier device to get the water out. And look, they're running just the fan alone. Twelve volts at two amps. There's 24 watts right there.

Just a power. The fan is bigger than this little pissant solar panel that they were going to actually supply with it right there that couldn't even run the fan. It gets worse. the supply to the Peltier device in there.

the element which does the business. 20 volts at 4 amps. That's 80 watts. So we're talking over a hundred watts total.

So I was I was pretty much on the money there with my solar panel. Let's have a look at how much water it produced. Shall we? to test one at 30 degrees? One at thirty five degrees. Celsius in 95 percent relative humidity.

They did it inside the relative humidity chamber. That's proper engineering, right? That's how you're supposed to do it. They should have done this before they started the IndieGoGo campaign, But no to know, then they've only done this two years later, right? So they tested this for 24 hours. How much water did it produce? 95% humidity? Okay, let's go for the 30 degrees.

Call it one liter of water. After 22 hours, the fan broke. This is great. This gets better anyway.

24 hours test. it produced a liter of water with a hundred over a hundred watts input. We're talking about this thing having one one hundred and twentieth of the claimed performance and that's what everyone was saying. Way back at day one.

If you did the back of the envelope calculations and looked at Kirsch and commercial dehumidifiers, it was obvious basic back of the envelope engineering told you that's the case. And sure enough, it was After two years of research and development in three hundred and three hundred thousand dollars spent. Unbelievable. Well no it's not.

It's completely believably because Physics. So there you go. Font us. It's a complete fast.

It's finally over and they're bankrupt and maybe you know backers will get a few bucks back. Deal: They've pulled down their video of course it looked like the real deal and if you follow the updates it was, it's just hilarious And over on the Eevblog forum we're being followed. Thunder Foots been following this with various videos over the last two years, them and the prototypes. They finally came to the realization that oh, it's just a dehumidifier and oh, we just need an off-the-shelf Peltier device and this runs a crapload of power through it and we can get, oh, look, water condenses on the plate, you know.

Yeah, that's what happens when you get a you know, a design arts design student who granted produced some fantastic looking videos and photos and everything else you know. Hats off. Absolutely brilliant. Yeah! Condor People out of there.

Three hundred and forty five thousand dollars. Luckily they couldn't con the investors unlike you know, many other ones we've covered like you beam and people just get carried away with the hype of these things. They don't do the basic back of the envelope calculations and any media reporting like actually there's some good ones, which it you know admit that they were wrong. Our higher hydration anywhere.

hats off to them, right? Originally they sung the praises of Font Us just based on their really you know fantastic premise of it and there and the slick nature of the advertising and stuff like that. but they eventually went. well. it looks like it was a scam.

We were wrong, you know. And here's people including myself and Thunderfoot who have done the calculations. They knew it was a scam. They've done a like a nice investigative analysis of this thing pointing it out and yeah, that's it's.

really quite nice. So wait, we're sorry and they apologize that they got it wrong. Fantastic. So you know.

Hats off. I Wish more media and other people you know did stuff like this. Anyway, it's a good gig if you can get it, huh? Raise three hundred and forty thousand bucks. Spent a couple of years travel around China everywhere else win all these awards, get all this media praise and the merry-go-round Had to stop eventually and even if they found the investors to keep them gone for another couple of years, it would have eventually ended up in the same way.

Because it's not magic, you need a large amount, a very large amount of energy, hundred and twenty times what they originally claimed. You need to pull that amount of water under ideal, ideal conditions. Too bad, if you're you know live in an ordinary environment, you're not going to have the power, you're not going to have the humidity and it's just not gonna work. So there you go.

Fountas has come to an end. bankrupt. Good riddance. Catch you next time you.