Hi yes, its Kickstarter project time again, but this one's going to be a bit different. It's not a debunking as such, because there's inherently nothing really to debunk in this particular product. It's the lifesaver. a limitless power supply for wilderness survival.

Never a dead cell phone comes with break through USB generator light siren UV water purifier and plasma fire starter. Everything but the kitchen sink. Now a few people sent me this and it was just raised on Twitter as well. and it's three days to go in the campaign.

1100 back is here. 230,000 Ozzie bucks of the 44 thousand dollar goal. Forty-four thousand dollar goal was never going to be enough to develop this particular product as we'll see. But anyway, yep, good on Marvin We know, Yes.

Marvin We we Berger sorry if I'm pronouncing and incredibly good on him. You know he's put a lot of effort into this campaign as we'll see and it's been successful. and he's done previous successful campaigns, so nothing against him. But the thing with this, even though there's nothing to debunk I Think this is a good example of just feature creep on a product.

It tries to be the jack-of-all-trades product and that almost never works when you try and develop a product like this. As we'll see, it's jack of all trades master of none and a lot of people will back this thinking that it's you know the best thing since I spent and it may be for their particular circumstance, but in general, no, it's essentially just a feature creep. expensive product that weighs too much and takes up too much space for the tasks that it actually does. The jack-of-all-trades doesn't work.

You're better off. All the stuff in here can be achieved with other better, simpler, more reliable, cheaper, or whatever off-the-shelf products you don't need. this all-in-one whiz-bang gadget that's gonna save your life in the zombie apocalypse if we go over to his website here, he's obviously he's developed this these previously successful crowdfunding products. And there's their multi tools for like survival firefighters.

and Ed Burt they look pretty good. Um, yeah, you know, no problems whatsoever. But when you start getting into electronic products like this, yeah, you start to come a gut. It's really easy to come a guts and not only with feature creep, but in terms of just sheer practicality of these sorts of things.

And the team they've actually got working on this thing is quite large. We've got an industrial designer, they've got an electrical engineer, they've got two mechanical engineers and the actress in the video as we'll see, and also the video production assistant technical assistant for the video as we'll see and the video ographers. So I think they spent more on the the making this promo video for this thing than they did for possibly developing this thing. But I hide this perfectional, professional actress.

She's been in things. so this thing has all of the elements of your classic serial entrepreneur Kickstarter thing the updates: oh yeah, it's the world is talking about us because it's been seen in Yahoo Finance and Digital Trends and new outlets and the awesome are and gadget here. All these ones that yeah people really read not who cares, it's it's just so typical of these Kickstarter's that they put all these badges as seen in blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Every kickstarter doesn't.

It's nothing against this. This is classic and because it's all part of the Kickstarter scene, they've got to promote these other. Kickstarter's because when you if you don't know when you develop a kickstarter like this, when you publish one, you'll get these company other Kickstarter's other companies contacting you. Hey, let's do a let's do a deal We if you promote how Kickstarter will promote yours and vice-versa Roots: It's like the old school I you know shared link thing on your website.

So what is it? The life saver? Well, it's a personal emergency generator. You guessed it. it's the old hand crank generator, but in this particular case, you actually can swing it. There's two modes of operation.

One is that you can just swing it like this and two you can actually hand crank it like this which generates more talk which charges it up faster. Yes, it's got an 18 650 rechargeable battery in it which is replaceable, which is quite nice. but as you'll see, there's no point having the generator just carry spare. Charged 18 650s would be better and lighter and simpler, but this is all part of what I'm talking about in this video.

Anyway, it's got a flashlight and a lantern and strobe, emergency siren, a force multiplier control button so that you can get the amount of force that you want, a panic button that triggers a siren, and blinding strobes. and of course, you can recharge the battery because you're not going to go out into the field with this thing with a flat battery and then charge it up like this. because as we'll see, we'll go through the numbers on and they're very honest about the numbers for this thing, which is strange for a Kickstarter There's you know, not much wanking in marketing wake numbers in this thing. I Don't think they're pretty honest, which is quite quite nice.

Anyway, it's got a UV water purifier and then a plasma fire starter. Wow And then if that's not enough, going to go into the updates here here it is asking about in the long term. we'd like to do even more feature Creep. Look at all this stuff.

extra bright flashlight and lantern because the current one the one in it's only like 31 lumens am FM Weather radio Emergency breakdown: Flasher air pump, stun gun In this zombie apocalypse, you might have to start stunning people in societal breakdown with your bug out bag. you're gonna have to start stunning people. Cell phone signal, amplifier, satellite messenger Bluetooth speaker, hand, body walk away your valuable energy warming up your hands instead of just don't like that cooling fan, electronic compass, rangefinder, red light flashlight, directional sound, and night-vision goggles. It's this is the classic thinking of a serial entrepreneur.

He just has no idea of practicality. This is just it's just nuts. It's just absolute nuts. And is it deadly serious about this sort of stuff? This isn't a joke.

like they want all these plugins because at present the UV Water Purifier and the Fight Plasma Firestarter are the two plugins which plug into the bottom of this thing. It's you know, it's kinda. you could say it's kinda like a nice industrial design. everything like that, but it's just.

but. as we'll see, it's just like a waste of weight and space so it's a killer deal if you want two of these things with the plasma fire starter and the UV water purifier plugins because they don't come our standard that it's only you know, one hundred and nine bucks each us. and anyway it's got 12 power power cranking, replaceable battery flashlights, blah blah, all that sort of panic button and all sorts of SOS beacon. Yeah, yeah yeah yeah yeah.

Anyway, it's a be all end all bug out bag survival tool and they've got a quote from the person Danny boo who's a who's actually part of the team on this Kickstarter he's actually presumably being paid to. This is the Outdoor Survival Specialist consultant and and was consulting for the little mini movie that we'll see in a minute. So yeah, got it. Quite your own people.

Geez, there's no here as we'll see it's it's everything on this thing's going to work and it's going to kind of sort of do as claimed essentially. but it just goes on and on and on and on and people think that this is gonna you know be the be-all end-all product and well, who needs who needs it? Recreational boaters Preppers Urban Survivalists all that sort of stuff put in your bug out bag Oh Stretch goals orange belt holster the SOS beacon. So before we get to the tech specs, let's go up and take a look at the at the video as I said I won't play the whole thing. but they've got this professional actress in the world.

No, she's yeah, she's got 52 kilometres to go distance to Target and they had the outdoor consultant chick on here. who's it? was on some Naked Outdoors cereal program or something. Anyway, show us the outdoor consultant and here we go. We've got a yep I've got at this.

It's on my belt here. I'm going to get out my water purifier stick which is a real theme. as we get into the UV water purification. it does actually work.

You don't need a huge amount of power for it, it won't be as as simple as that and as quick as that, but it does actually Work. so that's that is actually a real thing. and then keep going. And of course, there's a wolf or something and it's what's she gonna do.

Oh, let's grab our lifesaver thing, she's in the dark, and your account, and the alarm and siren and everything else. And then oh, oh, I'm going to start my fire with my plasma fire starter. These are a real thing. You can actually buy them little plasma fire starter modules so I'm not sure how effective they work I've never used one personally, but yeah, I can imagine those working.

So anyway, apocalyptic wasteland. but phone still works. Yes, aliens, The alien spaceship comes to take foot. Oh, you hate it when your battery just dies? I mean taking a photo of the alien spaceship are Bitnet, But no worries, no worries.

I'll just get out my thing. You've got to do this for 15 minutes. By the way, if you look at the specs, 15 minutes just to get I think it's a 30 milli watts. we'll go into the numbers 15 minutes of doing this or she could have hand crank it for three minutes.

Oh It means a charge let's just spit generate mixed with 30 milli watts and that all. Yep, it's not gonna work. Oh no, No good, no good. But wait.

I've got the extra mode. I've got the extra force. Do that. blah blah blah.

There you go. How much money did they spend producing that? as I said they had like an outdoor consultant and the professional actress and everything else. Oh goodness. now we're getting into the tech specs in a minute.

but look hats off to them they it's a five being a five-year development history I Don't want to take it away from them but this is I just want to use this as an example of a feature creep product that just you know these hand cranked outdoor generators. They're not new, they've been around forever but they everyone still thinks that they can do something better you know then just carry anything you know, a little foldable solar cell and a couple of charged 18 650s or something like that. Anyway, they do show look they show the real hardware here or the prototype hardware. they've got an art of fruit module there and 3d printed case and they're developing all that and the hand-crank module I won't bother 15 minutes as we'll see and but they don't lie about the numbers which is good and yeah like it's just just take you charged up 18 650 or a solar cell or whatever.

But anyway so they developed this a nice new handily thing which folds out I don't know but adding the motor and look, all this sort of stuff it all adds up to the weight of this thing and you know. And and then they've got a firmware development module and look, it's got power graph over time and all that sort of stuff. like you just don't You don't need this complexity. and look, they're gone through a lot of our prototypes here, which is quite good.

But now here's the thing. the timeline. So up to the launch here on Kickstarter but they still have to update the product requirements document and they still have to do another prototype. Use the testing on comfort, ergonomic, and power.

They don't know how well it's going to work. You've got to do more detailed firmware and software development. Design Mechanical Drivetrain case. They haven't even designed the mechanical drive train.

You could easily come a guts are so many things. Design Electronics for Prototype Version: Fire Assemble, Prototype Version 5 Engineering Validation and Test and we're still in June next year. So we're sick. You know what? Nine eight months down the track or something.

Designed validation, testing, Consumer testing, finalization of contract packaging completion and it's not. Go And there s the best case. Estimate is to ship in November 2020 So a year away. So really I'd Like it's not a Photoshop Kickstarter because they don't allow that.

They've been working on this for a long time, don't have taken away from them and they've got all the prototypes and everything which is great. but like you know, it's a year away and there's so many things to go wrong in all these mechanical types stuff. even on the electronics and production side of things as we've done in countless videos. So yeah, the timeline is not terrific.

Anyway, let's go to the numbers. As I said, they've been completely honest with the numbers here, which is amazing for a Kickstarter So hats off. Look, they actually total energy output right? Don't worry about the Watts here. all we care about is milli watt hours.

So 2:12 this. so to stand there 12 on this for 15 minutes? Geez, you're going to get tired for doing this. With 15 minutes, you generate 25 milli watt hours. or if you use in the force hand crank mode, it's apparently got some electronic force multiplier that you can set for however strong you are are.

You can do it in three minutes, but you're going to be buggered after three minutes. A hand crank in this sucker and you still only generate the same at 25 milli watt hours, which they call a quick charge which is apparently enough here we go. What can you accomplish with this 25 milli watt hours? You can restart your mobile phone. Can you I Don't know.

Yeah, maybe it'll maybe I don't know. but it starts up and it's got everything going. It's Wi-Fi is turned on that's got all this and all that and you know and you're not going to be able to do anything useful I doubt it with too many. once.

if your battery's flat and you just crank that up flash light 30 minutes of continuous use I Don't doubt it because it's only 31 lumens, the lantern 30 minutes continuous, the strobe light 40 minutes. It can't be a very good powerful strobe light for 40 minutes continuous operation on your 25 milli watts. That's not going to scare where your wolf or a bear or your zombie plasma firestarter 16 admission cycles. Okay, maybe you know I don't know and UV Water purification sterilized 1 liter of unsafe water.

Possibly because if you don't know, Missus Eevblog is A is a water quality scientist. She did her thesis on where water treatment so and she's worked in the field for 15 years or whatever and I asked her about it. She said yet this is a real thing, It's using water treatment plants and everything else. It's no gimmick and it does actually work and you can go into various art, links and things you can find out.

It's all about the dosage rate and the effective and how effective you are at dosing the actual water. That's why you got to swirl and around in there and you can get like you know, 30. Most manufacturers provide layers of intensity 30 to 50,000 microwatt seconds per square centimeter and the coliform bacteria are destroyed. For example, at 7,000 microwatt seconds per square centimeter or if you go over another source I found over here various pathogens your Cryptosporidium Giardia which are two of your main things that you'll get in Creek water you know and and stuff like that these viruses I won't going to log in activation level.

she couldn't read these documents for yourself I'll provide them down below if you really want to know. but anyway, dosage limiting this is milli joules per square centimeter. But if you do the conversions, but yeah, I've run some numbers here on the back of an envelope. yeah and you can easily do that on the you know I'm a little bit of mount of energy so you know it's a I'm sure that'll you know.

do a reasonable job and check out down here. Wait 15 ounces without the attachments? What's 15 ounces? 425 grams without the plasma and the UV purifies. That's a lot of weight to carry around when you can just carry existing tools with a couple of charged 18 650 Bad Is this hand-cranked thing to generate 25 million watt hours? Useless. And of course, if you just carry some charged up 18 650 lithium-ion batteries, for example, they are nominally like 10 or 11 watt hours.

Capacity In these things, just carry em charged well. Even one at let's say, 50 grams contains roughly at 11 watt hours roughly 440 times the capacity of a 15 minutes of swinging this thing around. So you do that for 15 minutes actually for 40 times 15. So you'd have to do this for six thousand, six hundred minutes.

You'd have to be spinning this thing around right? / 60 minutes in an hour. So you'd have to do this for a hundred and ten hours. 110 hours spinning this damn thing around to get the same capacity as a 50 gram lithium-ion rechargeable battery. Carrying one of the hits charging things is just.

it's just a stupid idea. It really is all that extra weight, all that extra space. It's just a silly, impractical product and people keep pushing these things as the be-all end-all Savior because it sounds fantastic. Oh, just got to crank it up.

But when you actually look at the numbers and hats off to them again for giving you the real numbers: 25 milli watt hours when a little 50 gram one is like 10 watt hours, give me a break. The flashlight lantern. for example: 30 minutes of continuous use for a lousy 31 lumen flashlight, which is bugger all. I've got more than that in my little single triple a keychain.

everyday. carry that I carry even like an old-school one. 31 Lumens. It's bugger all.

Hang on. They've completely screwed this up here in the table. 25 milli watt hours. Okay, that's not 900 joules.

That's only 90 joules. Joules is the correct one. So in that case, it's going to generate 250 milli watt hours, not 25 milli watt hours. Even when it's better by an order of magnitude.

Like that, Compared to a 10 watt hour battery, it's only 2.5 percent of that is 250 milli watts. It's not much at all. Still, the fact remains, these hand crank generators they generate for all that effort generate. its bordering on Nephal.

And by the way, there's one thing I can't find in here and that's waterproof or water resistance. There's just like nothing you carry this whiz-bang gadget. There's nothing about waterproof or water resistance or anything like that for a survival tool now, right? So what do you do instead of getting one of these jack-of-all-trades Master A? None. Big, Heavy.

Expensive. Well, it's not that expensive. but you know useless crank and generator thing well. The plasma fire starter.

You know you can buy plasma fire starters here. They are a little rechargeable - 9 bucks Amazon Prime Waterproof. Just get one of these. It's dedicated to the job.

It's waterproof. It's got its own little charge thing so you don't have to worry about sharing charge or anything like that. In fact, you can probably get one that has if one of this. If this has a removable battery, you can store the battery in there.

and you can share batteries among different tools. so you can carry all that pre charge capacity in your torch. For example, get an 18 650 torch get Nadine 650 plasma lighter thing get Nadine 650 water sterilizer Now apparently this SteriPEN Well, it's one of the original ones on the market and they're quite expensive. so you know you could argue that there's something to be said in saving a bit of cost there, but once again, you can.

Also, you can have it with its own pre charged source and things like that. Yeah, But then of course you get into the argument of UV sterilization versus a filter one like this at Life Straw for example. Which a lot of people having their bug out bag or whatever and you know that no battery, no power required. Just you know, suck through a thousand litres of water like that.

You know these are. these work pretty good. There's an argument that UV sterilization is actually better, but we won't go into it. This thing's more than good enough.

And as for your plasma firestarter? Well, why not carry some outdoor matches? And they work in all weather and they just work this small light, cheap like 16 grams per drum. They weigh nothing. They take no power, nothing unreliable, electronic wires to fail. Not this is what you need.

Come on. and you can also carry one of these a Magnesium fire starters for example. I Carry one of these in my Canyon in hiking pack and they work pretty well as well. Once again, no power, nothing to go wrong.

And as far as recharging goes, you're going to get better results from just one of these. There's millions of these, like for foldable solar panels. You know you can attach them to the back of your backpack and you get ones that come with. You know, 25,000 milliamp hour a USB battery pack.

but of course something like that's like really heavy. You wouldn't carry that in your pack pack, but you carry a smaller one. With that like or just simply as I said, one or two pre-charged batteries. It is like hundreds of times more capacity than you'll get from any windy cranky thing.

So just no, no, no, no, no to a product like this. Goes without saying that this thing is just silly and impractical idea. I Mean let's just put together a simple kit and compare it with this thing, right? This thing weighs 566 grams is quite large. it's you're dependent upon this one product to work, so let's compare it to just a bit.

A simple kit that I can put together. oK You've got some matches. What are? They weigh 16 grams for the matches? They just work. Or get Mad Magnesium Flint or whatever.

Okay, you don't have to rely on any technology to get your fire started. Just get a live straw. that's 56 grams right there. Once again, doesn't require on any technology to work to filter your water.

This can filter a thousand litres of water. Just suck it right through. Bob's your uncle? Okay, a torch. There's millions of torches on the market.

Don't get in to the torch flame war with all the fanboys anyway. I Like these lumen top ones for example, this little double-a one. how much this is. This weighs 50 grand and it's USB Rechargeable can use doublea's so I could share double-a batteries from my GPS for example or any other product you can share with.

or you get the 14500 with it with the USB rechargeable in it. It's tiny, it'll do 650 lumens, So right there, it's 20 times the lumen output of the silly life saber thing. It's just it. just no contest.

And then, okay, there's millions of these things on the market. Just one of these solar and the ice is a six point eight. What solar recharging this is? This is going to charge it a six times faster rate even if you keep winding for a continuous hour. And basically what you'll be with generating one watt continuously for an hour or you can just this is six times more and it weighs what 200 grams? Okay, and then you can get a 10,000 milliamp hour battery pack that weighs a hundred and eighty grams and that one's got four times the capacity of the battery inside this thing.

There's absolutely no contest. So if you compare the life saber with Dave's kit that weighs I basically tried to get them to way very similar. My mic is 500 grams versus 560. about the same for that half kilo, but it's just vastly more practical in every aspect.

It's more advantageous than this thing. This thing doesn't excel at anything. Why you would have one of these and carry it? Edit: I Don't know. It's just not practical.

Just know every one of these you know, cranky outdoor generators. They just they just fail. But hey, this one's a success and good honor. And maybe people will like it.

but it's just a classic example of one of these entrepreneurial ideas. And I yeah, we can throw money at this and we can do the world's best Jack-of-all-trades survival tool. No, sorry, it just doesn't cut it. I Use the right tool for the job.

Small, out, lighter, cheaper, more reliable. So as I said, my intent wasn't to rag on the designer of this all this campaign really just wanted to use it as an example of you know, just don't develop products like this. Don't get away with the feature creep and especially all this sort of you know, grandiose, ridiculous ideas of what it can have like always sort of no wanky stuff. You got it like no, just no, no, no, no, no, You know they promise the world and it these sorts of jack-of-all-trades products they never deliver.

They never do without fail. So anyway, I hope that was a good example of like an over engineered product. they know your thoughts are down below in the comments or over on the eevblog for if you liked the video. please give it a big thumbs up as always.

Catch you next time.