Hi Quite a few people on email and via Twitter pointed me towards this news article the other day. The Batter Iser It's a two dollar fifty gadget that extends disposable battery life by a whopping 800 percent. Sounds fantastic. Whoa.

And of course it must be true, right? It's in PC world. And look at all these other news articles that are running with it. look: Daily Mail Eight times longer. Eight times longer.

Eight times longer. Eight times longer. Can you believe it? I'm eight hundred percent. Oh well.

Eight hundred percent. Again, it's gotta be true. I gadget. They can make your batteries last eight hundred percent longer.

Ah man, this is fantastic. but of course a lot of people smell. hmm now as Carl Sagan had with his Baloney detection kit I Wonder if we can come up with our own electronic gadget news story? Baloney Detection List. Let's try it.

Let's go through and see if we can verify the claims of this thing. Because it's a real electronic product. it claims things like eight hundred percent. There's pattern, all sorts of technical information in here that as engineers we can go through and verify.

and PC World spin a rather interesting article from none other than John Phillips, the editor in chief. It's a killer story of industrial espionage. The robbery occurred last October in the Battery Office the company who makes this batter Iser And well, they knew the building layout or breakthrough in technology that, if it's legitimate, could blow the lid off the alkaline battery industry. That's worth three point four billion dollars annually.

Now, the first thing we're going to take a look at in our Baloney detection list here is who is making the claim. Is it a big company of reputable people? All that sort of thing? Well, looks like they're a start-up company. But look at this. This guy has the guy who found it has a PhD in electrical engineering.

Pretty good. he's a vice President, a Broadcom CEO Stinnett Flex Power. And well, sounds pretty legitimate. And the next thing on our Baloney detection test here is, well.

Does it break any laws of physics? In this case, we're talking about batteries Power. We're talking about conservation of energy. Does it promise more power out than what you put in? Well, No, it doesn't. You read down here that you know once the battery voltage drops, that effectively becomes useless, etc.

etc. It just has a boost circuit inside that boosts low-voltage up to 1.5 volts and it uses the unused energy in your battery. and well. this is a very well-known problem with batteries and product design that this thing's solving.

So yeah, tick. No problems at all. It's not violating the laws of physics, so this is actually sounded really promising because there's nothing new here at all. There have been products to do this and also circuitry built inside products to actually do this at, like a boost converter to utilize all of the energy or more energy inside the battery.

And they say to themselves, there's no IP in the Boost Secretary our technologies of the miniaturization technique that allows them to build it into a sexy-looking slave which fits over so it's all about. You know the physical engineering of this really nice-looking sleeve, so it's all sounding pretty good right up to this point. And if you actually go in here and have a look at their pattern that they've got, they've got a couple of patterns by looks of it. this is the original one and it shows the drop in the battery voltage here.

a typical characteristic curve of for example, an alkaline you know, a Sony or a Duracell or an Energizer or whatever battery and how you might only use a small amount of the capacity. And if you go over to a datasheet of a typical Duracell or alkaline or whatever battery, you'll see that that characteristic curve and it's real. So with this sort of characteristic curve, if your product is designed to have a battery cut out voltage of say, or 1.3 volts there, they're claiming one point. you know, three, five to 1.4 there.

If it has that sort of cutout voltage, then you can actually see how your amount of energy that you're using in your battery is quite small because the amount of energy in the battery is actually the area under this blue characteristic curve here. So we can actually see that all of this in here is all of this energy under this battery is completely wasted. We're only using this amount of energy here, so it is a legitimate, well known problem in the field. and that's what this thing overcomes.

It uses a boost converter to convert the lower volt. As this battery voltage drops, it actually boosts it back up to 1.5 so that the product always thinks that the battery is good and it uses all of the area under this curve. No problems whatsoever. So here's our next step in our baloney detection list.

How does Batter Iser Give your batteries eight new lives? Let let's look at the assumptions that they're making. see if their assumptions are valid, Because if you base a product idea on false assumptions, well, it's going to be a useless or it's just not going to work as claimed. So look here it is. Once a completely new alkaline battery is rated at 1.5 but once its output drops below one point, three, five, or even one point four volts, it effectively becomes useless.

Well, as an experienced electronics design engineer I Know that's not really true I Very rarely. In fact, I Can't think of one example. I've seen where the threshold the dead battery threshold voltage. It would be 1 point 4 volts or even 1 point 3 5 volts as claimed here.

But hey, we can go test this. Let's go to the lab. so let's do some quantifiable tests and take some random products that I've got lying around the office here and we're going to use an adjustable power supply and battery power products. I'm going to replace the battery with some probes and we can adjust the voltage.

We can start from 1.5 volts and we can wind it down until the low battery leg comes on. So I've got this Logitech mouse here. we can switch this on. Okay, we've got our green LED on top so it'll show it'll come up and flash or turn it red when the battery voltage goes down.

So let's wind it down. So I'm winding it down in point. Oh, five volt steps. So we've got one point Four Zero.

Nope, Nothing yet. One point Three Five is what they claim. You know a lot of products. They don't see all products, but they say many.

They use the word many. Well, we're still not getting there. One point, One point Two volts. No, we're not there yet.

We're not there yet. Hold on to your hats, we're getting down towards a Volt. Bingo, There we go. It's around about like 1.01 volts now.

They use an example of a keyboard and I don't know which one they use, but I've got a logitech A330 keyboard here uses two triple A batteries. But hey, we can adjust our power supply. Now for three volts instead of 1.5 do exactly the same thing. Well look at that.

Even at two point two volts ie. one point one volts per cell, we're still working well. Even at 2 volts, we're still going no problems whatsoever. This keyboard is going to use a ton of capacity in that battery.

Well-designed product. I've got one of these little Zoom One handy recorders here. It's got a handy little battery Biograph on there three Sigma bar graph. Let's wind the wick down.

We have to get down to 1.25 volts before the first bar even vanishes. and we have to get down to about 1.1 1 volts before it shows low battery. and I've got a Sennheiser wireless microphone here with bar graph. it has to get down to about 2.6 volts before the first battery bar graph goes down.

So that's equivalent to 1.3 volts per cell. and it won't die until about 2 volts or 1 volt per cell. And let's try this remote. Oh here we've got the LCD display.

but I'm also using a video camera to show the infrared LED here. now two point two volts, the LCD starting to get a bit dim so it's a bit of a problem, but the LED still works. Is it still control the product? It still works at one volt per cell. Thank you very much.

Here's a much more advanced remote control uses. for double-a batteries. it's working down to one volt per cell. No problems whatsoever.

Check it out and this old-school vacuum fluorescent display Casio calculator works down at naught point. Eight volts per cell? No worries, even this Xbox controller works down to one volt per cell. Not a problem. Even an old-school game boy works down to one volt per cell.

What's his? One point three five volts I can't find anything and this multimeter still not showing flat battery at under one volts per cell. this old-school Sony Dat Walkman It still works down to one point one volts per cell, almost empty and this differential probe takes four double. A Batteries still works down to about point nine. Five volts per cell.

even this little thermometer thingy which has no low battery indicator. but yeah, it starts to dim, but it's still working down at one point. one volt at one point two volts per cell. Yeah, you change it at that point.

but geez, you know it's not one point three five. So there you go. I Couldn't find a single battery power product here in the lab that would drop out at their claimed one point three five volts, let alone one point four volts. It's crazy and I am NOT cherry picking here I Genuinely could not find a product, but hey I know they probably are products out there if really badly designed products if you search long enough.

if you're bought enough, you know cheap ass five-dollar gadgets and Bluetooth keyboards on eBay You'll eventually find one that was so poorly designed that dropped out at the claimed one point three, five, or even one point four volts that it would be wasting most of this. You know a majority. as they say, like you know, maybe eighty percent of the capacity of the battery. I Don't doubt it, but it's not nearly as prevalent as they imply it is.

So right there. we've demonstrably showing that one of their main assumptions that they're basing their entire product on their entire business model on and indeed, their entire patent look is the pattern that says that right in there. They're basing it all on this: one point, three, five, or one point four volt battery voltage cutoff claim: the equipment is no longer usable. it's no longer usable in the product.

Are you kidding me? Right there? Off the bat. Gonski And indeed, any product that's actually designed to use both rechargeable batteries and primary cell batteries must absolutely must cannot get away with it. be able to operate down to at least one point one volts per cell. That is the cutoff voltage for rechargeable products.

That's why we saw many of our products there actually cut out at write On one point, one volts because you don't want to let your rechargeable batteries actually discharge any further. C is still using most of the capacity. There's a Juris cell. One hears any loop ones, for example, the segno any loops.

Exactly the same thing you want these things to cut out at one point one volts. The any loops are much better. They use like 95 least 90, maybe 99 percent of their capacity down to one point One Volts. That's why the cutoff voltage is around about that figure typically.

So if you take it the average of those products I tested there and ones designed for rechargeable batteries. looking at color foliage of one point One Volts and look at how much capacity you're losing. It's just this area under the graph here. It's not the a huge eighty percent that they're running with and they're trying to advertise their product it with it is using all of this space under this curve, so you're only wasting about twenty percent.

So right off the bat, the figures are completely back to front Aa typical marketing. So this guy who designed the product and founded the company He must know this. so he's effectively lying by not mentioning these things by omitting it. And that's classic marketing 101 stuff.

Because you know you can't get that eight percent banner headline that then all the media outlets run with. You can't get that if you tell the truth and actually say well, yeah, the majority of products they work down to one point One Volts. You know, no problems whatsoever. Anything designed with a rechargeable battery must work down to one point One Volts.

So you know the headline that I you get 20% improvement isn't nearly as good as Eight Hundred percent. No wonder they're not going to mention it. Next thing we want to do on our product, but Loney Detection Kit is actually test that banner headline: Can we do that? Of course we can. This is engineering 800% Where do they get flat from? Well, let's have a look.

Let's see you buy a new battery, You use it for a month or Ops 21.4 It's now ostensibly dead at one point, for we've proven that's not true. But if you slip on the batteries er, that's a two times increase in battery, you get another month's use out of it. And then if it drops to one point three, boom, etc. And now they're saying there are now I There are more than eight.

One point A point 1 volt steps between point 6 volts and 1.5 volts. So in grossly simplified terms, the batteries I can extend battery life somewhere around a factor of eight. Grossly simplified. You bet your assets grossly simplified.

In fact, it's worse than that. It's downright wrong. And why is it wrong? Well, let's look at this. This is from their patent.

The time it takes for a battery to drop by 0.1 volts is longer at lower voltages versus at higher voltages. This means at a constant current was drawn from the battery, it would take the battery a lot longer to discharge from one point to to one point one, then it would from one point five to one point four. This means the extent to which the battery life is increased would be even higher. Well, okay, yeah, that is true.

Look, it's steeper here and then it goes like that. But then look, they don't mention they conveniently miss out. This like remaining thirty percent of the capacity here where it starts to drop down even faster again. So once again, they are effectively lying by admission.

They're not telling you the whole story. They're basing all their claims around though. Very niche narrow scenario. Which, and they're trying to put this out there as this thing is going to save the world.

It's going to be a multi-billion dollar business. Invest in us. We're going to be, you know, Fantastic. There's such marvelous technology at it.

No, it's not going to have a very niche application because they don't mention the majority. The vast majority as I've demonstrated cases where their assumptions are not true. So the banner media spec of 800 times 8 fold increase in battery life is based on a 1 like a very narrow window of products that I couldn't find. But I'm sure they are out there if you look hard enough that fail it like one point three, or one point 4 volts within.

that's at one point three, five, to one point four in that sort of region. And then, yeah, okay, they're probably right. You're going to be losing maybe eighty percent of your capacity under this curve here. But that's also they don't tell you that it's going to depend on the type of battery.

Here's one of these Ultra Power Jura Cells They they last a lot longer, so there's not going to be as much a power loss as you'd get for one less standard Coppertop Duracell for example, and also their product claims to work down to Point 6 Volts and that's what they again basing part of this data. This 800% calculation on and Point 6 Volts is quite impressive for the circuit. Excellent, fantastic, Nice design. I Like it.

but the whole industry, the whole electronics industry, and power and battery industry takes Naught Point 8 Volts as the cutoff voltage for a cell. It doesn't go down 2.6 There's no capacity left this thing. Batteries drop off like a brick wall. It doesn't matter what datasheet you look at, they all drop off like a brick wall at Naught Point 8 volts.

So having Naught Point 6 volts and then including that in your calculation for your 800% for these naught Point 1 volt step, it's completely and utterly and demonstrably wrong. and another classic marketing technique. Or get a reputable university to test it for you and then cherry-pick some quotes from them so that you can, you know, look like it's fantastic. Look, the device was tested by researchers.

San Jose State University says it helps to prevent the voltage of a battery from decreasing on the load. Of course it does. That's our concept of a Bloody Boost Converter. And Dr..

Parvin here a material scientist I'm sure he's very reputable and he says we tested the battery Iser sleeve in our lab and we confirm that the batteries our taps into the 80% of energy that is usually thrown away. Yeah, probably based on the battery company's recommendation. that's 1.4 so they basically confirming. Of course they're going to confirm that, but it doesn't matter because it's a bad assumption to begin with.

And I'm sure that these scientists at San Jose University they you know they're no fools. They know what they're doing, but they're probably being taken out of context here. I Think they just cherry-picking the data that was hand fed to them in the press release from battery and it doesn't help when the researcher says also confirms at one point three volts under low condition. At that point we consider it to be dead and throw it away.

Well, it's demonstrable wrong. So I'm sure this San Jose researcher is probably being taken out of context ie. you know I Can't believe that he doesn't understand that electronics products are usually most of the majority of them designed to actually operate much lower than that. Next on our list.

Beware of claims like this. The company behind the batteries Er set is tested the gadget with several battery powered devices including game controls look this Xbox one and TV remotes, etc. Well, wireless keyboards. Well, I tested it with wireless keyboards didn't I and it was just demonstrable untrue that they drop out at the claim one point 4 volts.

So yeah, they may have tested the product in there and it might work in quote marks, but it doesn't mean that it gives any usable increase in life, let alone the banner spec of 800. Now you'd be thinking at this point that this thing is done and dusted. It's just not going to be even close to the claimed figures and it might only work in some real niche application. Well, we can go even further and show how when you look at the engineering of it, it gets even worse.

Now let's take a look at a typical boost converter chip that might be used in something like this. It's designed to go down to a low input voltage work off a single cell. Now let's go down here and take a look at some of the efficiency versus output graphs and this one on the right hand side here. Fishin' see on the Y-axis here and then we've got the output current on the X-axis here.

The efficiency of this thing is going to change based on the output current and you can see how it really low output currents like in you know, hundreds or tens of micrograms like you might typically get in one of their example products or remote control. Well, you're looking at like you know, 50 percent efficiency. Some converters are even much worse than this. This is a typical characteristic response curve of a boost converter like this: If I go over to this datasheet from linear technology R for example, then you can have a look at their efficiency curve.

Look, there's a big bump up there. Yeah, you might get your 90% efficiency, but only over a very narrow operational range of output current ie. how much power your product is actually taking. But once again, it drops off down at the low output currents and your efficiency is going to change a fair amount based on your battery voltage.

As a jobs, you can see the blue curve here at naught: 0.7 volts battery voltage. The efficiency is a good 10 percent less than what it might be when it's up at 1.5 volts. And what does that translate into in your final product? Let's assume that's only 50 percent efficient down at that point. Well, your 800 percent claim.

even if you could find the niche product to do it and cut off at one point, 4 Volts is still looking at losing half of your efficiency down at that thing. Unless you specifically design your circuit for a specific type of product, you when you use a general purpose chip like this, you have to design a general purpose, like to work over the range of any unknown product. You don't know whether that products going to be a wireless keyboard that draws a small amount of current down here, or whether or not it's going to draw hundreds of millions right up here. You just don't know.

So you've got a look at the efficiency and higher currents. It's just going to drop off like a brick wall. So any potential gains that you're going to get from this batteries are based on The dropout voltage of your product is going to be offset by the efficiency of this thing depending on what type of product you got. So once again, it even narrows the range of usable products even further than what it already is based on their ridiculous claim of one point three five volts cutout voltage.

So let's say you found a product that well. you could double your life if you use if you're only using half the capacity of the battery and this battle riser can use the extra fifty percent of that capacity. Well, if it's only 50 percent efficient, then you're screwed. You just to get back to square one and you're going to get exactly the same life out of it as you did with just using the regular battery and piece in a way your extra fifty percent.

it's not going to help at all. And the other thing to consider is the equivalent series resistance of the battery. Now, this gets a bit complicated, but look at this red graph here for this: Duracell Coppertop double A They don't actually show it extending out here, but the resistance rises as the capacity goes down and the voltage drops. and it's going to sort of like tail up like this.

as the voltage drops off like that like a brick wall, it's going to sort of like tail up in the opposite direction. and the exact effect of this depends upon the product that you're actually powering, whether or not it's I Taking pulse loads, for example, like high current pulse loads, That's going to be a big deal where if it takes it, you know your battery voltage might be falling like this. but then if it switches on a motor, for example, then Boom! You might get a low dropout like that, which may kill the product and things like that. That depends on how much decoupling they've got internally and all sorts of technical details like that.

And is this a batterer Iser Going to help in that respect I Don't think a huge amount because it's physically not a Dc-to-dc converter. it has to be like one of the world's smallest Dc-to-dc boost converters in order to fit in this form factor. So naturally, it's going to have extremely limited output, capacitance, and peak current capability. so you're relying on the internal decoupling of your product to handle those pulse loads effectively.

Now, will the batteries actually make a difference? In this case? Well, it may, but in the majority of cases I Don't think so because yeah, it's boosting the voltage up to 1.5 volts, which is great for those products which have a low dropout voltage. but in terms of a peak current at end of life, for example, yeah, it's boosting up to 1.5 but there's going to be a corresponding increase in the current because you have to keep constant power output from your DC to DC converter. So the current from the battery is actually more and ESR plays more of an effect. So you know, As I said, it depends on their how your product is designed and the decoupling so, but mostly because of the physical size of the thing.

I Don't think it's going to make a huge if any difference at all. In fact, what they don't tell you is that the batteries er could actually shorten the battery life instead of increase. It depends on your product. So while they might, you know, you might be able to find a product which says oh yeah, look, I double my battery life or even triple or even quadruple it.

No way you're going to increase it by eight times. but hey, you might be able to double it. But hey, you might have some other product where the battery life halves because of the particular efficiency and the design of the thing. And what's another downside? What is the maximum output current of this thing? they haven't told you I bet you they're not going to tell you until you hand over your hard-earned money and find out all it can't.

you be using my high-power product because it's only got a maximum output current of a couple hundred milliamps or something like that. so you can't using a toy that's work designed to work with double A's and then you know you might have to suck an amp at peak or something like that. Your product could easily fail if this batteries I cannot deliver peak currents, for example. Heck, let's just take a standard copper top double-a battery here.

If you've got a product that actually cuts out at 1 volts which was like a lot of the products that I just showed, then well, you're using already using like 90% of your energy and the best-case efficiency you're going to get out of a DC to DC converter even if it's optimized, is going to be like 90% sort of like at best. So it's already a useless product right there and could actually be detrimental if you use it down the efficiency curve. So they're not going to tell you that they're not going to tell you that this thing may actually decrease your battery life and you won't know that until you actually put it in and do the battery drain comparisons yourself and figure out whether or not this damn thing works. Oh man, and take a look at the PCB look at how much room you've got to fit the chip and the magnetics.

ie. the inductor. Because you need an inductor in this thing. Here's the inductor over here.

That's everything in this boost converter and the smaller and smaller and smaller your maker inductor. They probably got to tie in a little. Oh For 200, you know, 201 inductor in there, you've got to get really low profile in there. It's going to be a tiny amount of magnetic.

The small your magnetics leads to a much lower efficiency. The smaller is and also limits your output current. So how much output current can they fit in these things? Well, my engineering estimate is not very much at all, and they're not going to be very efficient either. But they're not going to give you the numbers on this because that just ruins their whole marketing campaign.

How do you dissipate your head in this thing? Well, it could be quite novel. You could actually use the metal bar like this as a heatsink I'd Certainly be using that. but then you've got to make sure your chippers are properly thermally bonded to your metal package here to get out the heat, especially at those high currents. Might be fine for low current devices like a wireless keyboard.

for example, you put in one of those Xbox are controllers. It's got the you know, the the transmitter and everything. It's got the vibrator, motor, all that sort of stuff happening, or some other high power product, this tiny amount of space on here at night. there's going to be very severe limitations imposed on this product and they don't give you that data, they just put out this press release with glowing you know numbers and they just gloss over all these technical details.

And then what about the quiescent current? For low current products that aren't drawing much, look at this for this: I Convert it. Yeah, you can get better than this, but you know this might be a typical figure 300 micrograms typical for your active quiescent current, and that doesn't include your efficiency of the thing, which as I said at a Blut best if you use it, the optimal part of the efficiency curve 90 percent might typically be. you know, like, 70 to 80 percent something like that, so they can happily throw around marketing buzz terms up to eight hundred percent improvement. All that sort of stuff.

Well, from an engineering point of view, we can practically guarantee that there will be some products out there I Don't know how many, but there will certainly be some where this thing will have a detrimental effect on the battery life. They don't tell you that that ain't good marketing. and if you take a look at a typical alkaline battery like this, the positive terminal on the top is all of this metal can. If this is still the positive terminal here, and the only thing isolating the positive and negative terminal is this tiny little gap.

There's tiny little rubber o-ring around the bottom so you could easily get in there and short it out. You can probably see the little tiny spite way. There we go. Just generated some smoke.

Woohoo there we go. I Made something smoke if you short out this negative terminal to the positive here. So if you take a look at the design of this thing, this whole metal body along here is connected to the negative. a tab there, so you're relying upon just the outer like you know, mylar insulating wrap or whatever it is around the battery there to stop any Spurs from shorting out between all this cut metal along here.

I Mean at any, there could be a tiny little burn on there and it could short through to the negative terminal. It's an accident waiting to happen and they want to use this on like they're saying up to decels. Are you kidding me? The amount of energy in a D-cell is incredible, let alone two. Double-a is enough to ruin your day, possibly start a fire.

Jeez. I Wouldn't want to rely on a product like that. Whoo! So there you go. That is the better riser product that made all the headlines and basically hardly anyone.

Almost nobody in the news world wanted to actually think and verify this and it's not hugely hard. Just ask any competent electronics engineer and they would have been able to tell you this I know I've taken 30 minutes to do this. I Basically came to this exact conclusion in like tens of seconds after I immediately saw this product I Just knew the limitations that would be involved in this thing. It's obvious to any practitioner in the field, yet they're just running with all this marketing spin and they don't tell you any of the downside.

So that's why I've presented hopefully a useful product baloney detection kit. here. You've got to look at the claims, and you know, look at their assumptions, verify the headline claims of eight hundred percent. it's not even close to that, and just look at the downsides of something like this.

Don't just get caught up in the hype because it sounds fantastic, and usually if it sounds too good to be true, it usually is. And while they're like, technically right in some of the things that they say in what they're doing here and the product is going to work in some very specific circumstances and it may actually give an improved battery life, but they don't tell you about all the downsides and everything else with it. Wait, stop the presses. Since I Finished this video yesterday just overnight, they've updated their website.

It was just coming soon, but now they've actually got some details here. It's one of these typical slick, you know, one-page marketing websites and let's look here. It works that most new batteries contain 1.5 volts of energy Wow right there. they're wrong.

They just have no idea what they're talking about. Energy and 1.5 volts of energy? That's just ridiculous. The is that many devices stop function around the 1.3 volt mark? Look, they use the word many, many and yeah, how many I couldn't find one here in the lab? Maybe I could if I looked a bit harder. But the majority of devices as we showed this is demonstrably not true.

That many devices do this. It's not. It's probably a small minority of devices, yet they're basing their entire product and everything around this stupid 1.3 volt figure. And it uses.

Yet, it lets you instantly tap into the existing 80% energy that's usually thrown away. Any device that uses a rechargeable battery automatically will must go down to one point one volts and and use probably you know, 80 90 percent of your capacity more. If you use those, segno any loops and wait, they've got a market in video. Let's run it.

Did you know that every dead battery you've ever thrown away had only used up to 20% of its battery life? Whoa. Hang on. What did they say? Did you know that every dead battery you've ever thrown away had only used up to 20% of its battery life? At Every dead battery you've ever thrown away? At Every dead battery you've ever thrown away? That every dead battery you've ever thrown away. Unbelievable.

They've gone from using the word many to every you heard it there. They're claiming every battery you've ever thrown away has wasted 80% of its capacity. Ah, this is demonstrably untrue. What if you could instantly tap into the other 80% that is still trapped inside? Now you can with batteries? Er.

When your batteries are running out of juice, just slip the batteries or micro thin sleeve onto your low or dead battery, insert it back into your device, and see your power level jump from low to 100% instantly. we tested the batteries Er in our lab and we confirmed that the batteries taps into that 80% energy that is usually thrown away. So I kind of feel a bit sorry for our professor colleague here. I'm sure he means well, but he should know better than this.

He got duped into doing this marketing video for this company and but even he admitted that he used the word usually thrown away, the 80% is usually thrown away. but that didn't stop the company then going to use it. and previously in the video just before him say every battery. So as an electronics design engineer and product design I can't help but look at this thing and just go.

Oh jeez, it's just mostly marketing and yep, sure it's going to work and give some extra output in you know, maybe quite a few circumstances, but probably not the majority of them. And yeah, it could work reasonably well in something that you know is a marginal current drain and it's dropping out at, you know, 1.2 volts or something like that. Yeah, you might be able to, you know, squeeze an extra, maybe up to you know, 50% efficiency out of it. but then you can't help but look at the efficiency figures like this and go well.

it's You know you're going to have some loss there as well. It's not going to be that great and all the different products and ah jeez, yeah, it's going to work. and they can easily spin a demo for anyone and show that I Yeah, look at just you know increases I can find a product easily I can work this thing in and show that it works wonders and you know people just go. Wow.

this thing is just the most amazing thing ever. It's going to revolutionize the world and well, not in practice. It ain't gonna revolutionize much I'm sorry and it's not even a new idea. it's like yeah, it's actually quite some innovative packaging and things like that they've done to get it in this sort of form factor and not things like that.

So I'm reasonably impressed by the engineering side of the you know, the physicality. Apart from the shorting out thing of course that's a ah man. So yes, whilst this product can actually work and give in provement a measurable improvement in some products, some is the keyword there. It's not going to magically work in all products, it's mostly marketing spin, preying on people's ignorance of how this sort of stuff works.

So if you're looking to buy this thing thinking that it's going to be magic, or if your heck, you're looking to invest in something like this, then well, you've got to know all the story. And they're not telling you that because, well, that's not good marketing is it? So there you go I hope you found that Baloney Detection kit useful. That is a bit of a step by step procedure on how to look at the claims of a product like this. and the Baloney detection kit might change a little bit depending on what the product is and what a specific area, but something like this that's real easy to debunk using just a basic and I look at the engineering data so there you go if you want to discuss it.

If I missed anything or or you think that I'm wrong and it actually might work better then I'm making out then leave it in the comments down below. Catch you next time you you.