While looking for uses for old disposable AA batteries, I ran across the Batteriser from 2015. Clearly, it was a flop of some sort, as I am posting in 2024. What happened? Are there any iterations that do work?
https://money.cnn.com/2015/06/02/technology/make-battery-last-longer-batteriser/index.html
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batteroo_Boost
Also, are there any uses for old batteries?
Rechargeable AA batteries have become much more accessible… And imo far fewer devices that we use take replaceable batteries. It’s much more common for devices to just have built in rechargeable batteries.
I use rechargeable AAs and AAAs in all of my remotes, controllers, mice, etc, and the kids’ toys are so chaotic that I wouldn’t put anything in them I wasn’t willing to lose, so the batteriser has literally no value to me. I’m sure I’m not the only one.
And I’ve heard rechargeable batteries don’t even leak, that would be another plus.
Not leaking would be huge. I forgot about that. Lithium are great for not leaking, but crazy expensive.
Why don’t we have lithium ion AA batteries yet? I’ve seen lithium iron phosphate.
I think it has the wrong voltage. 4.2V instead of 1.5V.
I know nothing, but I am surprised the voltage issue cannot be efficiently fixed with a circuit.
@[email protected] posted a link to such a product, it’s possible. The question is: is it viable…
The chemicals in NiMH rechargeable batteries aren’t that rare/expensive and it works.
Adding a circuit needs additional space in that small form-factor that takes away from the space the actual battery could occupy. And the circuit needs power itself. And the chips costs additional money, and it’s more complicated to manufacture which costs yet more money. I can only imagine you end up with a product that’s about on the same level with the regular batteries, just more expensive.
And I’m not sure about the market for AA batteries. Nowadays lots of products have batteries soldered inside of them. And the next step in tech is probably not a backwards-compatible AA battery, but something like the 18650, which is already widely adopted. And they come in the size of AA batteries as well, called: 14500 Lithium Batteries.
Random duckduckgo search brought me to this product. Maybe they are not comercially viable yet?
There are, but to use them as a replacement for NiMH/Alkaline cells, they need voltage conversion and typically have a built in charging circuit so you can charge then via USB-C for example. Theyre expensive, have a similar capacity compared to NiMH and can’t be charged in a regular battery charger.
On an other note, there are 1.5V lithium batteries (non-rechargable). They supposedly have a higher capacity and last longer.
And then there are 14500 Li-Ion cells that are about the size of an AA cell but run at 3.6V.
honest question: when was this not the case? I used rechargable batteries in my gameboy in the early 90s.
Batteries as well as rechargers are dirt cheap for well over 2 decades
Because rechargable batteries before NiMH sucked for many use cases - they were good for the Gameboy as you charged and used them straight away at high draw, but try using one in a low power device like a remote or wall clock and you’ll find it is dead in a week despite minimal actual usage
You’re saying before NIMH, which I assume is the current standard? Because I also use them for everything, and while I also have to swap them more frequently (just barely a noticeable amount) in the controllers (not remotes, those are fine, but Xbox controllers) I just… stick them on the 24ct AA+AAA recharger. I have 2 dozen of each, so it’s not like we ever have a battery shortage.
Saved a TON of $$$ on batteries.
NiMH has been common in consumer batteries for around 15 years (in my experience, although Wikipedia shows the chemistry is way older) but you can still buy the other chemistry (NiCd), and there may be newer lithium rechargables but I haven’t seen them in standard sizes (AA etc)
Eneloops set the standard for good quality NiMH batteries for a while, but IKEA Ladda batteries are also NiMH, and probably plenty of others now