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?
It flopped because it doesn’t really work, and most stuff we stick batteries on these days already do a good job of extracting all the energy out of the batteries. It’s mostly already built-in.
EEVblog made a few videos on it:
Dead old batteries are dead, if there’s almost no energy in them they’re done. Best case you might be able to stick them in a remote or an LED candle or whatever. But it’s a physical limit: almost dead batteries just can’t supply high currents because of internal resistance.
Another way to look at it is those potato batteries: yeah, you can measure a voltage off them. Yeah, you might be able to light up an LED. But you will never be able to power something higher power, not even for a couple seconds. It’s physically not able to provide much current.