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$1,000 Spray Makes Gadgets Waterproof
Rio writes "A new $1,000 spray claims to protect notebook computers, iPods, cell phones and other electronic gadgets from liquid, making them completely waterproof, a Local6.com report says. A creator of the technology said it could be used for emergency first-responders, bio-medical devices and historic preservation." This might be a bit of a flashback from last year.
I always wanted to make an iPhone call from 1000 feet deep. Of course, that big air thingy sticking in my mouth is kind of a hinderance, but go technology!
http://twitter.com/OLDTELEGRAM
The FAQ for the Golden Shellback (what they call this stuff) site says:"9. What aspects confuse people most about this process:
a. People get confused and think this is a spray. It is not, the coating needs to be applied in a piece of equipment.
b. People seem to wonder a lot about the contacts and how they are sealed. The contacts are not, the surfaces are sealed. So, water can run in and out.
That right there ought to deal with a lot of the statements and questions that are about to be made in this thread.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
A spray that magically repels water, but not air, even at vent openings?
Son, I would like to see you a part of the Brooklyn Bridge. Not the whole thing, mind you, just a portion as a souvenir. You'll get a certificate that will be filed with a US copyright office documenting its authenticity.
Snake Oil Incorporated reported their stocks have risen with a whole of 8%!
In order to waterproof anything electronic, every entry point for water needs to be completely sealed. Does anybody else see the problem here? Yes, that Blackberry might still be powered on. But no, you probably can't depress the keys any more and you almost certainly can't charge it or plug in headphones.
Also, 0.001" thick? I bet it scrapes off on accident rather easily. I also highly doubt that anybody could apply a coating that thin from a hand-held spray can.
---- I'll take you in a Hunt deathmatch any day.
Is it a spray? are the contacts sealed? I'm not sure...
For $1,000 I could buy a new notebook, iPod, cell phone...
It's called PAM.
If a spray like this would continue to work long after it's initial application, I can see getting PCB boards sprayed which would allow for some outstanding silent cooling options.
From the FAQ on the website:
a. People get confused and think this is a spray. It is not, the coating needs to be applied in a piece of equipment.
Geeks like to think that they can ignore politics, you can leave politics alone, but politics won't leave you alone.-rms
You can get a can of stuff like Humiseal for a few bucks, what's so special about this silly thing?
Of course, that big air thingy sticking in my mouth is kind of a hinderance, but go technology!
You can take that out though and talk for a bit (as long as you are breathing out). You can even breathe in if you let the regulator flow directly under your mouth (a required skill to be certified to dive)...
You'd not be very intelligible, but you could speak.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
video says i think $50 - $100 service charge
How is this different from the multitude of conformal coatings ($1000) already on the market?
I didn't RTFA, but from what I read in the summary, why the christ would I spend $1000 to protect my $250 iPod?
FOXTROT UNIFORM CHARLIE KILO
I hear if you dump this stuff in the middle of a swimming pool, the universe ends.
There are plenty of conformal coatings for this sort of thing. Fin-L-Kote is about $20/can. I've used that on PC boards in robotics applications. Automotive electronics are routinely conformal coated, usually with a rather thick coating.
The main problem is electrical contacts. Those have to be masked when the electronics are sprayed or dipped. The military/marine solution is gold-plated contacts, with everything else conformal coated.
This isn't going to work for something with a vented hard drive. Sealed hard drives are available for laptops.
Useful for preserving your iPhone for the full length of the 268 million months you're tired to your contract here in the UK.
ilovegeorgebush
In other news...
Millions of gadgets have shutdown, or been damaged, due to overheating.
Reading code is like reading the dictionary - you have to read half of it before you can go back and understand it.
I just don't see how this can work. It has to do one of two things. It either keeps water out, meaning that it covers and seals every opening that leads into the device, or it somehow coats every surface of the device, inside and out, including all circuit boards and components.
So, if it seals the device, how does it know what openings have to be there? Blackberrys (at least my pearl), iPods, etc have power and headphone jacks. So it is only waterproof until I have to plug something into it, rupturing the film? How long will this stuff last before it ruptures on its own due to normal use (like pushing keys on a keyboard). What about battery compartments and other doors on the device? My Blackberry has a door over the MicroSD slot that I open frequently.
The other option is to coat all surfaces inside the device. What about things that have to be left open to the atmosphere to allow humidity to exit, barometric pressure to equalize, etc? I own a Yaesu VX-7R handheld transceiver for amateur radio. This device is fully submersible. One problem they had with the first batch was the waterproofing sealed the inside of the device off from the atmosphere, which would cause a pressure differential against the speaker during barometric changes, which would reduce the amount the diaphragm could travel, resulting in reduced audio output. They fixed it by installing a valve that would equalize pressure. Now that problem occurred in a device designed to be waterproof. Just imagine the problems this would cause with typical gadgets.
Better known as 318230.
Sounds like a conformal coating which is nothing new, you can buy a can of the spray on type at your local electronics store for a few bucks.
This is very true. My current phone is waterproof/dustproof/drop proof, but that doesn't mean you can make calls underwater. I tried making a bluetooth call with the phone in a glass of water, but even a small amount of water kills the signal completely.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
Its a gold plated solution that will do little for Joe/Jane Average. I am not dropping $1k (unless they are Zimbabwean dollars) on my cell phone just to make it waterproof. The only way this thing could make it waterproof is if the clear coating protected the circuit boards and the connectors or seal the openings so no water can get in. Of course they said that water can run in/out...so...it must seal the circuit board itself. Again...m3h...
1331461 is only semiprime *sigh* Alas - I am just short of 1337.
How would you change out the battery in a protected product? The material obviously doesn't conduct electricity. Do they coat over the battery compartment, thus sealing your battery inside? You'd be forced to break the seal every time you swap batteries, or perform a reset on smartphones with the reset button beneath the compartment lid.
FOXTROT UNIFORM CHARLIE KILO
I've had two device fail because of liquid.. A 2 megapixel (as was the style at the the time) camera fell into a lake for about 3 seconds... pulled the batteries let it dry for a week. DOA.
A flash that somehow got beer into it.. POP, whoops..
A little weatherproofing would have helped. 1000$ is a bit steep though.
Like a month ago we had to make something IP54 Compliant This is part of the IEC 60529 Standard
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_Code
So even though I am the Linux Software GUY, I started to investigate water repellent coatings.
I think they are just using a hydrophobic coating.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrophobic
Hardly worth $1000 a bottle.
Similar to Scotchgard, Rain-X, Aquapel, Jigaloo, RainClear and Magic Sand.
These use Organosilanes like Trimethylsilanol (TMS) (CH3)3SiOH, or perfluorooctanesulfonates (PFOS) C8HF17O3S.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PFOS
Look at the fluorene chains on this one,
fluorocarbons are the basis for things like Teflon and Fluorinert that don't react with anything and so in Teflon's case make good non-stick surfaces.
Unfortunately Scotchgard has been "reformulated" to make is "safer" PFOS never breaks down, good for electronics, bad for people and the environment. the new Formula (Perfluorobutane sulfonate PFBS ) is designed to break down after a month, so you'd have to keep reapplying.
If you want to research this further see Patents, 3574791, 6676733, and 6994890
Also get on youtube and look up magic sand, some cool videos there.
I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it. - Pablo Picasso
Moderation is always retroactive. But I clicked your link, looked at the comments marked "troll", and I hate to break it to you, son, but all the comments marked "troll" are, indeed, trolls. Look up "internet troll" on wikipedia and you'll see that a "troll" is an offtopic comment designed to generate an emotional response.
An example of one of your trolls is a link to a wikipedia article about an album with a disparaging word about a particular race as its name, and your comment was "what does the the slashdot community think about this?" It had nothing to do with the article, summary, or comment it responded to. I am not a member of the race you seem to hate, but that doesn't make what you did any less a troll.
The comment I'm responding to isn't a troll and it won't be modded "troll". But all the comments I looked at in your comment history that were marked "troll" were indeed trolls, and if I'm asked to metamoderate the moderations (I usually metamoderate at least daily) I will mod the mods as "fair". I don't think anyone who modded your comments has anything to fear from other metamoderators, either.
If you want to troll, show some balls and do your trolling in meatspace.
You really should change your sig and stop trolling. Stop trolling and you'll mostly stop being modded "troll" (even though everybody gets downmodded from time to time). Mods, I'm checking "no karma bonus" but please feel free to mod this down farther (offtopic) if you wish.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
ive spent my entire professional career trying to teach PHB's NOT to dip sensitive electronics in liquids, and now these shit-whistles are telling them its okay? the litmus test for product functionality (read: "i gotta get me some of that") at this point is simple: a member of marketing coating a hair-dryer in "golden shellback" and jumping into a jacuzzi.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Dude, you've already bought an iPhone, and you wonder how people are willing to blow money?
OK, now that we've all a bunch of posts about how it can't work, my prediction is that as soon as they get a patent, we'll have at least as many posts (many from the same people) about how the patent is bad because it is obvious.
1. Put this on a computer
2. Drop your computer in a bucket
3. Fill the bucket with water
4. Enjoy the worlds most retarded water cooled system.
Optional 5. Enjoy never having to pay a bill for a water heater again.
Just put a spigot on the bucket and hang it above your bath tub = Free hot showers.
Just wait for the water to boil= Tea anyone?
Just put it in a sauna = Free Steam Baths.
The possibilities are ENDLESS.
9. What aspects confuse people most about this process: a. People get confused and think this is a spray. It is not, the coating needs to be applied in a piece of equipment. b. People seem to wonder a lot about the contacts and how they are sealed. The contacts are not, the surfaces are sealed. So, water can run in and out.
Is that per barrel? I can't imagine how any chemical sealant can cost that much, or who would be willing to buy it at that price.
Blah blah blah
"The only way I can think to do this is X, and since they are not doing X this can't possibly work"... because of course, every Slashdot reader is the ultimate expert on a topic and the entire scientific community couldn't possibly develop a chemical or technology that you have not first conceived of.
RTFA people.
A $1000 spray is indeed a spray, no matter what is being sold. If I were drinking something, and somebody asked me to pay them $1000 for waterproofing there would certainly be a "$1000 spray", and the other person would probably wish they were wearing waterproof/beerproof/etc clothing.
Fill it up with distilled water--it's an excellent insulator.
"I improvise. It's my greatest talent. I prefer situations to plans..." --Wintermute, William Gibson's "Neuromancer"
"That's not water damage, the WIND drove the water into your device, and if you read the guarantee very carefully, you'll see that wind damage is excluded from coverage."
This thing has snake-oil written all over it.
Ibid.
This product could keep me and my gadgets confident all year round. Just be careful where you apply it. You wouldn't want to create some kind of obstruction. Then you would have to have someone tear you a new one. Speaking of, here comes my boss.
Winkey shortcut mapping for 64bit windows. WinKeyPlus
And who can blame them? I mean, /. posting stories from the Local6, where headlines are about as misleading as "Boy Eating Bear." I read about this last week, maybe two weeks ago, on Hack-A-Day I believe, hell maybe even here on /. (possible dupe-age), either way, why the Local6?
As pointed out by numerous posters, the FAQ clearly states that this is not a spray, but rather a procedure of sorts. Engadget has a slightly better writeup of the technology here. From Engadget:
"...the process involves applying the coating to your precious toys inside a vacuum, after which they're basically impervious to all liquids -- in one test, a coated device spent over 450 hours powered on and functional underwater"
how well the DVD drive in my laptop will function underwater?
I can't imagine a waterproofing spray being a good thing for anything with cooling fans.
Prov 9:8 Do not rebuke mockers or they will hate you; rebuke the wise and they will love you.
I see lots of comments ask if you can take your electronics underwater, but isn't there a difference between waterproof and submergible?
For example, a waterproof jacket doesn't mean both sides of the jacket won't get wet when underwater. And a waterproof watch doesn't necessarily mean you can go diving with it - it just means if you wear it in the rain, it won't malfunction.
I don't think the spray seals it like a cannister, but it's more like a silicone covering that goes over all the circuits, boards, etc. So water should leak in, behind the speaker, etc.
..........FULL STOP.
Seriously, who would use this 'spray' on their iphone/ipod/whatever? At $1000, it costs 2 or 3 times the price of most consumer electronics. You could, probably, buy some sort of accidental damage insurance much cheaper than this spray costs, and just get the device replaced if it's damaged by water. Heck, put the $1000 into a fairly safe/conservative investment fund, and get interest on it.
Will it cure my asthma too? I think I'll save my money and just buy a can of Turtle Wax
What?
The creators have said, citation not handy, that this isn't for waterproofing, but for splash proofing. So, when you drop some coffee on your $300 cell phone, it doesn't die. The movies of them dropping it in water are just demonstrations and not expectations of actual use. Contacts like for headphones and chargers and what not are still open to the water.
Hmmm, if it is to be used for anything small that isn't an ipod (MP3 Player in general), I have heard that sandwich baggies work really well. They are also cheaper than a grand. For the people with Ipods, i1010 works good for me.
If it indeed ist just a 1 mil thick water resistant conformal coat, then that far from guarantees electronics will still function.
A lot of electronics widgets at high operating frequencies (think cell phone RF stages) may not directly be damaged by the water, but the prescence of the water will disrupt their operation by bogging down high speed signals with the high dielectric constant of water (about 80), which is also usually VERY lossy. So expect digital things to go on the fritz till the water fully drains out, and RF stuff to be euqally fouled up with low or no output power until the water drains out fully.
Over temp and time conformal coats are are real double edged sword. SMT components (99% of the stuff in most of todays consumer electronics) can be damaged in thermal cycling as a result of confomral coating that wicks under their body and expands/contracts much faster than the cermaic bodies of the parts. I've suffered the wrath of multiple different conformal coatings in mil/aerospace and concluded that usually it creates about as much mahem as it prevents. YMMV.
No more bulky tubes! Simply submerse your mobo into the tub and overclock away!
Arguing with an engineer is like wrestling a pig in the mud. After a while, you realize the engineer enjoys it.
waterproof? I don't think so.
You just KNOW some happy, Leisure Suit Larry mother fucker will buy a months supply of this shit, spray it on his dick and go to town:
LSLMFer: Hey ladies, im sexy non-stick and disease free!
Ladies: OOoh! He wont stain our carpet either! I want one!
-crim
Bitch you KNOW the side.. WORLD MAFUCKIN WIDE..
Oh well, too bad it's fake (a.k.a. flim-flam). Actually, that's not water. The devices are being exposed to a solution of chloral-floral-carbons or something similar. Notice they never demonstrate the phone in a pool or ocean, just a bin of clear liquid we are to assume is H2O that is really CFC."
A programmer is a machine for converting coffee into code.
I've tried this and it works reasonably well. It's not really a spray, more of a protective barrier. But cheap and reliable: http://www.fetpak.com/whstore/main.pl/slist?5
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
In fact, pure water is a pretty good isolator. What is conductive in water are the ions dissolved in it (that's what makes salt water a good conductor). But you could put your computer in a bath filled with pure water and it would do fine, as long as you take care to keep the water pure. (Not counting effects of mechanical resistance of water on fans etc.).
What person will donate an airborne act of love?
And it ships with a 22oz bottle of snake oil.
Not that anyone will be able use your device ... since it will be encased in Carbonite!
mua-hahahahahaaaa!
You say "Yes!"
Interested in a Flash-based MAME front end? Visit mame.danzbb.com
It sounds like it's a PROCESS whereby they do something that sounds like conformal coating on all the parts of your device, this sounds like it would require disassembling and reassembling your device, and possibly some amount of engineering on a per-device-type basis to make sure it still works afterwards. If it works it sounds like something that you would legitimately charge someone $1K for. Does it work, and what exactly is meant by "work"? No idea :P
Dollars to donuts they're using Parylene-C to waterproof things. Fits the bill: it's thin (microns), vacuum-deposited, and coats surfaces regardless of aspect or exposure. I'm betting the bulk of the $1000 they are charging for this process is due not to the materials but prep work. You have to carefully seal off contacts usually, by hand, before coating.
*RING RING*
Hello? Who is this?
Hbelpmeimstuckinanoceanfactoryblgblgb
*CLICK*
"Not only is it still working, but we are still getting audio from the iPod Touch in the connected speakers," the woman said. "You really don't see much of a coating or feel much of a coating."
Also:
A reporter tossed a Blackberry in a tub of water and it continued to play.
Seems like it works to me based on the article..
Wasn't there a movie about this? http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0326856/ Oh wait, that spray was marketed to reduce the amount of bullshit in the world...
I can get a ziploc for much less than that.
Most likely a vapor deposited film.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parylene
and some history
http://www.scscoatings.com/parylene_knowledge/history.aspx
A way to keep the screen and keyboard protected while surfing for p0rn!
Have gnu, will travel.
On Tekzilla:
http://revision3.com/tekzilla/newtime/
Can't remember where exactly in the episode, but it's there, and there's some good footage of various pieces of tech all wet and still running.
It probablly is but electronics is typically covered in all sorts of crap (both from the manufacturing process and picked up during use) so your pure water won't stay pure for long.
Also if the device is immersed in impure water then your pure water will gradually mix with the impure stuff.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
A creator of the technology said it could be used for emergency first-responders, bio-medical devices and historic preservation.
I guess that Emergency First-Responders could use "spray on" waterproofing. But the image of the person trying to remove the coating...
The subject says it all. BFD!
For $1000, I could buy 7 of those "world's cheapest laptops". With the leftover money...
Laptop #1. Diet coke/mentos/laptop explosion. $2.39 from amazonfresh.com.
Laptop #2. Death by latte. $3.39 at Starbucks.
Laptop #3. Sent to the bottom of Tacoma Narrows. $4.00 bridge toll.
Laptop #4. Dowsed in sulfuric acid. Post a warning sign too! $13.76.
Laptop #5. Crushed in the depths of Lake Chelan. $39.00 Lady of the Lake fare.
Laptop #6. Left outside overnight in Seattle. FREE.
Laptop #7. "Waterproof" without any stinking $1000 spray.
If you'd have left it that way and just kept hitting "Software Update", eventually some over-worked, distracted Apple wunderkind would have written a driver for it. Then we'd *all* have soup headphones!
How about putting w/e device it is you want to protect in a $0.01 plastic bag instead?
Any scuba place will offer a re-certification test for not very much money that includes a dive in a pool and all the skills. It's way, way safer to try the trickier things in a pool rather than open water where things can go bad quickly.
The breathing thing is I think one of the more unpleasant skills you have to demonstrate out of all of them, and you really need someone keeping a careful eye on you when you try. Not to mention then you'd have the full range of hand signals and diving knowledge you REALLY need to be a safe diver.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
OK, I don't get how this works... If it makes whatever gadget water-proof, how would you change the battery or charge it? If water molecules can't get through the layer of spray, won't it also pose some resistance to electricity? Or if you spray your whole phone, how do you take out the battery? You'd probably have to spray it again after... How does it work?
No more soaked keyboards.
Camping on quad since 1996.
I remember a guy, on Tomorrows World in the U.K. during the 80's, spraying an electric drill with something he'd invented and then dunking it in a fish tank full of water. He then pulled the trigger while still holding it and it worked fine. Lots of bubbles but no death involved.
I drink, therefor I am... drunk.