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MS Design Lets You Put Batteries In Any Way You Want
jangel writes "While its strategy for mobile devices might be a mess, Microsoft has announced something we'll all benefit from. The company's patented design for battery contacts will allow users of portable devices — digital cameras, flashlights, remote controls, toys, you name it — to insert their batteries in any direction. Compatible with AA and AAA cells, among others, the 'InstaLoad' technology does not require special electronics or circuitry, the company claims."
Not Prior Art if it uses electronics, diodes etc. This is purely mechanical. I think it's the most brilliant thing Microsoft has ever come up with. Patent worthy? Quite possibly in my mind.
Thats one of lifes great problems solved. Any chance they can work on Windows stability next?
Bob.
Scotty will turn in his grave. MS killed the hyperdrive fix.
They even made a logo for it. http://www.windowsfordevices.com/images/stories/microsoft_instaload_logo.jpg
Neat but not buzzword or logo worthy.
For once, we're hearing about an authentically clever, afaik new physical design which solves a real problem and is actually sanely applicable to be patented. I wasn't expecting that when I clicked on this story. Gotta hand it to Microsoft for this one.
I suggest you learn a bit more about electronics. Diodes have a voltage drop, 0.7V for normal diodes, schottky diodes go as low as 0.2V, but that's still a lot if you get only 1.2V to 1.5V from your battery.
And the summery clearly states that it is without circuitry. Which is not that hard to imagine if you LATFPITFA.
I did the unthinkable and read TFA. They are not trying to patent the diode, they came up with a completely stupidly simple *mechanical* system which really allows to put the batteries in any direction you want without checking the polarity. it's one of the "so simple anybody could have thought of it" patents, and I must confess that I am actually impressed by its simplicity.
For once I must say "well done, Microsoft" (sadly I'm not really anticipating repeating that sentence all too often)
"DRM is like the Ford Pinto: it's a smooth ride, right up the point at which it explodes and ruins your day."-C.Doctorow
Sometimes the stuff you learn in basic electronics can be really useful. In this case though it just made you look like a dick. RTFA.
"Your batteriy is not a Genuine Microsoft Battery"...*Pzzzzzt!*...Blue Smoke Of Death
Now if only someone could invent something that would stop my wife putting non-rechargable batteries in my charger and blowing them up. She said it was an accident... I just think she likes the explosions.
This is specifically for battery compartments with a physical parallel configuration, rather than a series configuration.
( 'physical configuration' as in the batteries laying side-by-side, rather than end-to-end, so the batteries' poles never directly touch eachother; unrelated to the electrical circuitry's configuration )
I'm trying to recall the last time I've seen a physical series configuration; but I just realized my old-ass flashlight counts as one.
( it's been replaced years ago by a proper wind-up for emergency cases and a decent Maglite-like one with a rechargable set for more frequent/high intensity beam use )
I have to say it again. This is the most brilliant invention Microsoft has ever come up with. It fixes an every day niggle that every one has just accepted for decades. It's dead obvious but no one thought of it before (I assume so far). Perfect candidate for a patent. And for all those who don't read articles: No it does not uses diodes, it's purely mechanical therefore does not drop any battery voltage or waste power like a bridge would. It's probably as cheap to make as regular battery contacts. Just hope it is as reliable as normal contacts. Brilliant I say. Well done Microsoft. I always thought you had some innovation in you somewhere.
Do not do it serially. Keep in mind that you can design with batteries in parallel fashion, and then connect the batteries serially logically. The funny thing is, that I DID think about this 3 years ago. For the last 3 years, I have been putting loads of batteries in kids toys and some of them just plained sux to put batteries in.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Let's say it use 2 batteries and the user place them like this
[- +}{+ -]
Well... doesn't look like it's going to work...
Just when Microsoft thought they'd built the ultimate idiot proof device, nature comes along with a better idiot.
To be fair though, those sort of devices are less common, and it's easier to spot when you've got it wrong (two batteries nose to nose or tail to tail is more obviously wrong than a single battery in backwards).
Microsoft has invented the diode? Thank goodness for that, I don't think electronics could progress any further without it.
If you insist on thinking of it as a diode, then it's a diode with a voltage drop of 0, which is pretty impressive!
I remember *some* devices that, instead of the cheap flat plate (positive contact) and spring (negative contact) configuration, had the housing built in such a manner that for the negative plate (which was semi-springy) it was full width, while for the positive plate it was shielded by the housing to just slightly over the width of the protruding positive contact of the AA/AAA battery.
That way, the battery could only be inserted one way. It solves the same big problem of inserting batteries the wrong way around and either the device not working, or worse.
It doesn't solve the "I wish I could put the battery either which way around so I don't have to use my square-peg-in-round-hole 18-month-old brain" problem, though - and it's still a fairly clever design. Now to see how well it holds up in mass production where tolerances of fitting such things in the housings are often seen as +-2mm and everything moves, twists and turns.
Heh.. my Microsoft wireless keyboard takes in batteries in physical series.. Guess they'd have to rework that one
Well when reading the news item as in "no electronics needed" how many people on Slashdot came up with the same idea in their head before reading the article? It's rather obvious how it could be done but yeah, many patentable things are. I just think it's sad people can patent such crap/simple stuff. Especially since many others could come up with a very similar product from just wanting to solve the same problem, and the patent would most likely cover that solution to.
I assume there's a reason it's not used already. Such as: It's not that hard to put the battery in correctly in the first place and maybe the connectors worn out faster / get bent more easily / touches by accident/moist/..
Users will be looking at these abiguos contacs and not be able to figure out which way to insert their batteries.
(No it doesn't help that any way will do if the user doesn't know it.)
FRA: STFU GTFO
...that someone who is too stupid to put a battery in the correct way round probably shouldn't be using an electronic device in the first place?
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
You should just say "out-of-spec RadioShack batteries".
No need to be coy.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Perhaps Apple should patent their 'batteries not changeable by yourself because you are morons' system too.
".... something MICROSOFT will benefit from. The company's patented design ..."
Just because somebody wins doesn't mean somebody else has to lose. If I want to quickly swap out the rechargeable batteries in my camera so I can take a few more shots, then I win also. I may pay a little more for the privilege, but if it's worth it to me, I've lost nothing.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
This will be a patented technology that will simply be ignored. I'll admit that on occasion I find it cumbersome to get the batteries in right, but for crying out loud! This is ridiculous.
Life needs these little challenges. Let's put it this way: it is well known that people who retire to a life of leisure don't typically live long after working their whole lives. When people stop using their muscles, their bodies turn to mush. And when things are too easy, people stop thinking as much and their minds turn to mush. Life without challenges is life that won't live long.
Okay, so that's the big picture. The smaller picture is where this stupid battery invention comes in.
And besides that, this only works with those types of cells. How about those coin and button cells that typically stack on one another to produce the voltage to power a TTL device? And beyond that, batteries have apparently, in spite of my personal resistance and preaching to the contrary, have gone to being non-removable for all of the most important and expensive devices. Where does this fit in any more? In wireless mice and remote controls? That's just about it these days.
...but I just realized my old-ass flashlight counts as one.
( it's been replaced years ago by a proper wind-up for emergency cases and a decent Maglite-like one with a rechargable set for more frequent/high intensity beam use )
Thanks a lot
Some just put out + and -, some others have a picture of the battery but molded into the plastic where it's not easy to see, some better have paper strips or something such.
But as said I just think people have accepted it and not starting thinking about / looking for a solution, as with many other popular simple items in your daily life. For instance atleast here in Sweden we've got those plastic scrapes to pick up the crap from the dish sink, and before someone invented that simple plastic scrape with holes in it people used their hands or a piece of household paper. Very simple and very comfortable vs using your hands or waste a lot of paper, but before doing that seemed like the obvious and normal things to do and most likely people didn't thought about it much ..
Now Microsoft had added the insulator part which atleast make it more reliable, if one had only cut two pieces of metallic then I assume it would had been easier for them to screw up than with a piece of insulator in between. Without the insulator / as a more simply and less refined design I assume it may have lost quite a bit in reliability for especially smaller batteries such as R03/AAA.
>And Sun Tzu also Said
It's Oracle Tzu now and it's not a strategic product anymore, you insensitive clod!
The truth is, it would be cheaper for most manufacturers just to spend a little bit more on tooling and do a decent job, and it would then not be necessary to have a relatively complicated bit of metal, 4 times. This is a BMW solution to a Ford problem.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
What, did you just get the first-post add-on for Opera?
[back on topic]
This mechanical battery solution is interesting but the main problem is that it becomes VERY HARD to take your batteries out again without a ribbon or some physical eject mechanism. The big advantage of the current battery holders is that the spring on the negative terminal end gives you just enough "give" to pop the battery back out. Of course this morning I filed a provisional patent to fix this battery removal issue. And it's a purely digital solution.
Note: if a question actually has multiple possible answers, it's not rhetorical.
If a question is meant to illustrate a point or accomplish rhetorical goals, the question is Rhetorical.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhetoric
The number of possible answers to a question has absolutely nothing to do with how rhetorical it is. Rhetorical questions are often asked in a way that doesn't expect an answer, but that quality of a question is distinctive from it rhetorical value.
Except diodes have a foward voltage drop almost as high as a 1.1V battery, so now it would take an extra 2 batteries for a 4 cell device using your "trivial" design.
Besides, no one uses diodes anymore for rectification - that's what fets are for!
That is SO useful! How can people be expected to look at a simple instruction diagram to find out which way to slot a battery into a gadget?
I think the solution I came up with when I read the summary is mechanically simpler, so I wonder if I can get a patent too...
Actually, the first thing I thought of was Jef Raskin's cable connector. It's a real shame that horrible designs like the USB connector(s) were adopted instead.
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'LATFPITFA' is certainly unique: Google returns one search result for it! Congratulations!
What one fool can do, another can. (Ancient Simian Proverb)