Motion Activated Battery Bank - Stupid. Sad. - Kickfarted Ep 3
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2017-05-06
·
1,777 words · ~8 min read
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welcome back to kickfarted kickfarted is
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a series that we do on crowdfunded projects through kickstarter indiegogo
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or whatever other platform that ship but don't exactly hit the mark today we're
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going to be looking at the ampy move the world's first wearable motion charger
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it's a portable smartphone battery that charges as you move
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yeah
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Intel skull canyon knock features a 6th generation core i7 processor and
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Thunderbolt 3. learn more in the link in the video description
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the ampy kickstarter was wildly successful they raised 309
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323 dollars they were featured in a number of major publications as well
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people got excited and i get it they make you feel really good about wanting
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to buy one they say stuff like your movement is your power your movement is
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your power hell yeah it is ampy captures
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the energy from your movement throughout the day and uses it to power your phone
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and other wearables they talk about the future about how one day maybe their
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technology will be integrated into smart watches and wearables so you never have
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to plug them in again we're so excited about what's to come one day our
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technology could be integrated directly into smart watches fitness trackers and
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other crazy wearables that haven't been invented yet so you never have to plug
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them in damn they're so cool i love this stuff
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and i mean like look at this right on the front of the box it says one hour of
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exercise equals five hours of smartphone battery life and just within the front
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cover it says that this battery can charge one full smartphone charge no
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asterisks that's just what they're saying they go on to state that people
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have a problem with their phones dying before the end of the day we all have
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the same problem our phones would die before the end of the day so many people
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have this problem oh my god i have that problem please take my money and they
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did which is why we're here today delivery wise they were okay we received
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ours mostly on time with their website still being up and you can currently buy
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them on amazon that puts stride technologies inc ahead of a lot of other
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crowdfunded companies but i must say in response to a headline that someone from
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buzzfeed copy pasted from another one of their articles why has no one invented
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this before well buzzfeed here's the top
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three reasons why one it barely works
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two they exaggerated its capabilities and three this is key i would hardly
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classify this as an invention nothing in it is a new technology and now if your
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attention span is so impressive that you can get beyond buzzfeed keep watching to
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learn more as we transition into the actual review section of this video well
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it's a battery that charges with movement so to begin i gave it to three
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different people and told them to do three different things with it taryn
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biked around some city roads for a little bit and then did some various
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workouts in the gym with it nick van burkel took it with him on a bmx bike to
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a pump track both of these scenarios resulted in a net power generation of
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nothing or at least nothing that i could measure by plugging it into my dead
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phone and measuring the resulting charge keep in mind both of these guys doing both of these
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things did it for at least an hour there's no way it's not charged at all i
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was literally riding for an hour straight it is not charging
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at all so yeah didn't work
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wonderful maholo
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i guess the little led did light up so there's that but that's it
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that seemed odd because if you hold it in your hand and you know like jack it
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for a little while it works the little led lights up and you can actually get
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some charge onto your phone if you can go long enough
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we got a little flash that was it that's where Linus came in i
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secretly hate him so i sent him out for a jog for an entire hour with the
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specific instruction that he needed to keep a lot of bounce in his step in
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order to shake the ante he came back exhausted which was funny
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and covered in sweat which was less funny when i had to actually take the
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ampy from him then the led light lit up
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i plugged it into my phone and it started to charge i genuinely got really
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excited here Linus had to suffer and the ampy was actually going to work now okay
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it's not all they claimed it would be neither of the previous benchmarks
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worked at all if we had used the energy that it took to chill this water and
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pump it into this building for me to consume it all while i ran
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to charge a phone i mean there you go
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but it's working now right
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right no not really
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a minute or two into charging i still hadn't gained a single percent and it
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was starting to fail my phone seemed confused as to whether or not it was
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charging and just a few seconds after that
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it was all over if you live in a city you probably walk
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enough to extend your phone's battery life by three hours
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if you also go on a run or maybe go cycling you can extend it by six hours
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the more you move the more power you get so big surprise it doesn't actually work
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now let's address their claims one hour of exercise equals five hours of
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smartphone battery life right well if you flip the box over it's a bit of a
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different story now it's stating five hours of standby battery life but okay
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okay what about the power's one full smartphone thing there can't be any
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clever wording there right well it's based off an iphone 5c of all
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things the battery listed on the box is only 1600 milliamp hours however it does
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say on their website that it's 1800 milliamp hours whichever version of
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their statements you decide to believe which at this point should probably be
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neither it's just over or just under one half of
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my pixel xl's maximum charge
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that's pathetic
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i mean you can just charge it from the wall like any
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other freaking battery bank but you shouldn't because it's a terrible
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battery bank with an embarrassing maximum charge for its size
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and weight take these two batteries for
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instance one from anker and one from chiro this one is 6700 milliamp hours
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this one is 6400 milliamp hours if you put them together
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they're actually just ever so slightly larger than the ampi yet with a combined
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maximum charge of over 7 times more at
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13 100 milliamp hours
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just buy a normal battery bank so what happened to all that special
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tech that it took three engineering phds from northwestern to develop
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let's find out by tearing the ampy apart
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wait so it's a magnet in an inductor
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i mean i'm not that great at physics but you start learning this in grade like 11
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or 12 don't you very impressive guys very impressive now
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i'm not saying that the principle of operation here can't be useful in
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certain situations it's a very cool idea just the implementation is nasty and
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deplorable as far as i can tell they saw an advertisement on tv at like 2 a.m
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advertising a flashlight that works when you shake it and had a sudden revelation
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of oh my god if we just replace the capacitor that's in the end of there
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with a battery we can store the charge longer
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brilliant absolutely brilliant i love it it's
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fantastic great idea speaking of brilliant john suggested a wonderful
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kickstarter idea to me let's install water wheels in toilets and urinals so
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people can charge their devices while they take a piss we should start a
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kickstarter anyways the ideas aside what's their
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future well no news yet and hopefully it stays that
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way for the sake of their potential future customers looking at the comments
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from their current ones on kickstarter reveals an impressive and inspiring
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amount of anger i speak for you and again just like last time this
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product wasn't exactly just released but they're still trying to sell it so i
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thought i'd try to alert people before they try to flush their money down their
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toilet alongside their waterwheel of power generation
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crunchyroll is a site that was created by anime fans for anime fans and that
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means that they offer the most current episodes of new shows straight from japan like re zero or orange they have a
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large collection of the most popular anime series like naruto and ace
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attorney and all of their content on their site has been professionally
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subtitled head over to crunchyroll.com Linus and you can sign up for a 30-day
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free trial of crunchyroll premium your monthly premium will be ad free and
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you'll enjoy benefits like 1080p streaming getting episodes of new shows
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straight from japan within an hour of their premiere and being able to stream
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anywhere anytime from a variety of devices like your phone tablet game
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console laptop whatever you can continue
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your premium membership to crunchyroll for only 6.95 per month so again head
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over crunchyroll.com Linus and check them out
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if you guys liked this video like it and do not buy an ampy if you dislike this
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video go ahead press the button hit subscribe so you can see more of our
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stuff later on and check out the description down below to see where you can buy stuff on amazon like normal
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battery banks which function very well and aren't an ampy um also there should
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be a link to buy our shirts and check out our community forum where you can uh
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yell or talk or discuss various things thanks for watching check out this video
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which is kickfarted episode 1 where i talk about a different horrible product
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and i'll see you next time