BrightCharger: The Eco-Friendly Smart Charger - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: Sonny_Jim
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: May 23, 2017, 06:25:47 am
content: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/brightcharger-the-eco-friendly-smart-charger-technology#/QuoteDoesn't pretty much every decent Li-ion cell come with protection circuitry already? And doesn't that protection circuitry have to be directly wired into the cell itself?

author: Zbig
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: May 23, 2017, 01:04:26 pm
content: There is no sane way of charging Li-Ion/Po other than the proper CC/CV routine at minimum. Every properly designed commercial mobile product implements that and it's never done charger-side. It's up to the charging circuitry inside the device to taper off and then shut down the charging current as the battery reaches its terminal voltage. The protection circuit inside the battery is just that: a protection in case everything else fails. They either have no clue what they are talking about or think everyone else doesn't.

author: RGB255_0_0
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: May 23, 2017, 01:38:21 pm
content: $33

author: BrightCharger
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: May 25, 2017, 10:31:42 pm
content: Absolutely every Li-On have protection circuitry and that protects from overcharging. When battery reaches full charge, phone turns to maintenance mode and stops charging battery. Maintenance power keeps phone alive without charging the battery. In the morning battery is 100%. Our question is Why to force battery stay full? Yes, you get 100% full battery and next 30min it is near 90%.Our solution is: we want to offer a BRIGHT new style of chargingSlower the charging, stop before “full”, prevent the “forcing” and then shut down the charging always completely.Comes with values:*Improved safety - no overheating risk to charger or battery*Energy efficiency - Save energy because cut of idle power of charger and maintenance/forcing power to battery*Better battery - Might increase time between the charging sessions and battery life*Optional night light feature + clear indicator to charging status*slower charging:Talking about 1A vs 2A charging, which is fast. 3A is even faster. On the other hand, fast=heat. Repetitive heating and even overheating is bad for lithium ion batteries. Compared to fast charging, you always need that same charger, which makes the “handshake” with your device for giving the fast charge to your phone. When the handshake is done / approved, the fast charge starts: the more Volts it can give the more Amperes which speeds up the charging. Simultaneously, charging chip has to monitor battery temperature because it rises a lot and has to be under threshold. It means if you open the phone and start using it, charger’s boost charging, temperature rising and fast charging have to stop. Playing with this temperature threshold and overheating is something we don’t want to recommend, because of studies on fast charging suggest there’s a possibility that it might reduce time between charging sessions and thus your battery life. Our thinking is based on a fact: Heat and Li-On don’t fit together.*Improved safety:Chargers can cause risk of fire. Visit Google “fires caused because of chargers”. BrightCharger has the value of taking off risk of fires caused by chargers and this value works with any kind of USB chargeable devices. Our way is we separate the battery from the charger as well as unplug charger from the wall after we’ve fulfilled the battery. Without an effort to think you get safety that haven’t been possible to provide before as simple way.*Energy efficiencyEnergy savings which is achieved when shut down charging and charger automatically, without effort to think.Saving isn’t much to individual but if we reach bigger picture the numbers grow. We think it is just irrational that all the world’s chargers consume while in a wall, even when not used for charging or for the phones’ landline modes. When battery reach full it’s turn to maintenance mode and in these modern days we don’t want to go back and turn our mobile gadgets into landline devices when battery is full. Talking about savings based on this ‘landline phone function’, e.g. Samsung Galaxy S7 edge consumes 4,8W in that mode and with certain cycle ‘sniffs’ if the phone’s battery needs to be fulfilled again and again. That is only way how you can get 100% full battery in the morning. Our way is we separate the battery from the charger as well as unplug charger from the wall after we’ve fulfilled the battery with slower charging to “full”. So number of consuming is pure zero after charging is stopped (and night light switch is OFF) Then we have zero consumption and not possible to charge again before touching the dome of the charger.If Optional night light mode ON, then after charging process is ended, the consumption of LED is 1.4W*Better battery:There is always some kinds of treadmills ongoing all the time and that is only way keep battery full 100% and that we want to stop.One fact is anyway Li-On best working range is 10-90% and everybody knows that, unplug that 100% full battery and see how battery drop quite fast near 90% and then it start to last better. So we think at is best for the battery to charge above 90% then stop the charging. Check out battery university long-term studies about this topic (http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/charging_lithium_ion_batteries)*FinallyWe’re more than happy to tell that actually there is a solution determining the status of the battery and we do it with our algorithm. BrightCharger is able to make the decision when the battery is “fully” charged. (90-100%) Include situations when phone is resting or someone is gaming with it. BrightCharger stops charging completely and stops drawing power from the wall. To re-charge, it requires touching of the dome again.

author: Zbig
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: May 26, 2017, 11:47:54 am
content: Hate to rain on your parade, but there's been so many startups trying (and failing) to "revolutionize" the phone charging with excessive usage of terms "green", "smart" and "eco", I'm not even willing to put an effort of addressing each of your claims individually. No offense, but you seem like one those people who has just learned some basics behind a topic and suddenly, for no particular reason, think you can do so much better. Your "More Volts means more Amps" statement is particularly revealing in that matter.Standards like Qualcomm's Quick Charge, that indeed allow the device to negotiate the voltage higher than 5V from the charger, were created to maximize the efficiency. By raising the voltage, you can transfer the same power with less current which, in effect, minimizes the resistive losses in the cable and connectors.Regarding charging the battery overnight to 90%: recent Sony Experias already do that: they figure out your daily routine and then charge the battery to 90% overnight, only to top it up to 100% just before you wake up. They can do it, because the smartphone itself has all the needed data while you can't. You and your charger could only make an educated guess based on the current value in time which could or could not have any relation to the actual state of charge. And no, my phone doesn't drop from 100% to 90% in 30 minutes. And even if some do, it could very well not be the actual SoC but just the characteristics of the battery gauge.As for cutting the charging voltage as soon as you think the charge is completed in order to save energy: you do realize that as soon as you do that, the phone starts to discharge the battery for its standby activities and, in effect, will need a recharge sooner than it otherwise would, if you just left it alone under external charger power, right? You don't "save" anything this way.As for the charger allegedly "wasting" power by just being connected: when will this nonsense die? The quiescent current of any modern, good quality charger under no load is negligible/f**k all (depending on how civil you are). Go ahead, check for yourself: take a look at any reasonable quality USB charger by any reasonably reputable brand plugged into the wall, not charging anything at the moment. Does it produce any loud noises? Does it produce any amount of light? Does it run circles around your room? Does it get noticeably warm? If it's a "no" to all of the above, it doesn't waste any significant amount of power and any effort or expense to further minimize that is not worth it.Take a look athttp://qnovo.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Qnovo_TechWhitePaper_v2.4.pdf(the technology also found in recent Sony Experias) and maybe you'll realize how much more involved than just learning the Ohm's Law it is to make any considerable improvement to the Li-Po battery charging technology.Also, what on Earth is a "fulfilled battery"? Is it a battery that has two kids, a house in the suburbs and some savings?Sorry for being blunt, but this will fail. You should really redirect your efforts to something worthwhile.EDIT:As for the claim that if your charger is not a BrightCharger it will probably spontaneously burst in flames at some point, it's so ridiculous I wouldn't even know where to start.

author: ar__systems
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: May 27, 2017, 08:59:29 pm
content: Quote from: BrightCharger on May 25, 2017, 10:31:42 pmThat's hilarious. You come to the electronics forum and try to feed us with your load of bullshit? Dude, come on. Don't waste your effort, you won't find any suckers here.Let's just call the things what they really are. Your device is not a charger, it is a power supply.The actual charger (as in circuitry that sits between battery, device, and power supply) is located in the device you supply power to, be it a tablet or cellphone. As a power supply you have no way of knowing in which state of charging the battery is. The only thing you can know is voltage and current you supply. You don't know the voltage or current of the actual battery. So basically you have no clue what's going on in the battery, and so there is no way in hell that you can make things work the way you promise.So please stop scamming people and go get a real job.

author: Sonny_Jim
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: May 29, 2017, 03:35:04 am
content: You've got to give them some credit for signing up and posting here, I did wonder how on earth they found their way here but it seems eevblog is on the first page of results for "BrightCharger: The Eco-Friendly Smart Charger" (for me, anyway).Such a shame they didn't bother addressing any of our concerns and just copied and pasted a press release. I know it can be a bit of an acerbic environment, but in some cases we've had some good dialog with people here. The 'zero power mains standby' video would be a good example of this, where they admitted that some of their claims were not presented correctly and changed their video to reflect this.As Zbig points out though, I don't think BrightCharger actually cares whether their product does any good or not, just that if they throw enough buzzwords and tries to scare people into housefires they'll get some sales.

author: Cyberdragon
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 05, 2017, 08:55:06 pm
content: I would like to make every charger that IS a BrightPower charger burst into flames.If it doesn't already given their lack of knowledge of electricty. Does it even have properly rated components or voltage seperation?