I always worried that it was a vampire draw on the battery and made the waste problem of batteries worse. Open to being wrong though
You could watch the video and find out.
It’s only connected when you are pressing the spots, and they were painful to use so that they wouldn’t get pressed accidentally.
My fingers still hurt because of these batteries.
I have a 3rd-party bit insert for my Leatherman that can check voltage on batteries, so I’m set for this problem (volty by pcpoodle)
Something on-battery would be cool, but with that Duracell PowerCheck implementation never seemed right to me, it seemed to show the battery having more and more power the harder and harder I pushed on the spots. 🤷
You’re either completing the circuit or not when you press on them.
Not necessarily. Buttons and switches introduce contact resistance, which in the case of the mushy Duracell buttons, is relatively high and also dependent on how hard they’re pressed.
Ideally, the buttons are pressed very hard to ensure the entire contact area is closed, minimizing the contact resistance from the buttons. A good switch should have little resistance.
Poorly closing the contacts by not pressing the Duracell buttons very hard would result in higher contact resistance (because there’s physically less contact between both halves of the switch), which means less current flows through the strip and less heat is generated. This would look identical to a deader battery with the buttons pressed well.
was it a genius idea if it was never needed in the first place?
The implementation was genius but it wasn’t really all that practical. I don’t think it being impractical takes away from the idea of the battery checking strip being cool regardless
