battery conspiracy?

shedweller

I've just modified my kids toy to work on rechargeable batteries and it was a very simple mod. The toy took four aa batteries but between two of the terminals was a little ten ohm resistor. By removing this and inserting a small bit of wire in its place i was able to get 5.2 volts which was enough to charge the toy. It needed 6volts so its ok.
I've come across this before with a ready to go phone waaay back in 1997! The battery died on me and the replacement cost was unpalatable so i stuck in four rechargeable aa's. Job done i thought. But they wouldnt charge in the phone. Hmm. So i tore apart the old phone battery and found a diode across two terminals. I soldered it into the phone and like magic, it charged!
It seems in this day and age that this policy/conspiracy is very much at odds with the push for ever greener ways of living. Shouldn't manufacturers be held accountable for this messing. Yes we can recycle the batteries but throwing in a few packs of aa's with the weekly shopping sure gets tedious. Anyway, i've looked around t'internet for a while now and i'm not alone in my suspicions. However i do see in a lot of forums where the poster is ridiculed about his opinion and a whole load of techy jargon is thrown at him.
As per my opening line, it is sometimes possible to modify a device to use rechargeable batteries. In my case i have less voltage but it works quite well.
Didnt work at all before the mod.

What say you lot?

MattD1349

Economics Dude. No real conspiracy, just ensuring repeated demand.

Overheal

it would be a conspiracy I suppose if collusion could be proven.

shedweller

MattD1349 wrote: »

Economics Dude. No real conspiracy, just ensuring repeated demand.

Very much economics alright. Are the toy makers still not conspiring though?
They must be making a packet from this racket. Wow that even rhymed!

seamus

I suspect the testing and certification involved in ensuring that your device is capable of being used as a battery charger means that it's economically sounder to just prevent this from happening with a resistor that costs half a cent.

Children's toys in particular are continually driven to be as cheap as possible while being as safe as possible. Unless you're an electrical/electronic engineer and you're confident enough that you're doing something safe (as you seem to be), I probably wouldn't advocate these things as life hacks for people.
If someone was to make a €10 child's toy with rechargeable capabilities, the resulting payout (and overall cost) of an accident that injured a child would be of the order of 8 figures. Children's toys don't make that much money individually.

The number of cheap chinese phone chargers and batteries that go on fire and burn people and houses down shows that scrimping on quality when it comes to electrics isn't really worth it.

In the case of the ready-to-go phone, it's a bit like OEM car parts. Build your car out of non-generic parts and void a warranty for using non-OEM so that people have to pay through the nose for replacements.

Fuzzy Clam

I doubt its a conspiracy.
The diode is probably to prevent damage if the batteries are inserted the wrong way.

shedweller

Fuzzy Clam wrote: »

I doubt its a conspiracy.
The diode is probably to prevent damage if the batteries are inserted the wrong way.

Aye. My point was that it could have been put in the phone and achieve the same result. Should have been clearer. Soz!

shedweller

seamus wrote: »

I suspect the testing and certification involved in ensuring that your device is capable of being used as a battery charger means that it's economically sounder to just prevent this from happening with a resistor that costs half a cent.

Children's toys in particular are continually driven to be as cheap as possible while being as safe as possible. Unless you're an electrical/electronic engineer and you're confident enough that you're doing something safe (as you seem to be), I probably wouldn't advocate these things as life hacks for people.
If someone was to make a €10 child's toy with rechargeable capabilities, the resulting payout (and overall cost) of an accident that injured a child would be of the order of 8 figures. Children's toys don't make that much money individually.

The number of cheap chinese phone chargers and batteries that go on fire and burn people and houses down shows that scrimping on quality when it comes to electrics isn't really worth it.

Good post! I should have said that the device i modded was already a charger for a small rc car. It only has battery slots and no charging socket so it needs fresh batteries to charge the car. This got old real quick for me.
I understand what you mean about being able to charge a device with the batteries in situ when previously they werent.

weisses

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2057472928


discussed here as well

Overheal

yeah, more a consumer conspiracy if that.