In my world, AA batteries are all about door locks. There are a lot of card-reading door locks that depend on them.
Whenever a lock fails, step one or two or three is replace the batteries. That's 4-6 batteries per lock.
As a maintenance/security procedure, once every couple of years, every battery in every lock in the entire building is replaced. Doesn't matter if they are dead, weak or brand new. That's hundreds/thousands of batteries.
That's a lot of batteries. And Duracell has multiple levels of "pro"/"industrial grade" batteries. We buy them by the case.
I'm sure the markup on consumer batteries are huge, but I'd also think the commercial use of double-As must dwarf the consumer market. Smart buy by Warren is my guess.
What's needed in this space is a door lock that winds itself much like a "perpetual" watch. Something that takes the mechanical energy used to turn the door handle and turns it into stored energy that can be used to read the card and unbolt the door.
It already is, though not for hotel room doors/etc. I used to have access to a colo where racks rented individually (i.e. not in a cage) had a combination lock that was electronic. To use it, you first "charged" it by turning the knob back and forth a few times, then entering your code. The correct code mechanically connects the knob to the locking mechanism, so turning the knob unlocked the door.
In the case you mentioned, I do wonder if you could get a bit more energy from the door itself rather than just the handle. For example, if the spring-loaded self-closing mechanisms weren't just mechanical, but used that energy to generate electricity, you might get a bit more out of it.
> And Duracell has multiple levels of "pro"/"industrial grade" batteries
What are the differences between those and the retail cells, in your experience?
I've seen people quoting P&G reps that the only difference is the glossiness of the labels and the cardinality of the package, but I haven't found any definitive statement online one way or the other.
The people I work with (about 900 of them, all <20 yrs old) do not check their email. The only reason they have email is to create an account with a service that has little or nothing to do with email. Forget about email.
Of course, he could never use the term "sperm whale". But this is what led to the Endangered Species Act that granted the whales a reprieve. Lang's invention was only a reaction to this. It's still a good read.
I appreciate the work they have done and have a great respect for the amount of research and effort behind this, but I really wish it was more affordable.
My girlfriend is dyslexic and is struggling (even with reading lessons, etc.) through college because of it. I had her read the example in the video and some of the text on their site and she was able to do so much more efficiently. I'd love to be able to purchase this font for her so she can use it when reading/writing documents for her classes, but the amount they are asking is simply too much for me.
I wonder if we'd be able to convince her health insurance to reimburse us for the cost? I can dream. :)
That's insanely expensive. Why should only the dyslexic kids that go to rich schools be given this opportunity to read easily? Surely reading is one of the basic things that should be made as equal for everyone as possible?
The technical details were great. And I'm sure other devs can learn from your predicament. But, as a user, you didn't answer the question, "When can I use this again?"
It broke. You fixed it. But, "Can I expect this to work again?" "Reliably?" All I heard was that it was broken.
It sounded a lot like, "something broke, it took a long time to fix."
