Show HN: Trontium Reactor, the first USB Power Delivery battery (opens in new tab)

The should include a camera in the device as well - just to record reactions when people take it out of their bag at airport security checks.

The only way I can see they could have made it look more threatening would be to write "Atomic Bomb" in large letters down the side and have a large LED display counting down to zero in 15 seconds or so.

Edit: The perfect add-on for your reactor: http://www.instructables.com/id/Crazy-Countdown-Timer/

What a bad name for a product. It reminds one of strontium and nuclear reactor. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strontium

It's an accu battery pack (lithium-ion), no nuclear reaction, the name is misleading.

My favorite item from the Q&A [1]:

What’s to prevent a Reactor from rolling off a table?

We will be offering an octagonal silicone sleeve that will prevent a Reactor from rolling off surfaces and also protect it from bumps.

So....your base product actually will roll off the table, but you can buy an optional extra to prevent it?

I know nothing about USB power delivery, but I presume that's the value proposition (since as others have noted, there are already a plethora of external USB batteries) although it seems nothing currently supports it.

[1] https://trontium.com/answers/

For $299 I can sure buy a lot of lithium ion batteries. There are already many such products out there that are very cheap. 290w/h is 58000 mah at 5v. I can buy a 11,000 mah pack for 29.99 on Amazon and surprise it weighs 1/4 the weight. Even if I bought 5 of them to equal the energy capacity it would be 1/2 the cost. (But it is not a REACTOR) There really is nothing novel at all about this product, and it is overpriced. I guess I am doing something wrong when shoving 3 lbs of commodity Li ion batteries into a tube and making some fancy name can yield a 100% profit margin.

The fact the website's team page is essentially devoid of information is worrying. I'm not a hardware guy so I have no idea about this sort of thing, but how hard is battery design? Is it wise to trust $thousands worth of Macbook/camera/etc to a battery designed by a group of anonymous people behind a Kickstarter campaign? If any of the people involved is an experienced and qualified electrical engineer, they really need to be shouting about it.

Awww. I was really hoping it would be a nuclear reactor that I could buy and use to power my electrical devices forever. I've got to say I was quite disappointed to find it was just a large battery.

This is cool, and I love the coming wave of sexy batteries :)

My main gripe is this: ONLY USB output? Why?

I currently have a "noname chinese crapgadget" battery that can power my usb devices, but also has 9V and 12V output. Much more versatile!

Also, and this is more of a stretch, I know - being able to power a macbook would make this a FAR more universal kind of battery.

EDIT: Oh! I'm sorry, it seems that you can charge your macbook.... https://trontium.com/specs/ But how does that work?

Good job with the site design and product design, and I wish you success with your crowdfunding! :-)

From FAQ:

>> Can I bring a Reactor on a plane?

> Yes. Per FAA rules every traveler can carry-on up to two Reactor sized batteries.

Well, if supposedly[0] a charged laptop battery can be shorted to unleash energy equivalent of a small hand grenade, how strong a bomb made of two Reactors would be?...

[0] - so I read at random places in the Internet.

Two things from the website : >We created Trontium to drive humanity forward Ok I cant discuss the reasons why you created trontium and driving humanity forward is indeed a great goal but wow this is just a (rather cool) battery.

Plus I think the keyboard (a yamaha psr E403 I think) featured in the pictures is not usb powered.

Other than that I'm impressed by the 8 charges you can make with the dewalt drill. Great to build something far from power outlets.

> Made in California

Perhaps it means something positive in California itself, but outside of it it more or less means "expensive, pompous, behind schedule" :)

My wife's cell phone and camera are constantly running out of juice. One of these would be great. But let's be real. This battery pack is larger than her whole purse.

The picture they have of a backpacker with a liter bottle on one side of his pack and a Trontium on the other looks nice and self-sufficient but he's got all that extra weight to lug. Is he going to be living in the wilderness for 10 days whilst writing a novel on a laptop or tablet? That's about the one use for this battery that I can foresee.

For the average Joe, this thing isn't going to be doing much traveling. And if it's not traveling, it's sitting on a counter not too far away from a wall socket.

As for taking it on a plane -- most plane trips aren't long enough to warrant a super-battery. Devices these days can last 6-8 hours between charges, and if they don't, there are all sorts of cheaper solutions. I have a $20 lipstick-size battery that's good enough to keep a phone or tablet in business for a few extra hours.

I'm afraid I just don't see the point of this product as it is. But I hope they keep doing research, and learn how to shrink it down until it's truly portable.

The kerning in that video looks as if the creators dragged and dropped the letters on there one by one.

Yes.. but its just a lot of heavy lithium batteries stuffed in a metal casing.. with a power draining LED to boot? Also, like nakedrobot2 say elsewhere, why only USB?

I like the LED status lights, but I don't like the skeumorphic cylindrical battery shape. Batteries get away with it because you put them into something. This thing will just continue to fall down or roll around.

Not sure what I get what all the hype on the site is about. It's a big rechargeable battery you can use to power all your USB things... ok this one supports USB-PD (how many devices support that?) but is that really that big of a deal? Right now it looks like a solution looking for a problem.

The idea of negotiating voltage (up to 20V) just doesn't seem all that great to me: consider a failure mode that lets the full 20V into USB devices designed for only 5, like the majority are.

Why have two websites? That would seem to be a bad idea from a branding perspective. Why not www.trontium.com and talk.trontium.com?

The interesting part here is that it uses the new USB "Power Delivery" standard, that can switch to 20V instead of the normal 5V. This allows up to 100W of power from one USB port. It could power laptops and other somewhat power hungry devices, once they have USB power input.

The protruding sheet metal on the end caps says "prototype". It doesn't have the refined quality that the price tag suggests. The edge looks like it came straight off a sheet metal shear. At least put a nice machined edge on it.

Wow. This seems like a direct competitor of Gbatteries (YC W14). Link to discussion on Gbatteries: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7459435

My favorite part:

> We are working on an inexpensive add on that will allow control of the lighting function underwater

Fits in a backpack water-bottle sleeve -cool!

The LEDs seem a bit excessive, and for $299... well. Good luck though, hope it goes well!

I wonder how long until Apple makes an official USB Power Delivery adapter for MacBooks.

How are you the first "USB Power Delivery battery"? What's a Mophie?

How is this even legal, if it contains actual trontium?

Who wants to walk around with a radioactive material in your pocket, irradiating your genitals?

Scary idea.