EEVblog #1121 - Fontus goes BANKRUPT!

Who saw it coming?, Fontus have filed for bankruptcy!
The infamous "self-filling water bottle" that raised $340k on Indiegogo has gone bankrupt and delivered nothing.
You 'canna beat the laws of physics Captain!

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[smc]

Went bankrupt - after awarding themselves nice salaries for a number of years. Once all the money was gone, killed the company off and on to the next grift.

So, let's not forget that when we celebrate the company going bankrupt. It's like a cell dying as the viruses burst forth from it, to spread elsewhere

[iamdarkyoshi]

Would have worked if they used batterizers to amplify the wank factor

[FullSendPrecision]

So they failed at building a dehumidifier.

[Thunderft]

1/3rd of a million dollars well spent!

[Thirsty_Fox]

It seems common lately to raise an enormous amount of funds in kickstarters for products that aren't reasonable. It also seems that the low-information people supporting these projects say that anyone who points out the flaws is just a 'naysayer' and 'scared of the future'.

[akuaku]

Thank you James Dyson Award, keep up the good work. Special thanks to the technical team that checks all the competition entries.

[TheMoistpotato]

Sadly i was an engineer at a startup "green energy" company, and the engineering dept all came to agreeance that the product we were developing was not a viable and safe product, all 8 of us left the company on ethical grounds over a year ago, even today and the slimeball president is still trying to screw investors on a product that doesn't work. Greed and stupidity has no limits. The saddest part is, there are non techical idiot investors still feeding money into this pre revenue company that has burnt 15 million in 10 years with a product that will never come remotely close to meeting the market expectations for a viable product. Idiots tend to believe they can challenge and rewrite the laws of physics and thermodynamics, when things dont turn out as they were fluffing to investors

[SwapPartLLC]

At 95% humidity you could just wring your shirt out into a cup and drink that.

[willsoe]

Their next indiegogo will be for a self-filling bank account

[charlesdeens]

"It just requires money to overcome the laws of physics"...lmao

[olbrzym]

Fan at 12v and 2A. Great if you want your water bottle to sound like landing harrier jet!

[Rick_Foley]

Am I the only one that noticed the "functional prototype" check mark was only half-way colored in. Like it's borderline functional.

[Psychlist]

My interest in crowdfunding is inversely proportional to the production quality of the video.

Also, if the video uses ukuleles and happy clapping, I'm out.

[retnemmoc]

"Applied arts university"
Couldn't even get a mail-order "technical" university.

[toast_recon]

In my second year of undergrad I did a (report) project on exactly this kind of thing, and came to a similar conclusion that we'd need a big 200w solar panel to get any kind of meaningful water out of the thing. So our use case was little water dispensers on hiking trails. I combined it with actually humidity/temp data day by day and (with what I could find brushing up on the thermodynamics behind it) calculated actual yields for different parts of the US. On good days in really humid places I got a couple liters a day, whereas in worse spots I'd get half a liter or even less. Sometimes the dew point is below freezing and there's no way to extract water without frosting up the device (my reasoning)

What I came up with was a pretty good numerical analysis on why the idea wasn't super practical. What's interesting is what my groupmates thought. There was this tendency for them to overestimate to try to exaggerate the calculated effectiveness (use ideal numbers for ridiculous humidity values) and try to pitch it to the class ass a portable device that produces these same numbers.

So my point is 1. Even an inexperienced undergrad should really be able to tell it isn't practical and refocus/abandon the project 2. There's this tendency among people to ignore the facts and try to make them fit what would be most convenient for their own interests. "This has to work because otherwise I'm a failure" is such a toxic mindset. Your job as an engineer is to see if it could work as intended, and if not, readjust everyone's expectations.

[darrenbremner]

Yer, run out of money. All money shifted over to the individuals running the show as salaries, company bankrupt. Money from investors into their pockets, job done.

[Mostlyharmless]

The thing that kills me about the bicycle mounted device is they they used a solar panel on the top brace, the part that will have a person over it and shading it, when there is a very obvious and easy to tap source of power from the wheels...

[Vladimir-hqne]

Well, that was the lack-of-education-of-backers tax.

[Furiends]

I like how that Fontus post tries to shift blame on the backers and on the media and on the "popularity" and on the awards. Couldn't have just been a gross miscalculation probably influenced by the cash signs in their eyes?

[ojonasar]

This is why we need a good education system and teaching people to actually think for themselves.