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Progress for Fontus (magical self-filling water bottle) not looking great; 2 months delay in finishing prototype, lots of technojargon in status update, "Engineers based in Vienna has already started optimizing Prototypes developed in the US" (indiegogo.com)

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トップ新着論争中古い順Q&A

[–]zoltecrules 22 ポイント23 ポイント  (1子コメント)

Everytime I see this project I keep thinking back to AMPY:

  • Take a highly inefficient technology (thermoelectric coolers, energy harvesting)

  • Convince people of impossible performance numbers without explaining it's only under the most perfect conditions and generous interpretation

  • When people question your product, just claim you have some top-secret new technology that overcomes it

  • Wait for people to receive their product, get disappointed, and claim it's just because they aren't using it in the right way

[–]relator_fabula 15 ポイント16 ポイント  (0子コメント)

Worse yet, they will claim that "it's getting better" and "this is only the first incarnation, future versions will be better, this is the price of innovation" and "We should be praised for changing the paradigm" and "We'd still be driving cross country if the Wright Brothers thought like you" and garbage like that.

[–]shoez 16 ポイント17 ポイント  (2子コメント)

we are still struggling with some suppliers and the company in charge of prototype development

There's another company in charge of "prototype development"?

To quote Office space:

What would you say...you do here?

[–]zoltecrules 11 ポイント12 ポイント  (0子コメント)

From what I read, the original team was industrial design team. Most likely they farmed out the engineering to an engineering firm or more likely an ODM.

Didn't you know 99% of the work is just coming up with idea?

[–]relator_fabula 5 ポイント6 ポイント  (0子コメント)

It's nothing short of absurd that they've been hawking this piece of shit since 2014, supposedly filed a patent in 2015 (https://c1.iggcdn.com/indiegogo-media-prod-cld/image/upload/c_limit,w_620/v1459707667/Timeline_final-01_xnqpzm.jpg) and yet here we are in November of 2016 and they've yet to even develop a prototype. They just come up with crazy, wild-eyed ideas, and then try to hand them off to an engineering team. "Here, make this happen somehow, because we had no idea what we were doing." This video is so relevant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKorP55Aqvg

[–]danwin[S] 12 ポイント13 ポイント  (2子コメント)

Dear supporters,

Another two months have passed and we are still struggling with some suppliers and the company in charge of prototype development. Consequently, I have decided to relocate the main activities of the development process to Vienna where we hope to achieve faster results and higher quality. The row of prototypes developed in the US did not meet our performance expectations and processes were overall extremely slow. Moreover, quality supervision was and still is difficult due to large distances. This is a problem we aim to resolve by adding the workforce of local independent professionals.

A new team of Engineers based in Vienna has already started optimizing Prototypes developed in the US and developing new alternative solutions that will enhance performance. Furthermore, the team has presented several solutions to existing technical problems that will have a positive effect on the functioning of the bottles. Naturally, these solutions force us to slightly modify the overall design, usage and dimensions of the bottles. Once the final design has been decided, we will naturally inform you immediately.

Approaching the end of October, we are unfortunately out of schedule since the final prototyping phase hasn’t been completed yet. Our aim is to finalize this phase by the end of the year. Thanks for your patience!

Have a nice week!

Kristof

Past discussion https://www.reddit.com/r/shittykickstarters/comments/4ie8ni/thunderf00t_debunks_the_fontus_self_filling_water/

Metabunk discussion in which Fontus attempts to defend itself: https://www.metabunk.org/fontus-self-filling-water-bottle-indiegogo-scam-campaign.t7495/

The Metabunk thread also points out that the September update casually mentions that Fontus engineers happened to create perhaps the most valuable new material in decades en route to developing a Fontus prototype:

I am in Los Angeles overseeing the technical development and supporting the team that has been tirelessly working on the heart technology of Fontus. They have been able to integrate a new type of material composition that has a cooling conduciveness of more than 30 times copper! (copper being one of the highest conductor materials used in the industry).

https://www.metabunk.org/fontus-self-filling-water-bottle-indiegogo-scam-campaign.t7495/page-3#post-190724

Boy this is getting into Triton-level of science

[–]Ekaros 1 ポイント2 ポイント  (0子コメント)

30 times copper? Even diamond is not even 3 times the copper. Basically they could make billions from passive cooling techniques with that material...

[–]hex4def6 1 ポイント2 ポイント  (0子コメント)

I think what they're obliquely referring to is a heat pipe, which can have an effective heat transfer ability many times higher than copper. See http://pscmf.com/product/showproduct.php?id=196&lang=en which quotes 10 to 1000 times the conductivity of copper.

[–]relator_fabula 9 ポイント10 ポイント  (0子コメント)

Maybe the fundamental laws of physics are different in Austria.

[–]ike_the_strangetamer 14 ポイント15 ポイント  (3子コメント)

Holy shit. If people just stopped to think about it, they would realize tha if it were possible to produce clean water out of thin air with solar panels, then the entire world's water problem would disappear over night. Any company that could do that wouldn't waste it on a water bottle - let alone not be able to find funding and need a kickstarter. This subreddit keeps amazing me at how stupid people are.

[–]Owyn_Merrilin 7 ポイント8 ポイント  (1子コメント)

I mean, it's possible, it's just really inefficient. Air conditioners, for example, do it as a side effect of normal operation.

[–]Kuryaka 2 ポイント3 ポイント  (0子コメント)

Yeah. If AC is needed, recycling the water that's created is a good idea. San Diego airport has it for potable water as a novelty as well.

[–]Loon8 4 ポイント5 ポイント  (0子コメント)

I love that their original $$$ goal was only $30,000 too. That should be enough right?

[–]woodlark14 2 ポイント3 ポイント  (0子コメント)

I kinda hope that the "minor adjustments" turn out to be making the bottle into a massive barrel that will accumulate rainwater.

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[–]allozzieadventures 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (0子コメント)

I think my favourite bit is the paragraph on the Indiegogo page that says: "However, we will make every attempt to accelerate the time line as much as possible and be communicating with all of our first adopters by frequent progress updates as we move along each of the milestones." pinky promise Meanwhile, a total of 5 updates in the last 6 months, none of them convincingly demonstrating that the Fontus team has done anything more than jackshit. They were supposed to put up test results in November, so I think supporters will probably start leaving in droves next month.