Ok... I've been looking into this 'Minidive' thing trying to decide if I should unleash the flying troll monkeys against these people and their dubious project.
First, There are high pressure hand pumps out there for 200 BAR. However, it is doubtful that these people have found a practical way to use them for scuba tanks. These pumps move a very small amount of air and it takes a lot of physical force as it gets up to 3000 PSI. One reviewer of air guns recommends that anybody under 150 pounds doesn't even try. It is stated that charging an air gun with one of these pumps can take almost 10 minutes of very hard work and the reservoir might only hold between 75 and 200 cubic centimeters of air.
200 cc = 0.007 cubic foot. 10 minutes to fill a 200 cc tank on an airgun, how long to fill a pony bottle that holds 99,108 cc.
Right? (check my reasoning, it's been a long time since I've used a pneumatic pellet gun.)
(conversions provided by an awesome website
www.onlineconversion.com)
Second, there is nothing shown in their project that isn't already in the marketplace.
Finally, what do they intend to use this pile of money for? It's always seems suspicious when a technology project has campaigns on both Kikstarter and Indegogo. If fact, if someone really does develop and document some new technological breakthrough, there are venture capitalists with technology backgrounds who are always looking for the next great thing. Why would someone take their breakthrough to be funded by a public without a technology background? (unless people with a technology background would know 'something' about the project.)
These people are raising a combined $150,000 to bring a pony bottle to the market place? I've been involved in bringing dive gear to the market over many years and if I brought this project to my bosses and told them I needed 150 grand to launch a pony bottle system, I would have been laughed out of their offices. Once they figured out I was serious I would be fired and once the rest of the dive industry heard about it, I'd never work in this business again.
Maybe I am missing something so I'm reserving judgement for now and I'm going to reach out to these people for some answers. Let's hear what you guys think of all this.
The flying troll monkeys are thrashing around their cages anxious for something to do.