Debunked: Triton Artificial Gills (Indigogo Campaign)

[txt29]

A comment from Indiegogo (for the moment no answer from Triton):

aReasonableSkeptic . 28 minutes ago

I want to buy these, but I want to know how you plan to ship liquid Oxygen to US residents. Please explain so I can help fund.

http://pe.usps.com/text/pub52/pub52c3_019.htm
“Liquid oxygen (UN1073) is prohibited from mailing under any circumstances.”
https://www.ups.com/content/us/en/resources/ship/hazardous/common_items.html
“FedEx Ground does not accept cryogenic liquids unless properly prepared and packaged under exception 49 CFR 173.320.”

Content from External Source

 

[Mabene]

I wonder if another angle would work better to get indigogo to shut down this campaign: If that device could actually work as advertised, it would be quite dangerous, and the campaign utterly fails to point out these dangers:

People WOULD die or be severely injured when using the device as advertised.

What is the maximum depth?
Max depth is 15 ft.

What happens after 15 ft?
Triton will start vibrate and the LED lamps will start flashing and it will get harder to breath if you go under 15 ft.

4. Safety and regulation
Where can I use my Triton?
The ocean, the sea, lakes, rivers, and swimming pools. Just about anywhere with water!

Is the Triton safe for kids to use?
Yes, but under parental supervision.

Is there an age requirement to use Triton?
We recommend 16 years, 16 and under should be used with parents supervision.

So, basically no mention of actual dangers or training requirements.

• the device provides 100%oxygen to the user
• the device provides the oxygen at ambitent pressure up to at least 15 ft [otherwies you wouldn't be able to breath at all below about 1m).

This would lead to at least these risks:

• if you go below ~5m/15ft, you risk effects from oxygen toxicity, resulting in seizures, loss of consciousness and - since this would happen under water - death.
• if you hold your breath when surfacing from 5m/15ft you risk pulmonary barotrauma, which can also lead to death.
• 100%oxygen is very reactive with oil or fat. if you get lipstick or sun lotion on your mouthpiece, it probably would ignite, causing severe injuries or even death.

Both handling pure oxygen (for medical purposes) and breathing compressed gasses (i.e scuba diving) have quite stringent certification and training requirements, which the campaign completely fails to address or even mention.

 

[txt29]

I also do not understand why Indiegogo hesitates with shutting down the project. I know another recent case, that was shut within 4-5 days after being reported as scam. Better told, I understand that Indiegogo profits from it, because they can hold the funds for a month, and get some provision, but I wonder whether it is worth of the price they'll pay once it becomes clear to the investors they were scammed.

And yes, there are also further risks:

• If you used such device repeatedly (multiple charges) for several dives during a shorter period, you would risk oxygen poisoning even in shallow depth: "The maximum single exposure limits recommended in the NOAA Diving Manual are 45 minutes at 1.6 bar, 120 minutes at 1.5 bar, 150 minutes at 1.4 bar, 180 minutes at 1.3 bar and 210 minutes at 1.2 bar" [source WikiPedia].
• In the case of repeated dives, the diver would be also exposed to serious nitrogen saturation, and to the consequent decompression sickness.
• Liquid oxygen quickly evaporates and containers must be constructed either as low pressure, letting out the gas when the pressure exceeds ~1.7 bar, or high pressure containers tested to withstand up to the maximum possible pressure (at a 100% full container it would be ~860 bar). Both of them would be extremely dangerous in the hands of an untrained person. The leaking low-pressure container, if stocked in enclosed space (luggage, pocket, cabinet, ...) or in the proximity of fats, oils, or flammables, would easily ignite fires. The high-pressure container would pose explosion risk, and would require special handling too. Materials exposed to the cryogenic temperatures are extremely brittle, and pressure bottles constructed for such pressures are not quite common either.

 

[Trailblazer]

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/triton-world-s-first-artificial-gills-re-breather#/comments

Mark Johnson2 days ago
A couple of sincere questions that really must be answered:

1) For oxygen to be liquid it needs to be below -119°C (-182°F). How are you providing this cooling during use?

2) The requirements for safe transport, storage and use of liquid oxygen are daunting and very stringent. How are you going to deal with these concerns? See:
http://www.praxair.com/~/media/praxairus/Documents/SDS/Oxygen/Liquid Oxygen Medipure Gas O2 Safety Data Sheet SDS P4637.pdf?la=en



Saeed KhademiCampaigner4 hours ago
Hi Mark, the liquid oxygen is kept in insulated containers (called dewars). These keep the oxygen in liquid form at a temperature of -170 degrees Celius. The container consists of a lower portion where the oxygen is in a liquid state and a smaller upper portion where the liquid has evaporated creating a gas. if you follow the regulations DOT then you can send them by air, and sorry we did delete you new message but that was a misstake, so i hope you are happy with my answer, have a great day

Content from External Source

The explanation of dewars in bold type, posted by Saeed Khademi, is copied word for word from this site discussing medical LOX: www.medox.org/liquid.htm

The site appears to be down at the moment but here is a Google cache: http://webcache.googleusercontent.c...edox.org/liquid.htm+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk




He didn't, of course, copy this part

 

[Balance]

What temperature does the oxygen emerge (boil of) at after the phase change from liquid? I'm imagining nasty frost-bite inside the mouth if there's no heater element.

 

[txt29]

Back to the risks - the most important risk was already mentioned - it is the barotrauma that would follow any emergency surfacing with closed epiglottis (holding the breath). That would inevitably happen rather quickly to practically every untrained user - not only due to the failure of the apparatus, but initiated by any bigger stress factor, such as water in the mouth-piece, or in the mask, the ending supply of oxygen or batteries, the loss of the device, or anything other unexpected would lead to such emergency surfacing while holding the breath. It happens even to trained divers, let alone to someone who is not aware of the risk.

I guess that the number of gas embolisms, serious lung edemas, and other barotraumas, including fatalities at untrained users of such device would be extremely high.

 

[txt29]

There was also this Q&A at Indiegogo:

Kim, Pan-Jae - 10 hours ago
Hi. Why not to make special adapter for the cylinder to refill in regular scuba shop?

Saeed Khademi - Campaigner - 5 hours ago
Hi Kim, we are working on it and we will release the news here on Indiegogo as soon as it is done, thank you for reaching out to us.​

Content from External Source

I wonder how many diving shops have cryogenic stock of liquid oxygen. Well, I admit there may perhaps be some, but so far I saw only ones with oxygen stocked in common 200 bar pressure bottles.

 

[Tsukee]

Not defending the triton "gills" as there are enough things that raise alarm flags, but just from the theoretical point of view, storing compressed (not liquid) oxygen is not that impossible. There are in existence breathing "helper" kits with pure oxigen cartriges like that: http://oxy2go.com/shop/system-iii-kit
And if they supplement the the cartridges with some little amount of oxygen extracted from water using a small compressor, by a quick look numbers seem to add up.

However I know way to little about breathing to actually verify the feasibility of such system.
For instance I do not know if you can really breath normally by only inhaling 1-2L of gas (that gas being pure oxygen) per minute?

EDIT: read somewhere that you can breathe at 0.2atm pure oxygen without a problem but @ 15ft there is 1.5atm pressure. So no idea how that with 1L of pure oxygen per minute @ 15ft underwater

EDIT2: lurked some more, apparently 15ft is the maximum depth that is still safe to breathe pure oxygen for a limited amount of time (any deeper and it becomes super toxic).

Also found this:



I think this is more or less what triton guys are doing. Still sounds a really risky business, diving normally is already risky enough, now add such a "toy" to the mix, with pure oxygen, nope. This project sounds worse than a scam sure they say "15ft max" but when people start drowning and dying from small mistakes it is going to be "fun"... From the description it looks liek they have some "safeguards" in place, so you cannot use the device below 15ft, but what if the device malfunctions? what if you go to 15ft, than breath in quick succession and than hold your breath and go down to 30ft? damn this thing should not be allowed to go into the market (and probably never will)

 

[Mick West]

Not defending the triton "gills" as there are enough things that raise alarm flags, but just from the theoretical point of view, storing compressed (not liquid) oxygen is not that impossible. There are in existence breathing "helper" kits with pure oxigen cartriges like that: http://oxy2go.com/shop/system-iii-kit
And if they supplement the the cartridges with some little amount of oxygen extracted from water using a small compressor, by a quick look numbers seem to add up.

Not really. The amount of oxygen they could extract from water is negligible. And they say they are using liquid oxygen, not compressed oxygen.

And look at the size of the bottle you linked to. It's a lot bigger than the Triton device, and it only lasts 9 minutes at 2 liters per minute, whereas Triton claims 90 minutes (2 x 45 minutes), and a diver breathing normally would need 15 liters per minute. So you'd need something about 70 times this size.




And of course shipping liquid oxygen is impossible.

 

[Tsukee]

No you do not need 15liters of oxygen per minute but only 0.75-1.5L of oxygen per minute and apparently you can breathe like that for a limited amount of time to up to 1.5 ATM. Check the video I posted, more or less fits the size, and you could probably get a good 20 maybe 30minutes maybe even pushing it to 45 @ rest. The problem is that they use so much bullshit words: "liquid oxygen", "rebreather" "artificial gills" "modified compressor" "modified battery" etc that make no sense whatsoever. And also, breathing oxygen is not really something you want to do for extensive amounts of time not to mention that any more than 1.5 ATM becomes a death hazard.

 

[deirdre]

No you do not need 15liters of oxygen per minute but only 0.75-1.5L of oxygen per minute and apparently you can breathe like that for a limited amount of time to up to 1.5 ATM. Check the video I posted, more or less fits the size, and you could probably get a good 20 maybe 30minutes maybe even pushing it to 45 @ rest. The problem is that they use so much bullshit words: "liquid oxygen", "rebreather" "artificial gills" "modified compressor" "modified battery" etc that make no sense whatsoever. And also, breathing oxygen is not really something you want to do for extensive amounts of time not to mention that any more than 1.5 ATM becomes a death hazard.

your prototype video is over 3 years old. wonder why he isnt a millionaire by now.

DO NOT USE UNDERWATER
http://oxy2go.com/warning

Content from External Source

only 0.75-1.5L of oxygen per minute and apparently you can breathe like that for a limited amount of time to up to 1.5 ATM

your source for this information is where?

 

[huwp]

No you do not need 15liters of oxygen per minute but only 0.75-1.5L of oxygen per minute and apparently you can breathe like that for a limited amount of time to up to 1.5 ATM. Check the video I posted, more or less fits the size, and you could probably get a good 20 maybe 30minutes maybe even pushing it to 45 @ rest. The problem is that they use so much bullshit words: "liquid oxygen", "rebreather" "artificial gills" "modified compressor" "modified battery" etc that make no sense whatsoever. And also, breathing oxygen is not really something you want to do for extensive amounts of time not to mention that any more than 1.5 ATM becomes a death hazard.

Good question, and shows that this point is worth clarifying further. The requirement for 15 litres of gas per minute is not for metabolism, but for ventilating the lungs to remove carbon dioxide from the body.

It is correct that you only metabolise a small proportion of the oxygen that you inhale; when breathing normal air at sea level you inhale a mix of 21% oxygen, 78% nitrogen and 1% other gasses (mostly argon); your metabolism uses roughly a quarter of the oxygen inhaled, and exhale a mix of (approximately) 16% oxygen, 5% carbon dioxide, 78% nitrogen and 1% other. The actual amount of oxygen metabolised is independent of the mix inhaled - if you breathe pure oxygen at sea level, you inhale 100% oxygen, and exhale 95% oxygen and 5% carbon dioxide.

However - and this is important - even breathing pure oxygen does NOT reduce the total volume of gas you need to pass through your lungs in order to remove carbon dioxide. If lung ventilation is restricted, then the body becomes unable to remove carbon dioxide effectively, and it builds up in the bloodstream quickly causing distress. (And if it builds up sufficiently, it can eventually cause death.)

The 'assistive oxygen' device shown above does not supply all the gas volume that is needed for breathing - what it does is raise the oxygen level of inhaled gas slightly, the rest of the volume comes from the atmosphere as normal. You could not use it underwater as the flow rate is way too low.

The triton campaign clearly claims that their device allows people to 'breathe comfortably' - and breathing comfortably requires filling and emptying the lungs. This requires in the region of 15 litres per minute for normal adults at rest, more while exercising (such as swimming around underwater...) and more at depth. So sorry, but it is physically impossible that the triton can do what they claim.

 

[txt29]

The cartridges shown on the pictures posted by Mick West are for the Oxy2go system III. They have the volume of 100 ml, and contain 18 liters of compressed 90% oxygen [source]. The cartridges shown on the video posted by Tsukee are standard 10 ml cartridges for the old discontinued Oxy2go system I (clearly it was discontinued because it was too small to be useful). They contain 1.8 or perhaps 2 liters of oxygen. One would be good for maximally 4 tidal breaths of 0.5L. It means the two cartridges could supply 8 small 0.5 breathes.

An adult person at rest consumes 6 liters of air per minute on surface. At 5m depth (15ft), it would be 50% more - 9 liters. As Huwp correctly told, you need to ventilate the lungs with sufficient volume of gas to extract CO₂, but even if you just calculated with the 21% of pure O₂ in the air, you would still need almost 2 liters per minute. It means the two small cartridges would be good for 4 minutes of rest. When swimming around, the consumption quickly rises to 10-30 liters per minute on surface, or 15-45 l/min at 5m. That means the two small cartridges would hold just a few tens of seconds.

The video posted by Tsukee is on the same level of bunk as the videos of Triton. Both devices are completely useless for diving.

 

[txt29]

only 0.75-1.5L of oxygen per minute and apparently you can breathe like that for a limited amount of time to up to 1.5 ATM
your source for this information is where?

Tsukee is right you can breathe at that depth pure oxygen for limited time. The toxicity of oxygen is a function of time and depth. The deeper you go, the shorter the exposure to the high PPO2 must be, but in fact (although not recommended), you can go pretty deep on pure oxygen, if you limit the time.

WikiPedia:

The maximum single exposure limits recommended in the NOAA Diving Manual are 45 minutes at 1.6 bar, 120 minutes at 1.5 bar, 150 minutes at 1.4 bar, 180 minutes at 1.3 bar and 210 minutes at 1.2 bar

Content from External Source

So at 6 meters you can stay safely for 45 minutes on pure oxygen.

EDIT: Those are NOAA limits for single exposures. US NAVY limits are bit lower than that - 30 minutes at 6m - source: DAN Nitrox Workshop

EDIT 2: although Tsukee is right that you can breathe at the depth the pure oxygen for limited time safely, he is not right that you can breathe lower volume of oxygen for more than couple of minutes - you would get both hypercapnic (too high level of CO₂) and hypoxic (too low O₂), and could easily black out.

 

[Tsukee]

Yap I never said you should do it
Just saying it seams possible, but really its a deathtrap and the only way they express that on the indegogo is by bolding the "limit 15ft", what a joke.

About the air volume thou, yes I have been wondering how that works (for example at low pressure 0.3 atm you can apparently handle pure oxygen, not even unhealthy, they used similar set up in space flight but the risk of fire was the biggest problem: Apollo 1 much?. ). So in terms of gas volume you use less at low pressure, couldn't it work (disposing co2) at higher pressure too with lower volume?

Oh and for the guy asked why the person in youtube video is not a milionare is because sure it might work but any little mistake results in death hazard

 

[txt29]

So in terms of gas volume you use less at low pressure, couldn't it work (disposing co2) at higher pressure too with lower volume?

The deeper you go, the more the gas is compressed, it means you consume more of it with each breath. However, already on the surface, the 2x10ml bottles of oxygen (equivalent of 4 liters) would be enough only for 10-30 seconds when swimming. At the depth of 5m it would be 7 to 20 seconds.

Oh and for the guy asked why the person in youtube video is not a milionare is because sure it might work but any little mistake results in death hazard

No, it cannot work. The containers are so small that they fill the lungs fully only once - normal adult has the vital lung capacity of 4-5 liters, so both cartridges together barely offer ¾ of a full breath at the depth of 5m. Simply useless.

EDIT: also note that the 6 pack of cartridges costs $19.95, meaning that for each single full breath (worth of ~30 seconds of dive time) you'd pay $6.65 (two new cartridges).

 

[Tsukee]

The deeper you go, the more the gas is compressed, it means you consume more of it with each breath. However, already on the surface, the 2x10ml bottles of oxygen (equivalent of 4 liters) would be enough only for 10-30 seconds when swimming. At the depth of 5m it would be 7 too 20 seconds.

Ah I see so basically you always need to fill your lungs to successfully dispose the co2 (its a matter of gas concentration), so although you might satisfy your oxygen demands, you are still not meeting the requirements to get the co2 out if you inhale lower volume. So basically the Triton thing would need a counter lung and a co2 scrubber and could work (altho it would become way more bulky

 

[txt29]

No, it could not work even with a CO₂ scrubber and a counterlung for keeping the exhaled unspent oxygen. The cartridges shown on your video contain together 4000 ml of O₂. The basal consumption of a 70kg human is 240 ml of oxygen per minute. It means, on the surface, resting, and assuming 100% efficiency, it could supply you with air for 17 minutes (4000/240=16.7). Once you start to move, the consumption grows 3-5 times at moderate effort, so it would give you 3-7 minutes.

 

[Mabene]

No, it could not work even with a CO₂ scrubber and a counterlung for keeping the exhaled unspent oxygen. The cartridges shown on your video contain together 4000 ml of O₂. The basal consumption of a 70kg human is 240 ml of oxygen per minute. It means, on the surface, resting, and assuming 100% efficiency, it could supply you with air for 17 minutes (4000/240=16.7), or for 11 minutes in the depth of 5m. Once you start to move, the consumption grows 3-5 times at moderate effort, so it would give you 3-7 minutes on surface, or 2-4 minutes at 5 m.

If you actually use a rebreather w/ CO2 scrubber, you don't have to adjust for depth/ambient pressure. Actual O2 metabolisation is independent of depth. The volume of gas moved my each breath increases with depth but since the exhaled gas doesn't get expelled but just has the CO2 removed and is reused that doesn't actually matter for the calculation.

 

[txt29]

Yes, I removed the depth calculation before you answered. Although there are slight changes in the metabolic rate due to stress, extent, and different PO₂, it is more or less negligible for this calculation.

 

[txt29]

Triton continues claiming they use Dewar flasks for keeping the liquid oxygen:

Saeed Khademi - Campaigner - 6 hours ago
The liquid oxygen is kept in insulated containers (called dewars). These keep the oxygen in liquid form at a temperature of -170 degrees Celsius. The container consists of a lower portion where the oxygen is in a liquid state and a smaller upper portion where the liquid has evaporated creating a gas.

Content from External Source

To debunk this claim I attempted to find a Dewar flask that would fit into their apparatus. Basically, the smaller the flask, the shorter is the time the oxygen stays liquid in it. First of all because there is less room for the insulation, and then because much less heat is needed for warming up the low mass of the liquid. The quality of the insulation is expressed in evaporation rate (ER) - telling how much of the liquefied gas evaporates in a day (or in an hour). At high grade and expensive products for laboratory use, it varies from 0.15 to 2 liters per day.

Small Dewars are hard to find. The closest in terms of dimension is the 100 ml Dewar flask from KGW, but it is still too big to fit into Triton. It has the diameter of 63mm (40mm internally), and it is 135mm long (90mm internally). The length could be OK, but the diameter would have to be less than 40mm even if we do not let any space for the nano-filters and piping shown in the diagrams. You cannot make the walls thinner while keeping the insulation quality, hence at the outer diameter of 40mm, there would be room for only 17mm of internal diameter, and hence only 20ml instead of 100ml even if we make it a bit longer (145mm). Now the important detail - the evaporation rate of the Deware is 0.3 L/day. It means the 20ml would fully evaporate in 96 minutes after refilling it to the top. And of course, the LOX would evaporate in both cartridges in the same time.


I do not even mention a load of other problems with the Dewars:

• The product above is a quite fragile glass Deware flask. Triton would have to use high-pressure stainless steel Dewars, which would require much more massive construction, and especially much bigger empty space for keeping the evaporated gas under manageable pressure. If we assume 200 bar Dewars (do not exist, common is ~20 bar), the ratio between liquid and empty space would have to be ~1:4, meaning there could be maximally 4ml of NOX (lasting 20 minutes after refilling), resp. even much less due to the necessarily more massive construction.
• The Dewars would have to be resistant not only to shocks, but also rated for underwater use. This would require custom production, since they do not exist on the market.
• The cartridges are claimed to be replaceable. The price of the above simple low-pressure nitrogen rated Dewar is €69. High pressure Dewars rated for oxygen and for underwater use would cost at least an order of magnitude more. Triton claims that they target the price of $20 or less.
• Then there is a bunch of safety problems, but they were already discussed earlier in this thread
• And of course, there would be no room for all the other complex technology needed for making it work, and no space for their "gills" that are claimed to be there anyway too.

 

[John Lewis]

There now appears to be a second IGG Triton campaign site, a word-for-word copy of the original now supposedly based in Australia.

The second site, associated with a different name, answered a question by claiming that this one is the "real" Triton--even though it's using all the same copy and video links.

Don't you love it when scammers attack each other over legitimacy claims?

 

[txt29]

There is now another campaign on Indiegogo for Triton gills. It uses the same images and the same text as the other one. The only exception is the campaigner name (Bassam Meraby vs Saeed Khademi) and the location (Sydney, Australia vs. Stockholm, Sweden). Otherwise the texts of both campaigns are identical, including the claim "A state-of-the-art oxygen respirator, that allows you to breathe underwater up to 45 minutes and at a maximum depth of 15ft by utilizing our ‘artificial gills’ technology & liquid oxygen technology."

The original Swedish campaign was shut down after reaching $900K (link from Archive.org)
The recent Swedish campaign is currently at $345K.
The newer Australian campaign collected so far only $990 for 10 pieces of discounted Triton at $99/pc.

I am quite surprised Indiegogo not only absolutely does not mind supporting scammers despite been warned, but that they have no mechanism to prevent identical copies of campaigns.

EDIT: In fact also the links are almost identical - they only differ by two dash symbols:
/projects/triton-world-s-first-artificial-gills-re-breather/
/projects/triton-worlds-first-artificial-gills-rebreather/

From the new campaign at Indiegogo:

Misa Laamanen - 20 hours ago
Whi there is 2 sites for this Triton.

Bassam Meraby - Campaigner- 9 hours ago
Unfortunately the other Triton is a scam however rest assured that this is the origional campaign we are sorry for the inconvenience​

Content from External Source

​

 

[txt29]

I am sorry for my duplicate entry, but the comment by John Lewis appeared above my message only later after I posted it. I suppose it was on hold while the new account of John waited for approval.

 

[deirdre]

I am sorry for my duplicate entry, but the comment by John Lewis appeared above my message only later after I posted it. I suppose it was on hold while the new account of John waited for approval.

don't be sorry. you provided links

 

[John Lewis]

don't be sorry. you provided links

I agree. Posting the links was helpful for anyone who hasn't followed this from the beginning. Wish I had thought of that.

 

[Hofnarr]

Just reading both new campaigns..

Career opportunity:
We are looking for a technician in marine technology that can start working with us in fall 2016, please if you feel like you are the right person for the job or if you know anybody that is perfect for this job let us know.
Send a email about yourself and your qualifications and we will get back to you.
Send the application to: info@tritongills.com

Content from External Source

Someone want to apply?
Could be interesting ^^ asking questions and such.

 

[John Lewis]

Just reading both new campaigns..

Career opportunity:
We are looking for a technician in marine technology that can start working with us in fall 2016, please if you feel like you are the right person for the job or if you know anybody that is perfect for this job let us know.
Send a email about yourself and your qualifications and we will get back to you.
Send the application to: info@tritongills.com

Content from External Source

Someone want to apply?
Could be interesting ^^ asking questions and such.

Have to change my name, as I've been publicly calling Saeed Khademi out for some time now and gotten zero response. You're right, though--might be fun to scam a scammer!

 

[huwp]

The 'second' 'Australian' campaign is currently closed for review by the 'trust and safety' team at Indiegogo.

Apparently running a provable scam isn't enough to get a campaign closed down, but putting up a copy of another campaign is...

 

[txt29]

There is now yet another Triton Indiegogo campaign, although it looks a bit different. I am curious how long it stays online:

http://igg.me/at/triton-scam

 

[exclamationMarek]

Have you seen how the Triton people approach difficult questions about the feasibility of their device in the comment section of their campaign? By deleting them of course! The deleted comments live on here: https://twitter.com/TritonDeleted

sidenote: I came here following the link in the new scam-busting campaign on Indiegogo. Whoever did that - kudos for the ingenuity! Though obviously I knew triton is a scam before that, I wonder how many actual "purchases" will this prevent. Most people probably reach Triton through [...] news pages that link stuff without even reading it, or through Indiegogo's front page, where of course only the best earning (s)campaigns are shown.

 

[John Lewis]

There is now yet another Triton campaing, although it looks a bit different. I am curious how long it stays online:

http://igg.me/at/triton-scam

Now it's getting interesting. Let's see what IGG does now!

 

[txt29]

... Whoever did that - kudos ...

Thanks! I got the idea when I saw the cloned Australian campaign this morning, and realized there is no content proofing at Indiegogo at all. So perhaps it stays up for a few days.

BTW, if you see some typos, grammar faults, or simply bad English (I am not a native English speaker), or factual errors, please let me know, so that I can fix it.

In case IGG shuts the page down, I archived it at Archive.org at the following address:
https://web.archive.org/web/2016041...cts/triton-world-s-last-artificial-gills-scam

 

[txt29]

Have you seen how the Triton people approach difficult questions about the feasibility of their device in the comment section of their campaign? By deleting them of course! The deleted comments live on here: https://twitter.com/TritonDeleted

BTW, not that I'd like to defend Triton, but many of the comments disappeared simply because the person who posted the comment, withdrew the donation. Only comments of active contributors are shown. It happened to me when I posted a comment at the beginning of their first campaign, too. It does not mean that they do not refund critics just to remove their messages, preventing them so from posting again, but it is natural that any message asking about refund will be removed automatically by the system as soon as the contributor finds his way to get the refund in his user account control panel.

 

[vislaw]

Thanks! I got the idea when I saw the cloned Australian campaign this morning, and realized there is no content proofing at Indiegogo at all. So perhaps it stays up for a few days.
...

Well done, sir. Very much appreciated.

Indiegogo has their headquarters in San Francisco. A group of us who reside here in the bay area are currently discussing alternatives that may be effective in convincing Indiegogo to suspend the patently fraudulent Triton campaign. I would appreciate it if you could write to me at our e-mail address: stoptriton@outlook.com. We are very interested in finding out what, if anything, you receive from Indiegogo in response to your campaign filing.

Frankly, the Triton controversy is one more indication that the "wild west" of crowdfunding will be its own downfall if the entities do not act responsibly. Not too long ago Indiegogo had a written policy assuring contributors that they would actively police campaigners to uncover and prohibit fraud. They quietly eliminated the provision. Why? They will earn 5% from the Triton campaign even though it is clearly a scam. Brava to METABUNK and its fine members for blowing the whistle on this shameful state of affairs.

We also welcome anyone else interested in our efforts to bring some sanity and responsibility to Indiegogo to contact us at stoptriton@outlook.com.

 

[huwp]

Just a quick observation that "Triton" have just now upgraded their claim on the length of possible use:



This is presumably an attempt to sweeten the apparent value proposition following questions on the still-unspecified ongoing 'costs of ownership'.

This doubles the volume requirements for supporting "breathing normally" (for total 180 minutes) to an absolute minimum of 3 litres of liquid oxygen (ref. calculation here: https://www.metabunk.org/debunked-triton-artificial-gills.t7417/page-2#post-178979), or at least 4-5 times larger than the entire volume of the complete unit - before including a cylinder to contain the LOx itself, or the 'battery', or the 'compressor' or the 'gills'.

The "Triton" page shows a rendered cutaway of the claimed internal structure of the 'gills', and it doesn't leave any space for an oxygen cylinder of any size, and the centre part is supposed to be filled by the compressor and battery, so it really isn't clear where any LOx cylinder is supposed to be contained. Awaiting further renders...

Still sounds a really risky business, diving normally is already risky enough, now add such a "toy" to the mix, with pure oxygen, nope. This project sounds worse than a scam sure they say "15ft max" but when people start drowning and dying from small mistakes it is going to be "fun"... From the description it looks liek they have some "safeguards" in place, so you cannot use the device below 15ft, but what if the device malfunctions? what if you go to 15ft, than breath in quick succession and than hold your breath and go down to 30ft? damn this thing should not be allowed to go into the market (and probably never will)

Of all the things that are concerning about this affair, the chance that anyone might actually be put in peril by using the device is the absolute last thing to worry about.

 

[huwp]

BTW, not that I'd like to defend Triton, but many of the comments disappeared simply because the person who posted the comment, withdrew the donation. Only comments of active contributors are shown. It happened to me when I posted a comment at the beginning of their first campaign, too. It does not mean that they do not refund critics just to remove their messages, preventing them so from posting again, but it is natural that any message asking about refund will be removed automatically by the system as soon as the contributor finds his way to get the refund in his user account control panel.

...Which also means that new potential backers can't see any comments from former backers seeking refunds. It is a quirk of psychology that people will very often tend go along with whatever they see others around them doing - nothing would give new potential backers second thoughts faster than seeing other people around them backing out. (Certainly that would be much more effective than, you know, presenting boring old proof that the thing they are hoping to buy is physically impossible).

 

[exclamationMarek]

BTW, not that I'd like to defend Triton, but many of the comments disappeared simply because the person who posted the comment, withdrew the donation. Only comments of active contributors are shown. It happened to me when I posted a comment at the beginning of their first campaign, too. It does not mean that they do not refund critics just to remove their messages, preventing them so from posting again, but it is natural that any message asking about refund will be removed automatically by the system as soon as the contributor finds his way to get the refund in his user account control panel.

As far as I know, if a comment is posted by a paying contributor, it will remain public even if the pledge is refunded. The only way to remove a comment is marking it as "spam". Take this comment for instance:

We can fetch the details for this comment from the Indiegogo database here: https://www.indiegogo.com/private_a...artificial-gills-re-breather/comments/5879231

Note that the "private" field is set to "false", but the "spam" field is "true". So we know that somebody deleted this comment, either the campaign owner or the backer himself. Saeed specifically mentioned in a comment reply recently that he will refund and spam comments that are calling out the scam. He later deleted that comment reply (and the twitter bot does not keep track of comment replies, though I can find that reply if somebody wants it badly).

 

[txt29]

As far as I know, if a comment is posted by a paying contributor, it will remain public even if the pledge is refunded. The only way to remove a comment is marking it as "spam".

I am not quite sure whether it is indeed so. When I commented on Triton's campaign, the comment disappeared from public view (although staying visible form myself as long as I stayed logged in) instantly after I cancelled the payment. Khademi would have to be watching closely and be very fast, but I can't exclude it, of course.

We can easily test it. Just someone go to my campaign at http://igg.me/at/triton-scam, purchase the 1€ perk, post a comment, and then withdraw the donation. We'll see whether the comment stays visible publicly or not. I tried doing it myself, but it does not let paying me with the same Paypal account, and I do not have another one.

 

[txt29]

I would appreciate it if you could write to me at our e-mail address: stoptriton@outlook.com. We are very interested in finding out what, if anything, you receive from Indiegogo in response to your campaign filing.

There is not much I could tell you, so I better post it here that everyone knows. There was an automated email instantly after I clicked the button "Start a Campaign", before I even started filling in any data. That was a bit surprising. There was then another automated email when I filled in all the content, and hit the button putting the campaign live. No verification or human interaction. If I had the text ready, I could have started the campaign within 30 seconds.