How do scouters work?

[Mr. Piccolo]

How do scouters read a person’s battle power? For example, do scouters measure the amount of heat generated by a being? In the English dub, I vaguely recall Captain Ginyu using the term “heat energy” to describe Freeza’s ki, but this was probably filler or just something added by Funi for the dub.

I guess if scouters cannot read suppressed ki, they have to pick up on something emanating from a body. I suppose picking up on heat might be one way of doing so, and we do know that ki can burn, so that is my guess. What do others here think? What might be some plausible theories?

[Pantalones]

I always figured that they just picked up on ki itself.

Just the "surface" ki level that's radiating off of someone at the moment, rather than any that they're keeping hidden below that (so when someone's suppressing their ki, only the tiny bit that's actually being released gets picked up on, and when someone powers up to a higher level the scouter suddenly picks up on a big spike as more ki is released.)

[Bussani]

I've always been sure that scouters detect ki itself. I think Muri even says this outright when he sees one used.

"Then that's how they've been able to find the few villages scattered all over the vast planet Namek!! That device reads the chi of living things!!"

In some ways it's no different from the more natural ki sensing the heroes use. If someone suppresses their ki, a scouter can't detect them, or will think they're weaker than they are. But it doesn't seem like a scouter can tell anything about a ki except its size, whereas natural ki sensing can sometimes tell who it belongs to, whether they're good or evil, calm or angry, possibly even which species they are.

Things get a bit more complicated if you ask: "If Vegeta and Nappa can't change their battle powers, why didn't the Earthlings sense their true power until they powered up/started attacking?" Some people think they actually could change their ki to a certain extent, or rather, that it would fluctuate by itself; I don't think this fits, personally, since Vegeta's ki would have to fluctuate more radically than anyone's for them to be unsure of whether he was stronger than Nappa. If you ask me, the better explanation is that their amount of ki couldn't change (so a scouter would always read the same amount), but how active it was affected how well the Earthlings could sense it.

[Kaboom]

They work very well, thank you.

[Herms]

They work very well, thank you.

I don't know, they have a bad habit of exploding whenever they run into any sort of technical difficulty. That's not the sort of thing many people would tolerate in, for instance, a cell phone.

[hleV]

They work very well, thank you.

I don't know, they have a bad habit of exploding whenever they run into any sort of technical difficulty. That's not the sort of thing many people would tolerate in, for instance, a cell phone.

If my cell phone could read people's battle power, I wouldn't mind it exploding when someone's over 22,000 or so xD

[Fox666]

They work very well, thank you.

Raditz complained about the Scouter, and we have seen a lot of characters attributing certain readinings to a mistake of the Scouter. So I don't think they always work...

[Gokuden]

In Dragon Ball: Online, the scouter measures your ki and attributes it to your defense and attack levels.

So if you have a power level of 15347, the scouter will say 49% of it is attributed to the subject of interest's defense, and 51% is because of the user's strength.

[TheDevilsCorpse]

In Dragon Ball: Online, the scouter measures your ki and attributes it to your defense and attack levels.

So if you have a power level of 15347, the scouter will say 49% of it is attributed to the subject of interest's defense, and 51% is because of the user's strength.

The DBO scouters are more advanced by ~250 years and obviously use a different measurement system. When you scan characters from during the original series, like Raditz, you get a reading a lot higher than the 1,500 he should be at.

[Gokuden]

In Dragon Ball: Online, the scouter measures your ki and attributes it to your defense and attack levels.

So if you have a power level of 15347, the scouter will say 49% of it is attributed to the subject of interest's defense, and 51% is because of the user's strength.

The DBO scouters are more advanced by ~250 years and obviously use a different measurement system. When you scan characters from during the original series, like Raditz, you get a reading a lot higher than the 1,500 he should be at.

I haven't met Raditz yet, I'll let you know when I do though. I forgot to scan Trunks' power level. darn.

[Duo]

They work very well, thank you.

I don't know, they have a bad habit of exploding whenever they run into any sort of technical difficulty. That's not the sort of thing many people would tolerate in, for instance, a cell phone.

It makes you seriously question the intelligence of Freeza's army to put so much faith in a gadget that spends most of it time causing complaint of malfunction or outright exploding.

[LiamKav]

They work very well, thank you.

I don't know, they have a bad habit of exploding whenever they run into any sort of technical difficulty. That's not the sort of thing many people would tolerate in, for instance, a cell phone.

If my cell phone could read people's battle power, I wouldn't mind it exploding when someone's over 22,000 or so xD

The thing is, one of the scouters main features is the ability to read someone's battle power level. So if it explodes after reading ones that are too high... it's like your mobile phone exploding because it somehow gets too good a phone signal.

[Kroni_Hunter]

Exploding scouters have always been an awesome part of the series. Remember the Rule of Cool

[matt0044]

I think it's because the scouter is processing too much information at once so it overheats big time.

[CaBrPi]

Such a tiny device probably lacks cooling systems. Of course, they probably rarely ever needed them, considering most of the races we see lack the refined chi control present in the main cast.

I like to think they function similar to geiger counters, in that they detect some sort of radiation. The higher the power level (that is, the greater amount of chi present), the more radiation would be given off, thus giving a higher reading.

[Rocketman]

The thing is, one of the scouters main features is the ability to read someone's battle power level. So if it explodes after reading ones that are too high... it's like your mobile phone exploding because it somehow gets too good a phone signal.

Thermometers can burst when they overheat.

[Mjb1985]

I'm pretty sure scouters work just fine. Most of the known universe is incapable of altering battle power. Out of his entire empire, only Freeza and Ginyu , the top two dogs, were capable of such a thing. It's just that the scouters weren't very useful against the Earthlings and there ability to hide their ki. When you are a universal power working for the empire, having this ability would be rather pointless generally. No one else seems to have scouters, no one can sense ki, and you are the most dominant fighting force in the entire universe. For example, a guy like King Cold, what purpose would it serve to hide his true ability. I doubt a guy like him can because it wouldn't effect him at all.

[LiamKav]

The thing is, one of the scouters main features is the ability to read someone's battle power level. So if it explodes after reading ones that are too high... it's like your mobile phone exploding because it somehow gets too good a phone signal.

Thermometers can burst when they overheat.

And that is why we don't hold thermometers to our faces when checking the temperature.

(I mean, I get that it's cool, but Raditz's scouter explodes after reading a battle power level that's less than the two guys he's supposed to be hanging around with. That's pretty poor design.)

[Mjb1985]

I've always enjoyed looking at who can sense ki, who can hide from scouters, and so on.

It's a pretty inconsistent thing, which I'm sure many of you have explained in universe in one way or another.

I remember when I was first reading Dragonball how shocked I was to hear Goku talk about him sensing the villagers in the town Oolong was terrorizing. Did that town have a specific name? And there are just multiple accounts of things that sound like ki sensing , even though they weren't supposed to really have this ability yet.

Also the Raditz Saga in which Piccolo seems to tell Goku there's no point in trying to sneak up on him because he has a machine capable of reading their battle power. All the while Raditz is in awe at their ability to change their battle power, which seemed to be more about amplification and removal of weights than suppression. Just a lot of odd tidbits I noticed.

[Fox666]

The thing is, one of the scouters main features is the ability to read someone's battle power level. So if it explodes after reading ones that are too high... it's like your mobile phone exploding because it somehow gets too good a phone signal.

Thermometers can burst when they overheat.

Maybe a decade ago? But I don't think they would do that today.