4 ms·

I thought the same thing, but if we're talking about building our own smart home, I assume the solution for that would be relatively simple? For instance, add

I thought the same thing, but if we're talking about building our own smart home, I assume the solution for that would be relatively simple? For instance, add a pressure sensor under the bathmat (or seat) in front of the toilet so that the turn-off timer doesn't run while it senses pressure. Alternatively, maybe infrared heat sensor or CO2 sensor to detect presence of living mammals in the room. But both of these approaches can be messed up by your cat/dog spending all day/night laying on the bathroom mat keeping the lights on. The cool thing about building your own smart home is you can design system to do anything on any kind of assumption. The bad part is you're turning your home into an test of your engineering design prowess, and most part-time novices aren't going to be super happy with how they score... especially if their score ends up being an input to their home valuation.

_dain_ 4y ago
>relatively simple >pressure sensor, infrared heat sensor, CO2 sensor we have very different definitions of "simple". and they need extra work to account for other use-cases (I cringe to use this term), such as lying motionless in a nice, relaxing bath. a light switch on a cord works every single time, needs no maintenance, no firmware updates, the CCP can't spy on you through it, and you can make it look nice by hanging a decorative weight on the end. a real "smart bathroom" shouldn't be about wallace and gromit gadgetry, it should be about making the experience more hygienic and dignified. such as: a bidet, rather than toilet paper.
- gooseus 4y ago
  My "relatively" qualifier does a lot of work... relative to projects like rebuilding transmissions or doing hobby robotics, I think adding a few bluetooth/wifi enabled sensors and a bit of logic to toggle a light is pretty simple. And yeah, that's what I mean by doing your own design engineering... are you actually going to solve for that "once in a year" case? Or do you just use a switch to toggle to "normal mode" for when you want to take that long bath? I don't have any kind of platonic ideal for what a "smart bathroom" might be, I just like thinking through the design/engineering possibilities.
quickthrowman 4y ago
> For instance, add a pressure sensor under the bathmat (or seat) in front of the toilet so that the turn-off timer doesn't run while it senses pressure. Alternatively, maybe infrared heat sensor or CO2 sensor to detect presence of living mammals in the room. But both of these approaches can be messed up by your cat/dog spending all day/night laying on the bathroom mat keeping the lights on. Instead of ripping up your floor or adding weird heat and CO2 sensors, you could just buy a dual-tech (PIR and ultrasound) wall switch occupancy sensor to replace the PIR occ sensor. This problem has been solved already. https://www.homedepot.com/p/Lutron-Maestro-Dual-Tech-Motion-Sensor-switch-6-Amp-Single-Pole-White-MS-A102-WH/205643008 https://www.homedepot.com/p/Lutron-Maestro-Dual-Tech-Motion-...

_dain_ 4y ago

>relatively simple >pressure sensor, infrared heat sensor, CO2 sensor we have very different definitions of "simple". and they need extra work to account for other use-cases (I cringe to use this term), such as lying motionless in a nice, relaxing bath. a light switch on a cord works every single time, needs no maintenance, no firmware updates, the CCP can't spy on you through it, and you can make it look nice by hanging a decorative weight on the end. a real "smart bathroom" shouldn't be about wallace and gromit gadgetry, it should be about making the experience more hygienic and dignified. such as: a bidet, rather than toilet paper.

gooseus 4y ago
My "relatively" qualifier does a lot of work... relative to projects like rebuilding transmissions or doing hobby robotics, I think adding a few bluetooth/wifi enabled sensors and a bit of logic to toggle a light is pretty simple. And yeah, that's what I mean by doing your own design engineering... are you actually going to solve for that "once in a year" case? Or do you just use a switch to toggle to "normal mode" for when you want to take that long bath? I don't have any kind of platonic ideal for what a "smart bathroom" might be, I just like thinking through the design/engineering possibilities.

quickthrowman 4y ago

> For instance, add a pressure sensor under the bathmat (or seat) in front of the toilet so that the turn-off timer doesn't run while it senses pressure. Alternatively, maybe infrared heat sensor or CO2 sensor to detect presence of living mammals in the room. But both of these approaches can be messed up by your cat/dog spending all day/night laying on the bathroom mat keeping the lights on. Instead of ripping up your floor or adding weird heat and CO2 sensors, you could just buy a dual-tech (PIR and ultrasound) wall switch occupancy sensor to replace the PIR occ sensor. This problem has been solved already. https://www.homedepot.com/p/Lutron-Maestro-Dual-Tech-Motion-Sensor-switch-6-Amp-Single-Pole-White-MS-A102-WH/205643008 https://www.homedepot.com/p/Lutron-Maestro-Dual-Tech-Motion-...