7 ms·

Man I wish someone would do this for my bluetooth sleep mask. It's pretty great except for one thing: When the battery is low or it's going to power off it ann

Man I wish someone would do this for my bluetooth sleep mask. It's pretty great except for one thing: When the battery is low or it's going to power off it announces it to you at full volume. On a sleep mask.

twelvechairs 3y ago
What does it do? Why do you want a bluetooth connection when you are trying to sleep?
- zoky 3y ago
  For listening to music/white noise/droning YouTube videos while falling asleep.
- astura 3y ago
  Plenty of people use audio to fall asleep - be it relaxing music, white noise, nature sounds, podcasts, talk radio, boring speeches, or whateverelse. Not everyone likes the same sleeping audio as others sleeping in the same room.
  - Fnoord 3y ago
    The application such as Spotify could have a timer. The headphones apparently don't, nor do they have an auto go off when battery is depleted, or a way to more silently announce battery is low.
- Vicinity9635 3y ago
  You can use it to play music, I go with audio books. it's actually better at pairing with my iphone and ipad than my apple devices, which is wild. Product page: https://www.amazon.com/MUSICOZY-Headphones-Bluetooth-Everything-Christmas/dp/B07TPLZY74?th=1 https://www.amazon.com/MUSICOZY-Headphones-Bluetooth-Everyth...
  - simonklitj 3y ago
    I'm interested to hear in what way it pairs better!
    - Vicinity9635 3y ago
      [dead]
baz00 3y ago
That's actually pretty funny. I imagine you were very pissed off when you first discovered that one. I had a similarly flawed one. I had an alarm clock which had a MSF radio sync thing built in. But every time it resync'ed with the MSF time signal it'd make the same sound as the alarm for 2-3 seconds. You couldn't turn it off. This was invariably at 3AM or some horrible time. I eventually opened it up and cut the MSF antenna out and slept better knowing the clock was always slightly wrong.
- thedanbob 3y ago
  How could anyone think such a "feature" was a good idea? I try to be charitable but that's got to be the result of either absurd incompetence or intentional maliciousness.
  - fsckboy 3y ago
    "can't fix it without violating the modularity of the abstractions"
  - iforgotpassword 3y ago
    There is a VDSL modem/router/wifi/Powerline combo device by the Deutsche Telekom called "Speedport neo". It's actually totally functional andwl pretty cheap, at least a few years ago it was almost a steal on some websites. The super awesome feature it had was that it contained a speaker that would play the Telekom jingle every time the connection was established. This cannot be disabled and would happen at night too. So if you had a flakey connection, or used it on some other provider that still had the forced disconnect every 24 hours, it would drive you nuts pretty quickly. So I assume a lot of people took too the obvious fix to this...
    - Fnoord 3y ago
      > or used it on some other provider that still had the forced disconnect every 24 hours German providers disconnecting customers every night is a ridiculous feature in itself. It is condescending towards customers who require to use their internet connection at night, for example because they work at night. It could lead to always-on features being broken, backups not working, and I've had countless of times where I was gaming with a German who gets DC'ed which does not work at all in competitive gaming. In The Netherlands, yes sometimes the connection is broken at night. Sometimes, for a longer period of time. But this is because of software or hardware maintenance, and then doing such during the night makes sense as it provides the least downtime. I get that. But there is no discernible reason German providers need to disconnect every 24 hours.
Fnoord 3y ago
You really do not want to deplete batteries on devices where they're difficult to replace. Whether that is true for your sleep mask, I HAVE NO IDEA. A better way to deal with it is have them disable themselves after a timer. Maybe you can enforce that from the other side (I assume that is your smartphone?). Like, you can do some device automation with e.g. MacroDroid.
- Vicinity9635 3y ago
  [dead]
throwmeaway1212 3y ago
I ended up just using a pillow speaker with a 3.5mm jack cable. Avoids problems like this I was having with bluetooth.
thaumasiotes 3y ago
My bluetooth ear clips have the following behavior when they want to give a low battery warning: 1. They shut down whatever audio is currently playing. 2. They take a dramatic pause. 3. They announce "BATTERY LOW. PLEASE CHARGE NOW." 4. They take one more dramatic pause. 5. Normal functioning resumes and you attempt to pick up on the thread of whatever the person you were talking to was saying for the past several seconds. This doesn't work well. This announcement is, quite obviously, much worse than doing nothing at all. The worst case scenario, if a warning is just not given, is that my sound cuts out and I miss whatever someone was saying. But that is precisely the effect that the ear clips intentionally generate on an accelerated schedule! There is no reason not to just add the warning into the existing audio stream. It should be an unobtrusive beep pattern or similar. That would take less than one second while not actively causing the same problem it's hoping it might potentially prevent. (Speaking of awful bluetooth behavior that has no conceivable reason to exist, I lose all my normal computer audio whenever I'm using voice chat. Why? Well, voice chat takes input from my microphone, which switches the bluetooth device into "headset" mode. Headset mode converts stereo audio to mono and it is the only audio output you're allowed to use while you're providing audio input, or might potentially provide audio input. Any applications that don't take audio input continue to try to play their audio to a bluetooth headphones device, which no longer exists, so they all lose the ability to make sounds. Why is there more than one mode for the device to be in? Why would I want to lose functionality as a side effect of talking to my family? What's so difficult about playing different audio signals to each ear at the same time that the microphone could potentially become active? Non-bluetooth devices handle this and it's not even considered a notable feature. "The microphone doesn't shut down the headphones while you're using it." Why would it?)
- Fnoord 3y ago
  > This announcement is, quite obviously, much worse than doing nothing at all. The worst case scenario, if a warning is just not given, is that my sound cuts out and I miss whatever someone was saying. But that is precisely the effect that the ear clips intentionally generate on an accelerated schedule! There is a very good reason to announce it with fanfare: completely depleted batteries can get permanently damaged. It also allows the user to plan better around the downtime. I'm actually able to continue with zero downtime on me in-ears because I detach one of them and power it up while the other one gets depleted further. With my over-ears I'm unable to do that but they last many hours more. Which is logical as they're more bulky, have a larger battery, and don't have a case containing a battery. > Speaking of awful bluetooth behavior that has no conceivable reason to exist, I lose all my normal computer audio whenever I'm using voice chat. Why? Well, voice chat takes input from my microphone, which switches the bluetooth device into "headset" mode. Headset mode converts stereo audio to mono and it is the only audio output you're allowed to use while you're providing audio input, or might potentially provide audio input. True, this is silly, this also happens when you phone. But I actually don't want high quality sound when someone speaks. I've had people's background noise during gaming; not my preference. The irony is that with ANC, there's mics active all the time as noise cancelling depends on that.
npteljes 3y ago
Reminds me of Futurama's NNY city clock. In a cutscene it announces at full volume: "THE TIME IS FOUR AM".

twelvechairs 3y ago

What does it do? Why do you want a bluetooth connection when you are trying to sleep?

zoky 3y ago
For listening to music/white noise/droning YouTube videos while falling asleep.
astura 3y ago
Plenty of people use audio to fall asleep - be it relaxing music, white noise, nature sounds, podcasts, talk radio, boring speeches, or whateverelse. Not everyone likes the same sleeping audio as others sleeping in the same room.
- Fnoord 3y ago
  The application such as Spotify could have a timer. The headphones apparently don't, nor do they have an auto go off when battery is depleted, or a way to more silently announce battery is low.
Vicinity9635 3y ago
You can use it to play music, I go with audio books. it's actually better at pairing with my iphone and ipad than my apple devices, which is wild. Product page: https://www.amazon.com/MUSICOZY-Headphones-Bluetooth-Everything-Christmas/dp/B07TPLZY74?th=1 https://www.amazon.com/MUSICOZY-Headphones-Bluetooth-Everyth...
- simonklitj 3y ago
  I'm interested to hear in what way it pairs better!
  - Vicinity9635 3y ago
    [dead]

baz00 3y ago

That's actually pretty funny. I imagine you were very pissed off when you first discovered that one. I had a similarly flawed one. I had an alarm clock which had a MSF radio sync thing built in. But every time it resync'ed with the MSF time signal it'd make the same sound as the alarm for 2-3 seconds. You couldn't turn it off. This was invariably at 3AM or some horrible time. I eventually opened it up and cut the MSF antenna out and slept better knowing the clock was always slightly wrong.

thedanbob 3y ago
How could anyone think such a "feature" was a good idea? I try to be charitable but that's got to be the result of either absurd incompetence or intentional maliciousness.
- fsckboy 3y ago
  "can't fix it without violating the modularity of the abstractions"
- iforgotpassword 3y ago
  There is a VDSL modem/router/wifi/Powerline combo device by the Deutsche Telekom called "Speedport neo". It's actually totally functional andwl pretty cheap, at least a few years ago it was almost a steal on some websites. The super awesome feature it had was that it contained a speaker that would play the Telekom jingle every time the connection was established. This cannot be disabled and would happen at night too. So if you had a flakey connection, or used it on some other provider that still had the forced disconnect every 24 hours, it would drive you nuts pretty quickly. So I assume a lot of people took too the obvious fix to this...
  - Fnoord 3y ago
    > or used it on some other provider that still had the forced disconnect every 24 hours German providers disconnecting customers every night is a ridiculous feature in itself. It is condescending towards customers who require to use their internet connection at night, for example because they work at night. It could lead to always-on features being broken, backups not working, and I've had countless of times where I was gaming with a German who gets DC'ed which does not work at all in competitive gaming. In The Netherlands, yes sometimes the connection is broken at night. Sometimes, for a longer period of time. But this is because of software or hardware maintenance, and then doing such during the night makes sense as it provides the least downtime. I get that. But there is no discernible reason German providers need to disconnect every 24 hours.

Fnoord 3y ago

You really do not want to deplete batteries on devices where they're difficult to replace. Whether that is true for your sleep mask, I HAVE NO IDEA. A better way to deal with it is have them disable themselves after a timer. Maybe you can enforce that from the other side (I assume that is your smartphone?). Like, you can do some device automation with e.g. MacroDroid.

Vicinity9635 3y ago
[dead]

throwmeaway1212 3y ago

I ended up just using a pillow speaker with a 3.5mm jack cable. Avoids problems like this I was having with bluetooth.

thaumasiotes 3y ago

My bluetooth ear clips have the following behavior when they want to give a low battery warning: 1. They shut down whatever audio is currently playing. 2. They take a dramatic pause. 3. They announce "BATTERY LOW. PLEASE CHARGE NOW." 4. They take one more dramatic pause. 5. Normal functioning resumes and you attempt to pick up on the thread of whatever the person you were talking to was saying for the past several seconds. This doesn't work well. This announcement is, quite obviously, much worse than doing nothing at all. The worst case scenario, if a warning is just not given, is that my sound cuts out and I miss whatever someone was saying. But that is precisely the effect that the ear clips intentionally generate on an accelerated schedule! There is no reason not to just add the warning into the existing audio stream. It should be an unobtrusive beep pattern or similar. That would take less than one second while not actively causing the same problem it's hoping it might potentially prevent. (Speaking of awful bluetooth behavior that has no conceivable reason to exist, I lose all my normal computer audio whenever I'm using voice chat. Why? Well, voice chat takes input from my microphone, which switches the bluetooth device into "headset" mode. Headset mode converts stereo audio to mono and it is the only audio output you're allowed to use while you're providing audio input, or might potentially provide audio input. Any applications that don't take audio input continue to try to play their audio to a bluetooth headphones device, which no longer exists, so they all lose the ability to make sounds. Why is there more than one mode for the device to be in? Why would I want to lose functionality as a side effect of talking to my family? What's so difficult about playing different audio signals to each ear at the same time that the microphone could potentially become active? Non-bluetooth devices handle this and it's not even considered a notable feature. "The microphone doesn't shut down the headphones while you're using it." Why would it?)

Fnoord 3y ago
> This announcement is, quite obviously, much worse than doing nothing at all. The worst case scenario, if a warning is just not given, is that my sound cuts out and I miss whatever someone was saying. But that is precisely the effect that the ear clips intentionally generate on an accelerated schedule! There is a very good reason to announce it with fanfare: completely depleted batteries can get permanently damaged. It also allows the user to plan better around the downtime. I'm actually able to continue with zero downtime on me in-ears because I detach one of them and power it up while the other one gets depleted further. With my over-ears I'm unable to do that but they last many hours more. Which is logical as they're more bulky, have a larger battery, and don't have a case containing a battery. > Speaking of awful bluetooth behavior that has no conceivable reason to exist, I lose all my normal computer audio whenever I'm using voice chat. Why? Well, voice chat takes input from my microphone, which switches the bluetooth device into "headset" mode. Headset mode converts stereo audio to mono and it is the only audio output you're allowed to use while you're providing audio input, or might potentially provide audio input. True, this is silly, this also happens when you phone. But I actually don't want high quality sound when someone speaks. I've had people's background noise during gaming; not my preference. The irony is that with ANC, there's mics active all the time as noise cancelling depends on that.

npteljes 3y ago

Reminds me of Futurama's NNY city clock. In a cutscene it announces at full volume: "THE TIME IS FOUR AM".