Lixil AI-Based Toilet Analyzes Shape and Size of Feces with Camera and LEDs | Hacker News Reader

Lixil AI-Based Toilet Analyzes Shape and Size of Feces with Camera and LEDs

cnx-software.com

30 pointshomarp21 comments

Hardly the first incarnation of this... and 80% accuracy doesn't sound very good. That's wrong more than once a week!

So why haven't these kinds of toilets taken off? Too hard to modify existing toilets? People don't care? Technology isn't there?

Seems like for those that are really interested, it isn't _too_ hard to just manually keep a log (pun intended).

80% accuracy is potentially fine for a time series, assuming the errors are random rather than specific to a user. You can denoise this stuff, and the recognizer should get better as the sample size grows.

I already monitor methane, humidity, and CO2 levels in the bathroom and log them, this looks like a great addition to my system. No doubt as always I'll be accused of criminal behavior at this point, especially with the whole "camera in the bathroom where there is a reasonable expectation of privacy" legal issue. I contend that is not an issue for "safety" monitoring such as gas levels. If I do implement an AI toilet cam, be assured it will point downwards not upwards. I agree an upwards pointing camera would be an extreme and egregious violation of privacy and rightly should be illegal and prosecutable. I contend though that photographing waste materials after they are disposed of is legal without consent or notification. And the company manufacturing the toilet cam product OP linked to obviously agrees completely with me and has a team of lawyers backing it up otherwise they wouldn't have spent a fortune developing this commercial toilet cam. (They say they are not commercializing the prototype in its current state, but they indicate the tech will be incorporated into future commercial products.) Also worth noting that my system and this system do not identify people using the toilet, unlike the legal and commercial "Therapy Bidet" which connects to the toilet user's Bluetooth to provide control at which point it obtains personally identifiable information. Amazing that that one is considered legal.

I think if you can monitor your gas levels with a regular camera then those levels are much much too high.

Why would you say something like that? Gas levels are monitored using gas sensors and an R-Pi custom monitoring station. There's no camera. I pointed this out. Reasonable expectations of privacy prohibit cameras in the bathroom. I contend though they don't prohibit diagnostic fecal cameras. Up cameras bad, down cameras not only good, but excellent and helpful. Safety gas sensors and logging are not illegal under any interpretation of privacy laws. I have every right to monitor dangerous gas levels, humidity and temperature in every room of my house without obtaining consent or notifying any visitor. The people here that have in the past claimed I am a criminal for doing monitoring have yet to make their legal case or as I have asked them to, to file a criminal complaint against me and my system. This is because they are armchair lawyers who have no case and little understanding of the law. They just like to badger innocent people who are not committing any crimes on the internet because that's what these sorts of armchair lawyers and busybodies do.

I think you missed the joke.

Running with the argument for a bit, I'd point out that such analysis reveals considerable biomedical data. Along with timing data on who uses the restroom, invasion of medical privacy would not be very hard.

An old friend and myself have had some extremely heated debates about whether the genomic sequence data his company collects from people and sells to everyone is biomedical data. I say that it is and is covered under HIPAA. He claims that is absurd and unreasonable and that genome sequences are simply not personal private medical data regulated under HIPAA. Many others in these debates have also disagreed with me and rebuked me claiming that even complete genomic data is not covered under HIPAA and is simply not personal medical information. I don't recall ever having a single supporter in my claim that a person's genome is private medical data.

Yet perhaps some of these happy to hate on me in the past and denounce my unreasonable opinion that genomes are medical data would now criticize me for monitoring conditions and levels of gases in my own private home as well as that of waste disposed of. Courts have repeatedly ruled that in disposing of cellular materials such as blood and sperm one gives up any rights to privacy. These materials can be collected from trash without a warrant. The reasonable expectation of privacy simply does not apply to things one has thrown away.

> I don't recall ever having a single supporter in my claim that a person's genome is private medical data.

Huh. In Canada, that's a settled question. It is, at least with regard to e.g. a medical record that contains genetic information. We're also looking at laws which prohibit discrimination on the basis of genetic information.

Though more directly to what you're talking about, I think it is in fact legal for a private citizen to collect discarded biological material from a person and sequence it. A company would be prohibited, however. I am not a lawyer, though.

> The reasonable expectation of privacy simply does not apply to things one has thrown away.

That can be fixed by statute. While the law is similar here in that items discarded are no longer protected by the constitution regarding search and seizure, statute prohibits a company, for example, from collecting banking information from discarded paperwork in the recycling.

You gotta be shitting me...

It had to be said.

this is the most important timeseries in health and we are literally flushing it down the toilet

changes in stool can tell you if your diet is right, if you're drinking too much, and are predictive for some specific diseases

Interesting factoid, I saw at a science museum that the Germans were really interested in stool shape and color as a sign of health and designed a toilet with a shelf for viewing the stool before flushing.

You know... I grew up with them, they are called 'Flachspüler' vs. the now common 'Tiefspüler'. From personal experience they were common up to 1990 or 2000. After this not so much anymore. Anyways, it had pros and cons, as everything. Pro: - no splashing up to your behind from stuff dropping down into your piss. - acessability for getting samples for medical 'shitworks' (not much of a factor, i had that maybe 5 times in my life?) Cons: Stinky, because 'open air', could be compensated by flushing early, multiple times.

Just for reasons of anti-stinkiness i prefer the 'modern' ones, and where i once placed a leaf of toilet paper into the bowl before using it to avoid too much cleaning, i now place a leaf of toilet paper into it to avoid 'upsplashing'.

Regarding cleaning, they usually were connected directly to high pressure piping, which roared liked the Niagara Falls trough it. Solutions with some tank up the ceiling with gravity assist were seen as inferior, and i may have seen them only a few times?

Never mind, back to topic:

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bristol_stool_scale

If someone poops on the camera I guess it’s all over

i think rule 34 may rear its head and howl soon.

Frankly who gives a s--t?

More seriously: it is a serious idea. Easy to spot first signs of a diarrhea outbreak on a cruise ship, refugee camp, etc.

Memes become reality.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJklHwoYgBQ

I feel sorry for those who did labeling for this company’s AI algorithm.

hopefully they had everyone label their own

Maybe they used Amazon's Mechanical Turd offering!

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