I let lasers power my smart home – and I don't want to go back | Hacker News Reader

I let lasers power my smart home – and I don't want to go back

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26 pointsFrankChalmers18 comments

People go through so much trouble just to avoid using a wire despite 95% of their "smart home" devices home being static. It seems like such a colossal waste of time and effort in my opinion. Wires are not complicated, and if you put in even 1/10th the effort into using wire as they use in avoiding wires you can make them look nice.

Don't like the look of bare kinked wires? A $5 piece of decorative conduit or mounting tape or a new wall socket will do what an extra $100+ in less reliable specialty tech can accomplish. For people who are suppose to be all about tech you would think something as simple as a bit of wiring wouldn't be so out of their depth.

I expect a lot of it is that manufacturers want to sell easy to install devices. Batteries are a lot simpler than wires.

For something like a door lock, having everything on the lock also makes the integration really easy. Solenoid type electrified levers more or less don't exist as residential products, even though that seems to be the way to end up with a nice looking installation.

I agree very much with your statement but renters do often need to make their setup portable and not modify the premises.

I have said this a few times when people starts talking about this wireless, that wireless, mesh, etc. “Behind every good wireless network is an excellent wired backbone infrastructure.”

Tracing walls go install cable is incredibly expensive, and installing faceplates on walls can look very ugly.

I can imagine a single base IR unit with direct LOS to say 10 low power devices (nightlights, wifi motion sensors, IoT devices, etc) could have great utility.

> One morning last month, I walked into my kitchen to get a glass of water, but my smart faucet was out of battery.

Not sure what on Earth that is, but it doesn't sound too smart to me.

Especially when mamy US homes have AC power available under the sink. So strange that a smart faucet product wouldn't use that.

Where? I've never seen that, and given that it's an area routinely transited by lots of running water, it seems stupid. Leaks happen.

It's for the garbage disposal

Oh! I have a relative who just installed one of those. It’s hands-down the most infuriating thing in the house.

The gimmick is that touching anywhere on the faucet body or its handle toggles some kind of solenoid to cut or resume the flow.

You still use its physical handle to set the flow and temperature—but the act of touching that handle registers as a “cut off water” capacitive touch.

So any time you try to turn on the water, it spits for a fraction of a second then cuts off the flow. Then locks out your subsequent touches as some kind of demented debounce kind of thing.

Same thing if you try to pull out its retractable head to wash down the basin.

I couldn’t wish a dead battery on it fast enough…

I have one that I actually like, but it works a bit differently - instead of being capacitive on the faucet - which is infuriating, there is a sensor in the toe kick area under the sink, so if you wave your foot there it turns the water on/off.

That sounds... fun... for people with mobility issues.

I have the touch based sensor, came with the rental property. I quite love it: I used to mostly leave water running when doing a couple dishes, but now it's basically instant on or off with the slightest effort.

I do want the floor control though! We do have the iot addon, so it is wirelessly controllable. Building a non-contact foot detector is on my to-do list.

Via Google Home the delay is 1-2 seconds which kind of sucks, but maybe there's a faster local network control, maybe there's a home-assistant base I can work with.

No surprise but man people are real black holes of energy on these topics, eh? You do you, but after a couple days living here the touch sensor quickly went from occasional accidental bother that was pretty easy to avoid to second mature. Similarly yes a foot sensor might be an issue for some people, but to me, it's be a nice additive on-control.

Huh, interesting to see this technology get closer to mainstream. This is basically an IR laser plus a solar cell. Efficiency isn't great (5W base station laser -> 100mW receiver) but that doesn't matter much for low power devices.

The company claims to have some sort of unique patent involving retroreflectors in the receiver ensuring that if something disturbs the path, the laser beam is destroyed. I haven't been able to find any other technical details and of course search engines are mostly useless, so if anyone manages to dig deeper into how this works I'd be very curious to hear it.

https://archive.is/3SeUf

It would be cool if the gimbal could power multiple devices, and auto-rotate between each of them. Ensure the lock is always at 80%. Once that's done charge the cat-feeder. Once that's done charge the CO2 sensor. Etc etc.

It can. See one of the attached screenshots. It cycles between the Alfred door lock and a toothbrush.

No, he has 2:

> one for the Alfred lock on my back door and the higher-power R1HP model in the ceiling of my bathroom, powering an electric toothbrush charger.

Would be weird otherwise, having a doorlock made to be opened from the outside in the bathroom. Or having your toothbrush near your house entrance.

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