Ask HN: If you could automate one thing in your home, what would it be? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: If you could automate one thing in your home, what would it be?

11 pointsbrwr55 comments

Suppose a genie showed up and offer to take one thing in your home and automate it. What would you choose?

Examples:

1) Dishwasher automatically starts once its full. 2) Lights turn on and off when you enter or leave a room. 3) Carpets are vacuumed by a tiny little robot without you having to lift a finger.

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Laundry.

Even with modern technology, the process is ridiculous. Collect the clothes in a hamper, carry clothes over to washer/dryer (sometimes this means walking down the street to a laundromat if you live in a large city), select all the right settings so you don't ruin your clothes, add detergent/fabric softener/bleach/etc, start first load, wait 30-45 minutes, move everything into a dryer, clean the vent, select the right cycle, wait another 30-45 minutes, put clothes back into a hamper, and repeat. Finally once it's all done, carry the clothes back to the closet and fold/hang everything.

Oddly enough, the most difficult part of this would probably be folding the clothes. Take a towel for instance. When I want to fold a towel, I begin by searching for the corners of the towel. As it turns out, this is a rather difficult problem for robots to solve.

Unfortunately, however, robots might be the most practical solution to this problem.

It could definitely be achieved, it's just a matter at engineering a new type of washer/dryer. What I don't understand is why washers and dryers are separate entities. Yes, engineering a machine that both washes and drys clothes would be difficult, but I'm confident that it could be done.

This is definitely one of the more difficult options!

Agreed. Given the range of sizes and types of washable/foldable items (i.e. you fold a sheet differently than a pair of jeans, and socks are folded differently than a tshirts), it would take some pretty interesting technology to solve this problem. However, provided that most washers and dryers cost $500-1000+ each, there would be a lot of money available for this technology and likely a very high demand.

It's already been done: http://www.cnet.com/8301-13553_1-10009797-32.html

Like you said, it's the folding that's hard.

Someone else posted that farther down. The problem is that the capacity is so low. People want capacities that are to the tune of 5.0 cf for a washer and 8.0-9.0 cf for a dryer.

The model in that article is only 2.44 cf. That is to be expected though, seeing as I don't know of anyone else making a similar device, but we still need to improve before sales would make it worth manufacturing in mass.

Combo washer/dryers are probably more common in Europe than separate machines, and come in a big range of capacities. It's just hard to make a big one work on a North American 120V 15A circuit.

I think a more realistic solution to fully automating laundry would be something like the LG TROMM Styler. It's a wardrobe that dry-cleans clothes.

This could work if you had a lot of clothes and didn't wear anything too often. Dry cleaning clothes too frequently will ruin them.

Why is it any more difficult to build a machine that works on a 120V 15A circuit? I never studied circuits, so consider me a layman.

I had a theoretical project when I was younger to alleviate clothes folding. Essentially, you would have a vertical stack of thin layers.

When you wanted to put your clothes away the machine would lift all of the layers up until you got to an empty one. Put the shirt down, it snaps a picture of it and catalogs it. When you want to get dressed, you flick through your catalog, select a shirt and it lifts all of the layers to get to that article of clothing. Essentially you wouldn't need to fold clothes, simply lay them out.

This is actually a fairly feasible solution. It isn't that much different than a typical industrial robotic arm.

You should turn your theoretical project into a company. People will pay a lot of money for innovation and convenience.

Folding clothes always makes me think of this advanced t-shirt fold technique. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5AWQ5aBjgE)

In the UK we have washer / dryers. They're not great. They tend to be condensing, not vented, dryers. (Vented dryers are better) And there's more to go wrong. Separate machines are better.

That was magical. I must learn how to do that.

One more thing: ironing.

I hate wiping my ass, and I'm not a fan of the water things (bidet). I want my toilet to automatically fold up some tp and wipe my ass.

I don't really know how to respond to this one, but I definitely got a good laugh out of it. Let us know if you discover anything!

I would like shower temperature just right. As I enter the shower temperature of my skin should be measured and the water temperature adjusted so it causes me minimum discomfort. Also the water should be additionally electrically heated in the faucet so that even first drops of it that fall on me should already have designated temperature.

Another consideration is that you might want the temperature to increase over time. I love hot showers, but I don't want the water to scald me as soon as I turn it on.

So many of these suggestions are mechanical chore-doers. If I could automate my home to inspire me, that would be something. To wake me up intelligently, get me pumped up to work out, inspire me with art and music at other times... you get the idea.

Again, this would mean a hyper-intelligent home far beyond the realm of current artificial intelligence capabilities. At the very least, we would require a machine that could pass the Turing test and, from there, we would have to make it understand emotion.

The day of the butler and maid will soon be past, and the home itself will be your steward.

Lockin and unlocking. I should have a ring on my hand with rfid chip and the reader should be on the doors near the handle so the dors would unlock as I grab the handle and lock as I release the handle after closing them.

Not everyone is a fan of jewelry, so maybe a thumb scanner would be more effective? The most important part is that only appropriate parties are aloud to open the doors. The same techniques could be applied to windows.

Why not just a remote in the keychain like we've been doing with cars for ages? I seriously don't get why this is not the norm yet.

That wouldn't actually increase security. It might help when you have a armload of groceries, but to innovate successfully would require something that makes the home owner more secure for unintended access.

https://lockitron.com/ is close to that

I wanted to link to this, but couldn't remember the name. It's pretty cool!

I'll throw one in the ring for a few giggles: Emergency Party Mode! http://youtu.be/6x1GkgbVP1I?t=3m15s

One thing I've been dreaming about for years is a stacked washer/dryer where the washer is on top. Once the washer is done, the bottom opens up and it transfers into the dryer and then the dryer starts automatically.

It is probably impractical for many reasons, but I'd be the first in line to buy it if it existed.

I don't think that it is impractical at all! Certainly it would take a feat of engineering, but it is certainly possible. Check out my response to gatsby.

I've thought about this too but rather than having two machines...

Why not have a washer/dryer work in one machine? Put your cloths in and it starts to wash, once the water is rinsed out it begins to dry.

Edit: So apparently there is such a thing! http://goo.gl/CWgKD (redirects to sears.com listing of such machine)

The problem with that machine is that it is ridiculously small. At 2.3 cu ft, you probably couldn't find a comforter in there. Good find though! It gives me hope!

Doors. I would have doors open themselves, either because my phone is near the deer and my keys are nearby, or an implanted RFID chip. Or anything. Just a way for doors to open quickly and silently, to just the right amount. Not too much, not to little (it would depend on the situation).

Air compression is a valid solution here, if I am understanding what you're asking for. The trick would be developing a silencer for the compression tank similar to that of a firearm.

Check this out:

http://youtu.be/otYAm6OXnH8

Buying things for the home. I'd like to see an interconnected network of pneumatic tubes like banks have at the drive-thru. Connect every home and business with these tubes and integrate it with internet purchasing.

Wasn't there an entire town in the USA where they connected the refrigerators up to a automatic restocking system. Or have I imagined that?

If you did imagine that, you have an awesome imagination! If not, please send some articles on the topic my way. I'd love to read more about it.

This would definitely be an interesting development, but I think there are a number of concerns here.

First off, that would be a lot of tubes. This problem immediately screams a graphing problem with, at the very least, number_of_cities * average_number_of_homes_per_city nodes. Even with that many nodes, the systems would be terribly inefficient.

Secondly, consider that not all packages are the same size. In addition to have a standard-sized tube, we would also need a number of tubes to handle over-sized cargo and, since we can't realistically run one of these to every home, we would still have a use for the offices of UPS and FedEx.

Another thing that worries me are the implications on us humans. If we can have everything sent to our house without ever leaving, we would all become recluses and never go outside.

Heat/hot tub turn on automatically before I come home. When away from more than 1 day, I turn heat down for my home/hot tub significantly. Would be great if it all turned on a couple hours before I got home.

Nest (http://www.nest.com/) is already working on a thermostat that solves this problem. I can't imagine it would be hard to adapt it for hot tubs as well. On an unrelated note, I really want a hot tub.

Dishwasher should be integrated with dish cabinets. You put dirty dishes in the bottom part and after they are washed they should be autoatically transfered to the top part where you can get clean ones from.

Here's the rub: A lot of people keep their dishes in a cabinet above the counter, so there is empty space between the dish washer and the cabinets where the dishes should end up.

I can't think of a way around this at the moment except the possibility of in-wall dishwashers. In-wall ovens exist, so why not change dishwashers, washers and dryers to do the same?

There are a couple of brands of dishwashers with drawers. The idea is that one half gets newly dirty dishes while the other half holds the clean ones. According to Murphy, the dish you want will always be in the dirty drawer.

http://www.ajmadison.com/b.php/Drawers%3BDishwashers/N~64+42...

- Tiny robot comes and puts my keys in key holder.

- Turn on coffee-maker or juice-maker once I'm home

The house itself. I would have the house be like S.A.R.A.H in Eureka. Or something similar.

So you are talking about giving the house a full personality? That's a fairly interesting idea and I'm not sure if it's an active area of research.

It seems like giving the house a personality would require a huge advance in natural language processing. I don't think it would be a practical idea until a machine is built that can pass the Turing test with flying colors.

It will happen in the future, for sure. The question is when.

water to turn on when i step in the shower, turn off when i walk out or give some sort of signal

Would you rather it happen automatically or after you give a voice command such as "Shower On" or something similar? Having the water pre-heat would be very cool. The problem would be knowing when to start heating the water. Assuming the home owner doesn't follow a perfect schedule, a voice command would be the most effective. Another possible solution is that the water starts heating when you enter the bathroom. Motion detection isn't that difficult, so the latter might actually be the better solution. It would depend on how long it takes to heat the water to the desired temperature.

well if we're going down that route, the water should start heating up as i step into the bathroom.

Even better, the shower should be able to recognize that a person has entered the bathroom and also be able to identify that person. In a multi-person household, each person will have a certain temperature they prefer for showering. What if your shower could identify you and adjust the temperature of the water based on your preferences? Machine learning applied to the bathroom!

And also adjust the showerhead spray setting based on the individual.

Electric showers should already heat up water immediately, any water already in the shower head might be cold though..

Houses with "combi" boilers should always have hot water on demand. The water that has been sat in the pipes for a while will have cooled though.

Maybe one thing that would prove useful would be a pipe-heating system. Heating the pipes would also heat the water inside them. Another use for this would be homes in colder climates where the house's pipes are likely to freeze on a cold winter's night and burst when someone turns on a faucet.

Lawn care.

What a huge hassle.

Good idea! This isn't something that I had considered.

I imagine it would be very similar to cleaning inside. An autonomous lawn mower and robots for things such as edging would be cool, but, again, it would be a sticky situation.

groceries

What about groceries? Sorting them, buying them, keeping track of current stock?

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