People should show respect on not link to foone here.
Everything with a battery should have an off switch
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Re: Everything with a battery should have an off switch
#12Obligatory addendum every time foone is posted here: foone goes by they/them pronouns and foone hates HN and all it stands for so please don't bother them with twitter replies just because you saw this thread on here. If you think about following them on twitter because of a cool tech thread, please be aware that they're not a tech novelty account and don't complain when they tweet about politics.
You forgot, foone isn't going to change from streams of Twitter posts to long form blogging.
Re: Everything with a battery should have an off switch
#13People should show respect on not link to foone here.
What do you mean?
Re: Everything with a battery should have an off switch
#14Examples lying around in my house: Bathroom scale: lovely it powers up when you tap it, but eats up 2 button cells a year for a few dozen uses a year Kitchen scales, bit more use, at least once a day but again 2 button cells a year electronic caliper: Same, eats up 1 button cell a year, just sitting in my toolbox Strangely enough none of our kids toys with batteries seem to suffer from this problem How much extra cos…
Between clicking on/off at least once a day, and changing batteries once a year, I'm picking changing the batteries. I'd also guess most people would just leave it on. They may have already tried that.
Re: Everything with a battery should have an off switch
#15Examples lying around in my house: Bathroom scale: lovely it powers up when you tap it, but eats up 2 button cells a year for a few dozen uses a year Kitchen scales, bit more use, at least once a day but again 2 button cells a year electronic caliper: Same, eats up 1 button cell a year, just sitting in my toolbox Strangely enough none of our kids toys with batteries seem to suffer from this problem How much extra cos…
Could you check the voltage on those cells next time you swap? I've found that seemingly similar devices have very different notions of what constitutes a discharged battery. I have a remote controlled humidifier and RGB LED - controllers for which use one and two infrared LEDs respectively. Both are powered by CR2025 button cells, which when new have an open circuit voltage of 3.3V and 2.7V once depleted. The two-LE…
Voltage doesn’t tell you much about the state of charge of a battery (especially with no load being applied), and there may not be much energy left at a battery ‘floating’ at 3V. The cutoff may have more to do with saving money on the power circuitry than what the designer thought was a ‘dead battery’.
Re: Everything with a battery should have an off switch
#16(Background: I work in product design/new product development, and conceivably might have designed this thing! If any of those were still designed in the Western world. Which they aren't. I have designed some stuff like it, though!) Oh, great, this debate again! I shall use this post as ammunition next time I am arguing with our stupid design team about why we need an off switch on the stupid product we are designing…
> This is because they… never use the products they design. Oh, sure, there might be a user study or two. But they never actually have to live with or work with the damn things.
Yeah, I do software and Ive found the same thing: if I’m building it, then I’m actually the first user of the software, and I have all sorts of feedback for the designers. Luckily I’ve worked with some great designers who were usually more than happy to adjust the designs though.
Re: Everything with a battery should have an off switch
#17Examples lying around in my house: Bathroom scale: lovely it powers up when you tap it, but eats up 2 button cells a year for a few dozen uses a year Kitchen scales, bit more use, at least once a day but again 2 button cells a year electronic caliper: Same, eats up 1 button cell a year, just sitting in my toolbox Strangely enough none of our kids toys with batteries seem to suffer from this problem How much extra cos…
Both bathroom and kitchens scales are large enough they can run on AA / AAA batteries and casually go a decade (or more) without replacement.
Tangentially: I used to have a 3 button timer, it was a little LCD countdown display and 3 buttons. One button set hours, one minutes, and one starts / stops the countdown timer. I found this timer when I was a kid, used, and the 1 AAA battery it had lasted into adulthood, literally decades. I have since bought almost the exact same device - 3 buttons, one display - a few different times and the newer ones only last a year on the same battery.
What's going on here? Presumably someone designed a new 3 button timer, since they can't just steal an existing schematic, and I guess just nobody cares to make it good? Why don't all 3 button timers last multiple decades on a AAA battery?
I've seen the same thing with other small electronics, like the dozen or so stopwatches I've owned in my life. A few of them go strong for decades, others have their LCD display start fading in a year.
Re: Everything with a battery should have an off switch
#18Examples lying around in my house: Bathroom scale: lovely it powers up when you tap it, but eats up 2 button cells a year for a few dozen uses a year Kitchen scales, bit more use, at least once a day but again 2 button cells a year electronic caliper: Same, eats up 1 button cell a year, just sitting in my toolbox Strangely enough none of our kids toys with batteries seem to suffer from this problem How much extra cos…
Between clicking on/off at least once a day, and changing batteries once a year, I'm picking changing the batteries. I'd also guess most people would just leave it on. They may have already tried that.
I wish the Dymo label printer (for those labels printed on tape) had an off switch.
Every time I want to use it, the 6 batteries are flat.
Re: Everything with a battery should have an off switch
#19Examples lying around in my house: Bathroom scale: lovely it powers up when you tap it, but eats up 2 button cells a year for a few dozen uses a year Kitchen scales, bit more use, at least once a day but again 2 button cells a year electronic caliper: Same, eats up 1 button cell a year, just sitting in my toolbox Strangely enough none of our kids toys with batteries seem to suffer from this problem How much extra cos…
I have a oven thermometer that has two active parts which are linked via some sort of wireless system.
One part is the one you plug the actual thermal probes into, and that then transmits data to a separate display. You can turn that one off.
Then there is the separate display that lights up and beeps and what have you: this one doesn't turn off, presumably so you can admire it say "--" whenever you're not actively measuring the temperature of something...